Assessing the Prerequisite of Successful Csr Implementation: Are Consumers Aware of Csr Initiatives?

University of Wollongong

Research Online

Faculty of Commerce - Papers

Faculty of Commerce

2008

Assessing the prerequisite of successful CSR

implementation: Are consumers aware of CSR

initiatives?

A. Pomering

University of Wollongong, alanp@uow.edu.au

Sara Dolnicar

University of Wollongong, sarad@uow.edu.au

Publication Details

This article was originally published as Dolnicar, S and Pomering, A, Assessing the prerequisite of successful CSR implementation:

Are consumers aware of CSR initiatives?, Journal of Business Ethics, 2009, 1-17. The original publication is available at

www.springerlink.com.

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Assessing the prerequisite of successful CSR implementation: Are

consumers aware of CSR initiatives?

Abstract

Corporate social responsibility has received a large amount of research attention over the last decade. Results

indicate that consumers are influenced by corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives of businesses if

they are aware of them. Whether consumers are in fact aware of CSR initiatives, however, has not been

studied in the past. This ‘missing link’ in CSR research makes the conclusions that CSR affects consumer

behaviour questionable. Consequently, a number of researchers (e.g. Maignan 2001; Mohr, Webb, and

Harris 2001) have called for empirical studies to determine the extent to which consumers are actually aware

of the CSR records of corporations and the social issues engaged within those CSR records. The present

study fills this gap for the Australian banking industry sector. Results from a qualitative study with bank

managers and a quantitative study with consumers indicate that the awareness levels of CSR activities are low,

despite the fact that banks do actively promote their CSR activities. This leads to the conclusion that...