Convergence of Interests--Cultivating Consumer Trust Through Corporate Social Initiatives

This paper examines the social and business benefits of a corporate social initiative and explicates the link between the social and business interests. We propose that perceived social benefits of a social initiative is a key antecedent to consumer trust in the sponsoring company/brand, which then generates both transactional (i.e., brand purchase) and relational (i.e., advocacy behavior such as word-of-mouth) business benefits. We further expect that intrinsic (but not extrinsic) attributions of a social initiative mediate the relationship between perceived social benefits and trust. Findings from a quasi-experiment involving a real-world social initiative provide support for our hypotheses.

Citation:

Shuili Du, C.B. Bhattacharya, and Sankar Sen (2007) ,"Convergence of Interests--Cultivating Consumer Trust Through Corporate Social Initiatives", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 34, eds. Gavan Fitzsimons and Vicki Morwitz, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 687.