Managerial Guidelines and Research Directions towards Stakeholders' Responses to CSR

1. Steve Hoeffler, Paul N. Bloom, Kevin Lane Keller
Understanding Stakeholder Responses to Corporate
Citizenship Initiatives : Managerial Guidelines and
Research Directions
Presents by
Chaw Su Wynn (142 SIS 74 )
13th April 2015
CSR
Firms
Employees
Consumers

2. Content
• Motivation
• Goal of the Study
• Key Concepts
• Hall of Fame
• Prescriptive Advice for Managers
• Suggestions for Future Research

3. Motivation
• Getting consumers’ attention and interest has become increasingly difficult,
manycompanies assume that they can attract loyal consumers more effectively if
consumers believe that the company is a good corporate citizen and is viewed
as such social-cause organizations
• Companies are putting much more effort into looking good to all these
stakeholders
CSR
• To identify how socially oriented programs can foster both consumer and
employee engagement while also improving the welfare of society at-large and
the financial fortunes of companies
Goal of the Study

4. What companies try to accomplish?
• To produce changes in beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors among employees and
agents (distributors and retailers) ,investors, regulators, cause organizations
and consumers
• To persuade these stakeholders to think, feel, and act in more favorable ways
toward the company, its brands and its favored social causes, ultimately
leading to improvements in brand sales, corporate profits and social welfare
• Persuasion Knowledge Model (PKM), most important model to examine
consumer’s persuasion-based attributions on CC initiatives
Two distinct paths when it chooses a cause to support
1) Commonality, to reinforce existing firm image and equity ( more closely
aligned with corporate mission and brand values)
2) Complementarity to augment and add on to that image and equity
CSR

5. Key Concepts
What is Corporate Citizenship (CC) initiative?
• “CC initiatives are the actions by private companies that are intended t
o create benefits for society as a whole and not just for the companie
s and their shareholders”
• Designed to encompass corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate
societal marketing, green marketing and similar terms used to identify
what private companies are purposively doing to try to serve society
at-large
CSR

6. Key Concepts
What consumers evoke to cope with persuasion attempt?
Consumers stimulate three types of knowledge to cope with the persuasion
attempt
1. Topic knowledge or general beliefs about the topic
2. Agent knowledge or beliefs about the traits and goals of the persuasion
agent
3. Persuasion knowledge or beliefs about the appropriateness or fairness of
the specific types of persuasion tactics used
CSR

7. Key Concepts
How to measure consumers and employees’ responses?
AIDA (Awareness-Interest-Desire-Action) hierarchy-of-effects model of
consumer persuasion
Stage 1 Awareness of the CC initiative
Stage 2 Perception of the importance of the CC initiative
Stage 3 Perception of the likely efficacy of the CC initiative
Stage 4 Support of and engagement of the CC initiative
CSR

8. Key Consumers & Employees’ responses to
CC initiative Each Stage
CSR

9. Key Concepts
What are the potential motivators?
Two Key Potential Motivators for firms supporting CC initiatives that dri
ve consumer attributions
1. Intrinsic, genuine concern for the importance of the cause and desire
to improve the community
2. Extrinsic, a desire to improve the fortunes of the firm
CSR
• Committed role of environmental leadership
• Fulfilling this mission by commitment to understand of
environmental issues and sharing information with partne
rs

10. Key Concepts
How do consumers respond when they become aware?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofYJJh_6QKg
Before
• Does not consider as persuasion attempt
After
• Change of meaning could occur
• Stimulate the persuasion knowledge to help understand the reason behind
• Stimulate consumer’s general attitude towards Coke (either positive or
negative)
• Consumers update their persuasion knowledge
CSR
&

11. Key Concepts CSR
Awareness and
attributions of CC
CC initiative Attributions
• Faireness
• Impactfulness
Amount Spent on
Communicating the CC initiative
How to communicate CC initiatives internally?
• Inexpensive
• Straightforward

12. Key Concepts
What about their perceptions on the importance of the initiati
ve?
• Consider the cause relevant and important both to society at-large and
to themselves personally
• The more personally relevant, the more likely to perceive and ultimatel
y engage with initiative
However, firms cannot simply attempt to maximize personal relevance for
consumers and employees when it selects a cause to support because it
has dual goals of :
1) Improving society through consumer engagement with CC initiative
2) Enhancing the firm or brand reputation
CSR

13. Key Concepts
Factors influence perceived efficacy of CC initiative
1. Perceived firm motivation for supporting the cause
2. Perceived level of firm commitment to the cause
3. Perceived fairness of the contribution toward the cause
4. Perceived degree of fit between the firm and the cause
Firm’s perspective,
• How to explicitly to describe its motivation
• Why the support for the cause makes sense for the firm
• Volunteerism, good way for employee’s leadership skills
Perceived CSR affects not only customer purchase behavior through
customer- corporate identification but also customer donation to
corporate-supported nonprofit organizations
CSR

14. “2nd Lives” Campaign by Coca-Cola
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO6SVJm3pOc
• Environmentally friendly campaign
• Launched in Vietnam
• Transform the otherwise-useless leftover plastic bottle
into something creative, fun and usable
CSR

15. Hall of Fame (2014)
Hyundai “Hope on Wheels”
http://www.hyundaihopeonwheels.org/
Johnson & Johnson “Making Smiles” Asia Pac CSR campaign
http://support.operationsmile.org/site/TR?fr_id=1650&pg=entr
y
TOMS “One For One Movement”
http://www.toms.com/improving-lives
Microsoft
The Walt Disney Company
CSR Source:http://www.prnewsonline.com/2014-csr-awards/#winners

16. Suggestions for Future Research
• Reverse relationship of increased spending to promote initiati
ve and negative attributes from consumer’s perspective and u
nderstand the factors that lead to negative attributions and
how theseattributions might differ fro different types of consu
mers and employees
• How consumers and employees make critical inferences abou
t perceived firm commitment, sincerity and fairness?
• How important is it for employees to actually participate in th
e initiative?
• How much does it matter to employees that their company is
involved in CC initiatives and communications even if they pe
rsonally are not involved?
• Role of fit between the firm and the cause
CSR

17. Thank You