| Author | Rehman, Sana ur |
| Call Number | AIT Diss no.SM-10-03 |
| Note | A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment for the requirements of the
degree of Doctorate of Philosophy in
International Business, School of Management |
| Publisher | Asian Institute of Technology |
| Abstract | As financial crises are hitting all walks of lives, what will be the attitude of corporations
toward the dynamics of corporate social responsibility (CSR) especially in the developing
societies and its associated customer’s attitude? How customers would trust and do
tradeoffs between CSR and cause related marketing (CRM) information disseminated by
the companies? CSR has been much studied from diverse aspects in developed societies
but the literature provides a paucity of insight from the developing societies point of
view, where poverty, corruption and political instability are the prime concerns of the
governments.
Corporate social responsibility has become a common mantra for corporate public
relations. CSR is understood as a general attitude of a corporation or good citizenship and
it affects almost all affairs of a company. A more focused or campaign-oriented approach
to public relations in called Cause related marketing (CRM). While cause related
marketing is often subsumed under CSR, in practice CSR and CRM can be used as
different PR tools. For example, a company that the general audience is perceived as less
socially responsible might try to compensate this negative CSR by supporting a specific
cause. On the other hand a corporation could follow a more cause unspecific citizen
model by making sure, that is, investing in assurance mechanisms, that all governmental
regulations are strictly followed and giving the general impression that it is a good and
trustworthy company. In this study we address the question what has a bigger impact on
customers’ attitude and whether CRM can compensate for negative CSR. Though cause
specificity of a company image might leave a stronger impression, CRM needs cause
affinity to come into fruition. A cause unspecific practice of CSR in contrast might have a
broader effect on the society. In order to overcome various measurement problems we
apply an experimental design in a society characterized by significant religious diversity
that measures consumers’ attitudes towards two PR tools: an unspecific CSR approach
and the support for a strictly religious cause. We find that both CSR and CRM have very
similar positive effects on consumers’ attitudes and that CRM can compensation negative
CSR to a high degree in the cause affinit segment of the market.
This research has also tried to assess the preference between two religiosity measures:
observation based and solicited, and the attitude of devout and non-devout people in the
context of a developing country towards CSR. The results show that observation based
religiosity measure is more reliable if the researchers have deeply rooted cultural and
religiously contextual know how about the society in which the research is being
conducted. Moreover less religious people like CSR most as compare to highly religious
people. |
| Year | 2010 |
| Type | Dissertation |
| School | School of Management (SOM) |
| Department | Other Field of Studies (No Department) |
| Academic Program/FoS | Doctor of Philosophy in International Business (Publication code = SM) |
| Chairperson(s) | Zee, Rian Beise; |
| Examination Committee(s) | Shivakoti, Ganesh P.;Dimmitt, Nicholas J.;Winai Wongsurawart;Huang, Xu; |
| Scholarship Donor(s) | University of Balochistan Quetta, Pakistan;AIT
Thailand; |