Consumer Responses to CSR in Greek Banking Sector: Does CSR Really Matter? (original) (raw)
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Consumer Responces to CSR in Greek Banking Sector: Does CSR Really Matter
This paper focuses on investigating the impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on consumers' preferences and loyalty in the banking sector. The researchers examined the main concepts associated with CSR and how it is related with the choice and the retention of customers to a specific bank. 67 individuals participated in a qualitative research, which was conducted through semi-structured interviews. The purpose of the research was to analyze the extent to which CSR actions affect customers' choice and loyalty to a bank. The main conclusions that emerged reveal that although the satisfaction and commitment, as well as the positive perception of consumers depends on the trust created by the banks, customers in Greece still believe that the CSR actions implemented by banks only contribute to increasing their organizational profits through the improved corporate reputation and recognition. It is thus evident that CSR does not have a significant impact on customers' attraction and loyalty. This paper also identified that one of the major problems in the banking sector is the lack of public confidence in the way banks operate and the special role they play in modern societies.
Scientific Annals of Economics and Business, 2017
The objective of the current paper is to investigate the impact of customers' perceptions of their service providers' corporate social responsibility (CSR) on customer loyalty, bringing relevant and useful insights regarding the nature of this relationship in the retail banking industry, and in the particular context of a developing country. The objective was accomplished by planning and implementing a consumer survey among a sample of 1449 Romanian retail banking customers, using an item-pool drawn up from the literature. The observed variables were grouped into several reflective latent variables, and afterwards included into a multiple regression model. The results indicate that customers' loyalty towards retail banking companies is significantly and positively impacted by how customers perceive their providers' CSR. Moreover, analyzing each category of responsibilities individually, banks' responsibility towards their customers can be emphasized as being the most important dimension in our research context. The results convey practical implications for customer loyalty enhancement in a European developing country's retail banking industry, by identifying those CSR dimensions on which organizations should focus on within their CSR policies implementation and communication.
CSR from Egyptian Banks Clients View and Its Effect on Customer Loyalty
2018
Your customer is your partner. Corporate social responsibility is considered new phenomenon for the Egyptian business environment. This research provides a valuable contribution to the literature and provides valuable understandings for other research in the area of corporate social responsibility and customer loyalty and the relations between these variables from customer point of view. This research is an empirical study on the Egyptian bank sector to analyze the relation between customers’ perception of corporate social responsibility activities and their effect on customer loyalty. The data for this research collected through a survey from 535 respondents of clients of three banks working in Egypt (NBE, CIB, QNB) in some branches in Alexandria. From the results of this research that have been observed that from Egyptian banks clients’ perspective corporate social responsibility consists of three dimensions (economic, legal-ethical, and philanthropic-ethical) and that there is po...
Seven years on from the tumultuous events of 2007 financial crisis (FC), yet, many aspects of the banking industry are unrecognisable when compared to the pre-crisis era despite the growth in the UK economy that seems finally to be gaining traction. One consequence of the ethical violations and corporate excess malfeasance of many banks that brought UK banking industry into the firing line (Herzig & Moon, 2011; Bouvain et al, 2013) has been the call for reforms concerning its responsibilities towards the society (Williams & Elliott, 2010; Sun et al, 2010). This study attempts to get to the heart of much of the debate about CSR development in light of that FC. It is concerned with the perception of CSR activities in the post FC, the likelihood of the convergence between banks CSR activities and its customer-stakeholder needs and the implications of CSR on their attitudes as well as on Corporate Reputation (CR). The study reviews various works of literature concerning the topic at hand. The hypothesised relationships between CSR and respectively customer satisfaction, customer purchasing decision and CR were evaluated using a quantitative method based on a positivist research paradigm. Primary data was sourced from 92 usable questionnaires (response rate 46%) from UK banks customers. Drawing from the analysis, it was found that there is a significant positive relationship between perceived CSR activities and customer-stakeholder satisfaction in the post FC which is in line with literature of stakeholder model and supports the views of Luo & Bhattacharya (2006). With reference to CSR practices and customer purchasing decision, the results revealed a positive significant relationship between them, also consistent with the results of the study of Klein & Dawar (2004). Moreover, the analysis of this relation contributed to CSR literature by investigating the multidisciplinary domain of CSR on customer purchasing intention. CSR was also found to have a significant positive relationship with Corporate Reputation which shares the view of Reputation Institute (2009, cited in Trotta et al, 2011). Remarkably, the findings indicated a partial mediation effect of CSR on the relationship between CR and customer behavioural intention. Concluding remarks highlight further theoretical development of CSR and managerial implications as well as limitations for future research.
