Влияние корпоративной социальной ответственности (КСО) компании на потребительский капитал бренда и намерение совершить покупку

Research gap
Over the past two decades, businesses have widely adopted corporate social responsibility (CSR), and the focus has shifted from simply engaging in disparate CSR activities to defining the strategic role of CSR in business (McWilliams et al. 2006; Porter and Kramer 2006). Strategic CSR implies the implementation of a Win-Win strategy, according to which the company implements socially oriented actions that will bring it profit. At the same time, many researchers emphasize the likely development of strategic CSR and its transformation into other Shared Value strategies, according to which the company does not consider gaining profit as a primary focus of activity, but contributes to society, creating a value that will bring income in the long term.
However, as researchers (GSOM, 2019) observe, today, strategical CSR cannot fully meet the requirements of a new external effect of developing the participation of companies in the life of society, such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN Foundation). The Sustainable Development Goals encourage a new approach – the creation of Shared Value. This approach differs from the strategic one in that the company’s actions do not determine the receipt of profit in the short term. The focus is on campaigns that will create value for a wide range of stakeholders in the long term. At the same time, as studies show, the strategic approach still remains one of the dominant CSR approaches (GSOM, 2019).
Despite the fact that strategic CSR has been developing for more than two decades, researchers still have not come to a common conclusion about whether CSR activity influences the marketing outcomes of companies, especially on Brand equity and Purchase intention. However, researchers emphasize the importance of marketing policy in implementing CSR activities for strategical CSR. Thus, marketing results from CSR activities are important for strategic CSR from the point of view of tracking how the company’s actions in relation to CSR affect the perception of consumers, and as a result, their intentions to make purchases, ensuring the economic stability of the company. Understanding how perceived CSR affects the consumer is also important in Shared Value creation, since one of the first levels of Shared value creation is reconvincing the needs of products and customers. That is, understanding what kind of marketing results the activity brings will help build more effective communication with the consumers in the formation of new values.
To sum up, there is lack of research on the impact of perceived CSR on marketing outcomes: Brand equity and Purchase intention.
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Research problem
Nowadays, there are works that consider the results of CSR on Brand Equity and Purchase intention. However, as the researchers point out, these results cannot be generalized, as there are geographic, indigenous limitations to these studies. In addition, studies do not demonstrate a dominant research result, some prove the influence of CSR on Brand Equity and Purchase intention, other demonstrated opposite results. Thus, the problem of research is formulated as follows:
What are the effects of consumer perception of a firm CSR activities provided on its Brand equity and purchase intention?
Research questions
Considering marketing results, the analysis of the existing literature made it possible to make an conclusion that there is a limited number of studies that would comprehensively assess the impact of perceived CSR on such a marketing result as Brand Equity. It is a complex model with several components. Today, the most widely studied component is Brand loyalty. There is a limited number of studies examining the impact of CSR on other components of Brand equity, but their number is insignificant. At the same time, many researchers consider Brand equity as a full-fledged resource of the company, which emphasizes the need for its comprehensive assessment. In addition, the influence of perceived CSR on Purchase intention has also been insufficiently studied. The number of studies that have been carried out at the moment cannot demonstrate general trends, since they have limitations of a geographic, industrial nature. In addition, different studies demonstrate different effects of CSR on marketing outcomes
For a long time, there was no single framework for the theory of strategic CSR approach that would describe strategic CSR management. The lack of a framework made it difficult to define CSR components for research to determine their impact on marketing outcomes. If analyze the latest research in the field of CSR influence on marketing results, it can be observed that the combination of factors is different: the works include both the components of the Carroll model and the components of the Triple Bottom Line, as well as the components of the Stakeholders’ approach. The lack of a unified model consistent with the strategic approach makes it difficult to generalize the few studies on this topic.
1) What components of CSR influence Brand equity and Purchase intention?
2) What effect does perceived CSR have on Brand equity and Purchase intention?