CSR: a roadmap towards customer loyalty

Abstract

The customer related corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature is enriched with studies confirming its influence on customer loyalty. Nevertheless, there are sparse studies confirming the mechanism through which CSR beliefs may influence customer loyalty towards retail banking services within the context of emerging markets like Nigeria where concerns about trust and bank reputation remain persistent. Accordingly, we proposed a research model by employing attribution theory and therefore collected data from 435 retail bank customers in the country to test the proposed model that CSR beliefs have an indirect influence on bank loyalty via brand trust and reputation. Evidence emerging from our statistical analysis validates the research model in addition our supplementary analysis provides evidence on the sequential mediation of reputation and trust with regard to the relationship between CSR beliefs and customer loyalty towards the bank. Overall, this study facilitates a deeper discussion of the relationship between perceived CSR and customer loyalty by identifying brand trust and bank reputation as meaningful mediators. Implications of the study are found in the discussion and concluding sections of the article.

Keywords:

• bank loyalty
• bank reputation
• brand trust
• CSR beliefs
• mediation
• retail bank context

Acknowledgements

This article has been presented in part -summary brief- in the Society for Marketing Advances (SMA) 2018 conference held in Palm Beach, Florida. The authors are grateful to Prof. T.C. Okeke for (partially) helping out with data collection. Similarly, the authors are grateful to the three reviewers as well as the editor-in-chief of this journal for their constructive criticisms which have helped to shape this final product. Finally, this study was undertaken at the time when the first author had an appointment with his second affiliation.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in [Open Science Framework (OSF)] at [https://osf.io/r4pdv/].

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).