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Socially responsible markets involved in the consumer-organization identification process

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International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Over the past two decades, the major actors in the markets, consumers and organizations, have become increasingly concerned about their social responsibilities. Companies conceive strategies and mechanisms to be identified as socially responsible organizations, and (the) socially responsible consumers identify themselves with those organizations they believe to match their concerns. The existing literature provides advances in this line but there are still inconsistences and knowledge gaps, mainly in understanding the underlying corporate social responsibility processes. To contribute to fill this gap, our research benefits from prior advances to provide a theoretical Socially Responsible Market cause-effect model that is validated. The model is valuable for organizations as it explains the impact of social responsibility perceptions on attitudes and consumer behaviour, which gathers latent responsible markets.

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Notes

  1. Before completing the definitive fieldwork, a pre-test of an exploratory nature was carried out involved 40 individuals, and showed no problems in the interpretation of the items.

  2. Aragón is a Spanish community with capital in Zaragoza, commonly used as a city laboratory (for product and market testing). The reasons are its location in the epicenter of various cities and influences (Basque Country, Catalonia, Valencia and Madrid), its average population size, its rural–urban hybrid character and the premise that represents the average behavior of Spanish (Alegre 2016). Therefore, the results offered as a city laboratory are considered a first approach to the whole country.

  3. Except in the SRC case, which measurement scale is confirmed by Berne et al. (2014).

    Variables marked with * in Table 1 were then eliminated.

  4. P31 was eliminated since it presented a load inferior to 0.5 testing the measurement model.

  5. It is noticeable that p value < 0,5; nevertheless, freedom degrees number is very high.

  6. The substantiality of the loads is confirmed with the t-values obtained, all of them being significant, and the value of the individual coefficient of reliability.

Abbreviations

CA:

Corporate ability

CON:

Consequences

CSR:

Corporate social responsibility

ID:

Identification

SRC:

Socially responsible consumer

SRM:

Socially responsible market

SRO:

Socially responsible organisation

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Marketing Management and Market Research, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zaragoza, c) Gran Vía N° 2, 50005, Zaragoza, Spain

    Carmen Berné-Manero, Marta Pedraja-Iglesias & Pilar Ramo-Sáez

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  1. Carmen Berné-Manero
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  2. Marta Pedraja-Iglesias
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  3. Pilar Ramo-Sáez
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Correspondence to Carmen Berné-Manero.

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We acknowledge to D.G.A. its support through IMPROVE research group.

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Berné-Manero, C., Pedraja-Iglesias, M. & Ramo-Sáez, P. Socially responsible markets involved in the consumer-organization identification process. Int Rev Public Nonprofit Mark 14, 179–196 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12208-016-0168-5

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