Understanding motives of consumers who help

Abstract

This study integrates insights from several theories, including consumer coproduction, organizational and customer citizenship behavior, functional motivation and social norms to examine consumers' decisions to perform voluntary tasks in retail outlets where they shop. Results of this study suggest that the reasons for engaging in customer citizenship behavior in the retail setting are determined largely by the type of behavior or context. Regardless of whether the voluntary behavior is incentivized or not, altruism and enhancement are the strongest motives of consumers who engage in the widest range of voluntary consumer behaviors examined. This study adds to the literature by uniquely establishing a connection between customer citizenship behavior and charitable volunteering behavior.

Keywords:

• consumer coproduction
• organizational citizenship behavior
• volunteerism