To What Extent Is Corporate Social Responsibility Beneficial to a Company’s Performance.docxVIP

To What Extent Is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Beneficial to a Company’s Performance?An analysis of the correlation between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and company performance from consumer’s perspectiveFrom both theoretical and managerial perspectives, there has been increasing concentration on business ethics in the 21st century in addition to profit generating. The concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) thereby emerged, focusing on commercial success along with maintaining ethical, social and environmental values (Mousavi et al, 2013). After CSR moved from the ideology to concrete practice, many empirical studies have been trying to examine whether companies’ moral and socially responsible behaviors contribute to good performance (Lindgreen Swaen, 2010). However, such correlation between CSR and company performance is rather complicated and controversial, due to various definitions of CSR and different methods to measure business entities’ performance. Therefore to be specific and straightforward, this article tries to examine CSR’s positive effect on consumers’ trust, purchase intention, brand perception and overall satisfaction which play critical roles in determining performance, and concludes that generally CSR may benefit company performance to a relatively large extent.Corporations which demonstrate their commitment to CSR are much likely to obtain consumer trust. According to Pivato et al (2008), their empirical research in organic food retailing industry proved the hypothesis that consumers’ perception of retailers’ corporate social performance (CSP) is positively related to consumer trust. Under the precondition that consumers are capable enough to judge organic products and behaviors accord with CSR, the conclusion is quite persuasive. In addition to industry-level studies, Park et al (2014) further divided consumer trust into expertise, integrity and benevolence trust, and identified 4 aspects of CSR activities, namely eco