Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between consumer perceptions about large companies and behavioral intention toward buying products from these companies. It is hypothesized that the better the perceptions, the higher the behavioral intention. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies are proposed as the perfect tool to improve consumer perceptions and, hence, increase the customer base of large organizations. Such an approach has randomly been explored in the existing literature, making the examination of the proposed conceptual framework of the study an interesting research topic.
Design/methodology/approach
– The proposed conceptual framework was tested on a sample of Greek consumers. The final sample consisted of 454 adult consumers. The reliability and the validity of the newly developed questionnaire were thoroughly examined. Empirical data were analyzed using the “Structural Equation Modeling” technique.
Findings
– The results of the quantitative research highlighted the negative perceptions of Greek consumers toward large companies but, at the same time, revealed the statistically significant positive effect of certain dimensions of consumer perceptions on behavioral intention. In more detail, “interest toward community and employees” and “contribution to economic prosperity” seem to enhance behavioral intention, with the first being the most important factor.
Research limitations/implications
– A limitation stemming from the implemented methodology is the use of self-report scales to measure the constructs of the proposed model. Moreover, as the measurement of consumer perceptions has never been attempted in the existing literature, the items used to measure this construct were created after an extensive review of theoretical papers, failing to incorporate scales that have been already tested for their reliability.
Practical implications
– Using the findings of the empirical analysis as guiding lights, the present study proposes certain measures for large organizations. Highly proposed policies are offered in the final part of the paper. These policies are connected with enhancing the perceived interest of the company toward its community and employees.
Originality/value
– The present paper proposes a conceptual framework that examines CSR under a context that has been randomly examined before. It goes beyond theoretical principles and approaches issues that are vital for large organizations. Moreover, the results of the study may be generalized in other developed countries with similar economic realities (e.g. Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland).
