دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی چگونگی سودآوری مسئولیت اجتماعی شرکت ها - نشریه الزویر

ABSTRACT

Firms in various markets such as health care, financial services, software, consumer goods, etc. spend a significant amount of money on corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. The literature suggests that consumers take into consideration firms' CSR activities when making purchase decisions, noting that and doing so either increases their purchase intention or makes them willing to pay higher prices for the firms' products and services. Unfortunately, notwithstanding its strategic benefits, the empirical findings regarding the impact of CSR on firms' financials are mixed. In this paper we explore when and why investing in CSR can have positive or negative impact on a firm's profitability. In doing so, we model two types of CSR (i.e., company ability relevant CSR (CSR-CA) and company ability irrelevant CSR (CSR-NCA)). We allow firms to choose which one to pursue if they decide to invest in CSR, and we incorporate the indirect effect of CSR through expectancy disconfirmation on consumers' utility, which has been ignored by the extant literature. Our analysis reveals the conditions under which it is optimal to invest in CSR and of what type. Then, we extend our analysis by investigating how the increase in consumers' appreciation of CSR and increase in consumers' sensitivity to evaluative context affect firms' optimal CSR strategies.

6. Conclusion

Our study was motivated by the fact that firms in various markets spend significant amounts of money on CSR activities. However, it is not clear from the current literature if that is always profitable for the firm to invest in CSR activities. Therefore we address this fundamental question.

Broadly, there are two main types of CSR activities, company ability relevant (CSR-CA) and company ability irrelevant CSR (CSR-NCA). Consumers' willingness to pay for a firm's product increases when they observe that the firm invests in CSR of either type. But when a firm invests in CSR-CA, doing so helps to improve the firm's new product development and manufacturing capabilities, which in turn increases the consumers' expectation of quality of the firm's new product. On the other hand, CSR-NCA does not influence corporate ability. Unlike CSRNCA, CSR-CA has two conflicting effects on a consumer's utility. While the direct effect (i.e., the extra utility consumers receive from buying a product is produced by a firm that invests in CSR) is positive, indirect effect (i.e., expectancy disconfirmation) is negative due to the increase in consumers' pre-launch expectation.

Further, our analysis demonstrates that both firms should invest in CSR-CA if consumers' appreciation of CSR is high. However, if consumers' appreciation of CSR is low then only one firm should pursue CSR-NCA. If consumers' appreciation of CSR is in the medium range then both firms' optimal CSR strategies would depend on consumers' sensitivity to the evaluative context. If consumers' sensitivity to the evaluative context is high then the firms will be better off pursing asymmetric CSR strategies-i.e., one firm investing in CSR-CA, while the other firm investing in CSR-NCA. On the other hand, if consumers' sensitivity to the evaluative context is low, it will be better if only one firm invests in CSR-CA. Below, we summarize both firms' optimal CSR strategies.