Corporate social responsibility and its importance to consumers.

摘要

The focus of the present study is to better understand how consumers think about corporate social responsibility—to identify those business activities that consumers expect corporations operating in America today to engage in, and to evaluate which of these business activities consumers perceive as more important. Because specific industries may have unique social responsibilities attributed to them, the current research is limited to one industry, in an exploration of the corporate responsibilities associated with the automotive industry.; In Study 1, 63 systematically diverse people participated in eight focus groups to discuss corporate social responsibility. Given a stakeholder framework to discuss the topic, the participants articulated a wide range of corporate responsibilities that were pertinent to the well-being of several key stakeholder groups.; In Study 2, a nationally representative sample of 3,236 consumers, between 25 and 74 years of age and with a household income of at least {dollar}25,000, responded to a mail survey regarding the social responsibilities of automotive manufacturers. The survey included a measure of corporate social responsibility that was developed from the responses generated in Study 1. This measure listed 22 business activities, each of which was pertinent to the well-being of either consumers, employees, society at large, or shareholders. Respondents were asked, “as consumers”, to rate the importance of each business activity.; Results of Study 2 showed that, as hypothesized, the respondents placed most importance on those socially responsible business activities that were directly associated with the well-being of consumers, as compared to business activities pertinent to the well-being of the other stakeholder groups. This suggests that consumers evaluate the importance of corporate social responsibilities largely on the basis of their own self-interest, and that the business activities rated as important are most likely to affect consumers' attitudes toward a corporation. Substantial variation was also found between respondents on the importance attributed to socially responsible business activities affecting the other stakeholder groups, particularly society-at-large and employees. The results suggest that consumers who are more “other-oriented” and “socially vulnerable” tend to attribute more importance to corporate responsibilities affecting these other stakeholder groups.