Business ethics, corporate social responsibility, and brand attitudes: An exploratory study

By O. C. Ferrella, D. Harrison, L. Ferrell, Joseph F. Hair, J. T. Pursell, Raymond J. Harbert. Journal of business research, 2019

264 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract It is important to understand the relative importance of business ethics and social responsibility in determining brand attitudes. However, there has been a failure in prior research to differentiate between attitudes toward business ethics and CSR. This research reviews customer-brand research related to business ethics and social responsibility and conducts a study to evaluate customer attitudes. Four scenarios offer variations in company behaviors related to positive and negative conduct of customer social responsibility and business ethics. Study findings from a panel of 351 respondents provide new insights related to a customer's expectations and perceptions of company CSR and business ethics behavior. We conclude that although CSR attitudes remain important, customers value business ethics as a critical behavior in their perceptions of brand attitudes.

Subfields: Information Systems and Management, Marketing, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/65ee473189f8f5c929a6c0b59f9f211244d2e2d3