Corporate citizenship and its impact upon consumer moralization, decision-making and choice

Abstract

Businesses are increasingly embracing corporate citizenship strategies. However, the empirical literature surrounding consumer responses to such practices, features many contradictions concerning their impact. As a result, many businesses are uncertain about the extent to which they should commit resources to these activities to influence a positive response from consumers. Therefore, this paper seeks to address this gap by exploring consumers’ awareness of varying levels of corporate citizenship activities and assess their moral responses to such efforts. Using a combination of qualitative methods and projective techniques with a broad cross-section of twenty consumers, the results help to shed light on the impact of corporate citizenship activities upon moral recognition, consumer decision-making and choice.Existing research is largely normative in nature and illustrates a positive relationship between moral recognition, judgement and choice. This study adopts a descriptive approach to morality, thus helping to address the previous contradictions surrounding consumer responses to corporate citizenship strategies by identifying that morality is not an all or nothing phenomenon and that it varies between the recognition of a moral issue, the subsequent judgement of that issue and actual choice.