Is corporate social responsibility a motivator or hygiene factor? Insights into its bivalent nature

Russell Lacey, Pamela A. Kennett-Hensel, Chris Manolis

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science · 2015 · Volume 43 · Issue 3

Abstract

This study fills extant gaps in the marketing literature by further probing the multi-faceted impact of a company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices on customer relationships, and it marks the first systematic marketing study devoted to investigating CSR as a bivalent mechanism that encompasses both motivation and hygiene properties. Via a field study utilizing three separate samples of customer survey data (combinedn= 2,408) collected over three seasons from a professional basketball team, results support a moderated mediation model wherein CSR is shown to be anecessary and sufficientmechanism for stronger customer relationships. While business leaders typically support the notion of CSR for largely altruistic reasons, our research brings new understanding as to how CSR operates in customers’ minds and suggests that CSR is not only something that a company should engage in based on principled grounds but also something that a company must practice for strategic reasons as their customers demand it and place relational value on it.

Keywords

Corporate social responsibility, Motivation-hygiene theory, Relationship quality, Moderated mediation

Enable JavaScript for citation tools and additional paper interactions.