The impact of the CSR activities on consumer trust and attitude toward the distribution company: The moderating effect of involvement

Abstract

Understanding how consumers perceive CSR activities, in terms that CSR activities affects consumers' trust and attitude, has long been recognized as essential elements of a distributor's business strategy. Identifying what consumers seek from a core CSR activity also helps a distribution company to formulate its new CSR motive proposition. In order to achieve the purpose of the research, we divided sample into two groups; one has been exposed to information on CSR activities of a distribution company and the other one has not been exposed to the information, to figure out the differences for each group in the effects of the CSR activities of the distribution company on consumer trust and attitude toward the distribution company. Moreover, this study is also to examine the moderating effect of the consumers' involvement into the product within the linkages among the CSR activities, consumers' trust, and consumers' attitude, by dividing factor of the involvement onto the products into two, high involvement and low involvement. As a result of this study, the hypothesis that the CSR activities of the distribution company have a positive impact on the attitude formation was rejected, thus the two groups of sample could not be compared in differences between the groups. CSR activities, however, found to form a strong trust toward the distribution company. In addition, the difference in trust and attitude between the consumers' group of high involvement and of low involvement turned out to be statistically significant. The results of this study can predict consumer behavior that could be caused by CSR activities of the distribution company. This study proposes a valuable strategic direction to develop consumer persuasion strategies on CSR activities for the strategic activities of the future distribution companies. ? 2017 International Information Institute.