Corporate Social Responsibility and Consumer Behavior

In today's environment of global competition, companies are becoming much more innovative with respect to how they distinguish and market their products. With all of the traditional (and even emerging) media outlets now flooded with competitive marketing, companies have begun to look at corporate social responsibility as a distinguishing factor for their company, with the goal of translating it to a distinguishing factor for their products. Essentially, companies are working on the assumption that consumers will reward them (i.e., purchase their products) for support of social programs.

To date, much research indicates that a potential consumers' response to a company's social initiative depends on their evaluation of the initiative. Researchers have found that consumers will reward companies perceived as having altruistic social programs and punish those that are perceived as insincere. To further elucidate this premise, Becker-Olsen et al. (2005) set out to investigate the parameters that affect the relationship between c