Moderating Role of Individual Ethics and Spirituality in Assessing Consumer Attitude and Purchase Intention Towards Firms Practising Cause Specific CSR: An Abstract

Abstract

Previous research has found that consumer responses to CSR activities of a firm are influenced by the issues they choose to focus on, the quality of its products and consumers’ orientation towards CSR issues (Sen and Bhattacharya 2001). Hence consumers want to be informed of what corporations are doing and support good deeds that are in line with their belief system. In this context, the type of cause that the company supports may increase the salience of firm-serving benefits (Forehand and Grier 2003). On the other hand, the assessment of company support of causes begins at the personal level. Researchers have suggested that the purchase intentions of consumers are driven by personal values, moral norms, internal ethics, spirituality and other similar factors (e.g. Arvola et al. 2008; Shaw and Shui 2002; Vermeir and Verbeke 2008). Very few studies, however, have examined consumer ethical beliefs, spirituality and their choice of socially responsible organizations as related to purchase intention. This paper attempts to fill this gap by proposing and testing a model that looks at how cause-specific CSR affects purchase intention of individual consumers and whether this relationship is likely to be influenced by the personal ethics and spirituality of the individuals.