earticle

영어

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities are important tool in corporate management strategies. However, the way that companies conduct CSR activities might bring different effect on consumers. The purpose of this study is to verify the effect of CSR fit (similarity between the firm’s CSR activities and the firm's core products or technologies) on the consumers’ evaluation on product performance. In addition to the main effects of CSR fit on perceived product performance, and we also examined how this effect changes when CSR information source and consumer expertise are involved as control variables. Study 1 of this research was conducted with US consumers and study 2 was with Chinese consumers. Experimental results show that consumers’ perceive product performance is better when the fit between CSR activities and firm's core products or technologies is low than the fit is high. When CSR information sources are neutral sources, consumers perceive product performance to be better when the fit between the firm’s CSR activities and the firm's core products or technologies is low than the fit is high. However when CSR information was delivered by company’s source like nadvertisement, such difference disappears. This study also show that the higher the customer's expertise, the better the product performance was perceived for high-fit CSR activities. On the other hand, the lower the consumer's expertise, the better perceived product performancewas perceived for low-fit CSR activities.