Author
Abstract
Purpose - – The purposes of this study are to demonstrate the conditional effect of functional fit and image fit on consumer brand attitude through the altruistic attributions and identify the criteria for choosing a perfect social cause for managers. Design/methodology/approach - – Based on the existing research, a conceptual model is proposed, explained the moderating effect of social cause affinity on the indirect influence of functional fit and image fit on consumer brand attitude via altruistic attributions; these relationships were assessed through a bootstrap procedure. The model was estimated with a sample of 240 subjects. Two newly created, printed corporate social responsibility (CSR) information served as the basic stimulus of this article. Findings - – The main conclusions are as follows: first, social cause affinity moderates the effect of functional fit and image fit on altruistic attributions, and the combination of image fit and social cause affinity both on high levels can more easily lead to the emergence of suspicion of company's altruistic motives, contrary to functional fit. Second, contingent on social cause affinity, CSR fit has an indirect relationship with consumer brand attitude mediated by altruistic attribution. More specifically, the indirect effect will be more positive for functional fit with higher levels of social cause affinity, but for image fit with low levels of affinity. Research limitations/implications - – The experiment relied on fictitious corporate name. Most of the responders were students from Changchun. This may reduce the generalizability of the results. Practical implications - – Besides functional fit and image fit, social cause affinity should be treated as a key criterion to choose social cause. Originality/value - – This work analyses and compares the indirect effect of functional fit and image fit on consumer brand attitude through altruistic attributions. The findings give some enlightenment on solutions to contradictions in existing research.
Suggested Citation
Hong Tian & Haixia Yuan, 2013.
"The contingent effect of corporate social responsibility fit on consumer brand attitude,"
Nankai Business Review International, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 4(4), pages 349-364, November.
Handle:
RePEc:eme:nbripp:v:4:y:2013:i:4:p:349-364
DOI: 10.1108/NBRI-08-2013-0030
Download full text from publisher
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to
for a different version of it.
Citations
Citations are extracted by the
CitEc Project, subscribe to its
RSS feed for this item.
Cited by:
- Govindan, Kannan & Shankar, Madan & Kannan, Devika, 2018.
"Supplier selection based on corporate social responsibility practices,"
International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 353-379.
- Fawad Ali & Maarif Sohail, 2018.
"Effects of Corporate Social Responsibility on Consumer Purchase Intention,"
Pakistan Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, International Research Alliance for Sustainable Development (iRASD), vol. 6(4), pages :477-491, December.
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eme:nbripp:v:4:y:2013:i:4:p:349-364. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Emerald Support (email available below). General contact details of provider: .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.