CSR communication through social media : a litmus test for banking consumers’ loyalty

Ahmad, N; Naveed, RT; Scholz, M; Irfan, M; Usman, M; Ahmad, I

Abstract

Prior literature in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has largely focused on investigating its relationship with organizational-related outcomes, whereas the impact of CSR on consumer behavior is largely ignored in the recent literature. Further, most of the prior studies have investigated CSR with a philanthropic viewpoint, but its importance in achieving marketing-related outcomes is something that is to date, underexplored. Hence, the aim of the present study is to investigate the impact of CSR communication through social media on consumer loyalty with the mediating effect of consumers’ brand admiration in the banking sector of Pakistan. The banking sector was selected due to the reason that this sector is homogenized in nature and creating consumers’ loyalty due to this homogenized character of this sector is challenging. The data of the present study were collected from different banking consumers through an adapted questionnaire on a five-point Likert scale. A total of 448 fully filled questionnaires were received which included 289 male and 159 female banking consumers. The results of the present study revealed that CSR communications through social media have a positive impact on consumer loyalty, and consumers’ brand admiration partially mediates this relationship. The findings of the present study would help policymakers from banking institutions to use CSR strategy from the perspective of marketing which is undoubtedly very important for every organization in the current digital age.

Citation

Ahmad, N., Naveed, R., Scholz, M., Irfan, M., Usman, M., & Ahmad, I. (2021). CSR communication through social media : a litmus test for banking consumers’ loyalty. Sustainability, 13(4), e2319. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13042319

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 13, 2021
• Publication Date: Feb 20, 2021
• Deposit Date: Feb 23, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 23, 2021
• Journal: Sustainability
• Publisher: MDPI
• Volume: 13
• Issue: 4
• Pages: e2319
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/su13042319
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.3390/su13042319
• Related Public URLs: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability
• Additional Information: Additional Information : ** From MDPI via Jisc Publications Router ** Licence for this article: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ **Journal IDs: eissn 2071-1050 **History: published 20-02-2021; accepted 13-02-2021