EFFECTS OF THE FIRMS SOCIAL INVOLVEMENT ON CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

1998

RESUMO

Firms social involvement is common practice in the modern world. The issue has received intense attention in general and academic literature. In particular, the management literature has focused on corporate social responsibility. Societal obligations, altruistic behavior, and economic motivations have been shown to motivate social involvement. Among economic justifications, the effects of social involvement on the workforce and on funding sources have been studied. This dissertation turns to the demand side effects, by investigating how a firms social involvement affects consumer behavior. Drawing from the literature on products social valuein particular on symbolic valueand on signaling theory, this dissertation hypothesizes direct and indirect effects of social involvement on consumer utility. The former arises from the value consumers place on social involvement and is posited to be moderated by personal social values. The latter derive from social involvement signaling shared values, hence reducing the uncertainty associated with the firms claims of attribute performance. To capture the proposed effects on consumer behavior, a random utility model is developed. Social involvement is assumed to affect both the consideration and choice of a product or service. Data from conjoint choice tasks in a mail-out survey served to estimate the model parameters. Real brands of four categories were utilized, along with fractional factorial designs for between-subject manipulations of social involvement and expertise, and within-subject manipulations of price and attributes. Consistent results across the brands and categories support consumer-based economic justification for social involvement. The effects are found to be substantial both for consideration and choice. Mixed results suggest that personal social values do not necessarily moderate social involvement. This may be credited to social involvement having symbolic consumption value, which suggests that personal value-based segmentation is not relevant. The hypothesized effect of increased weight of the attribute level in consumer utility in the presence of high social involvement received only limited support. Evidence was found that this effect was present but was offset by the reduction in the sensitivity to the attributes under a strong manipulation of social involvement. Finally, price sensitivity was found to decrease significantly in the presence of social involvement.

ASSUNTO(S)

cause marketing choice conjoint responsabilidade social corporativa consumer behavior modelos randômicos social responsibility mercadologia random utility models

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