How Customers Perceive Banks' CSR Initiatives
Ecoforum, 2022
The pandemic context shows signs of stability. During these complicated times for all, banks were extremely vigilant toward the evolution of the sanitary crisis. Banks came up with quick solutions to protect the health of their colleagues and clients. And they have been open to adapting their strategy to the changing data from the field. This paper analyzes the perception of the involvement of Romanian banks in corporate social responsibility during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study reveals that the activity of banks during the pandemic, evaluated positive to some extent, does not significantly impact the level of trust in the banking system. The findings could guide banks from Romania to better communicate their CSR projects and impact on the community. Despite the difficulties brought by the pandemic, it is natural for banks to take a step forward and think about the way they will define their CSR strategy in the future. Altogether, our findings could help the banking system learn to be even more empathetic and understanding towards clients and to be present in the community. During the pandemic, banks have done much to rehabilitate their reputation, impacted by the previous economic crisis.
Corporate Social Responsibility in Greek Banking Sector – An Empirical Research
Procedia Economics and Finance, 2014
Companies voluntary embody social and environmental actions via Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). In this paper we indicate CSR polic ies in banking sector in Greece and we study the banks customers' perceptions regarding their banks' CSR polic ies. We present the ten biggest banks in Greece and we ind icate the charitab le programs and sponsoring that they offer in general during the last years in Greece. The present study empirically investigates the customers' perception regard ing CSR polic ies of banks; we study if they have really understood the meaning of CSR. Specifically, it is estimated whether customers believe that banks really wish to help society and the environment or they just wish to improve their sales and increase their profits. Under this framework, the results of empirical research are presented and the relevant find ings are d iscussed.
The Effect of Corporate Social Responsibility on Customer Trust and Loyalty
Sustainability
The concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been the subject of various studies in recent decades. The purpose of this research was to study the Corporate Social Responsibility of companies, in combination with customers’ perspectives, in terms of their trends regarding their trust and loyalty. In this study, the business sector of the Greek mobile telecommunications’ companies was selected, where research on issues related to CSR is not considered extensive, to analyze customers’ attitudes towards a company that emphasizes its social responsibility. To complete the theoretical framework, questionnaires were collected to empirically investigate correlations and highlight, ultimately, the importance of having socially responsible companies in the mobile telecommunications sector in Greece. The present research proved that both at the bibliographic and practical level, successful companies are the ones that are concerned not only with increasing their sales and profitabil...
Review of applied management and social sciences, 2023
This study analyses corporate social responsibility (CSR) with consumer loyalty in the banking industry. Specifically, our study empirically demonstrates the mediating role of Consumer Trust with Consumer demographics as a moderator. There was a total of 350 responses from the survey. Completed versions (315) were collected from the total. Employees of banking firms and individuals in the general public familiar with CSR and the role of banking institutions in CSR were selected using a non-probabilistic convenience sampling method. Through the quantitative analysis of an online survey, five hypotheses were tested. These hypotheses were approved after the attestation of a structural equation model. Our findings revealed that CSR positively impacts consumer loyalty with the mediating role of consumer trust, while consumer demographics have multi-group Moderation. Our study determines how consumers are more loyal to Pakistan's banking industry and how CSR has increased trust levels. Meanwhile, this research provides a better view of how CSR positively impacts consumer loyalty, and their trust level increases the level of commitment when consumers are facilitated with CSR activities. This study will help financial institutions raise their customers due to working on CSR. So, the banking sector can expand its customer base level due by focusing on and implementing CSR.
E & M Ekonomie a Management, 2017
The current research investigates the moderating influence of consumer demographics on the relationship between customers’ perceptions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and their corporate brand loyalty towards retail banks in Romania, a typical developing country and one of the largest countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The investigation is based on data collected within a survey conducted among a sample of 1449 Romanian retail banking customers, based on a questionnaire including a specific set of items drawn up from the literature, intended to reflect corporate brand loyalty, as well as perceptual CSR dimensions, from a sustainable development and stakeholder-based perspective. After an exploratory factor analysis, the observed variables were grouped into several latent variables regarding perceived CSR and brand loyalty and, further on, these were included into a multiple regression model which was tested comparatively within various sample groups generated based on consumer demographics variables. The results emphasize several significant dissimilarities between gender, age, education and residence type based consumer segments in what concerns the impact of various CSR dimensions, as perceived by customers, on brand loyalty towards corporate brands in the banking sector. Thus, brand loyalty is significantly influenced by: perceived responsibility towards the environment - only in the case of female, younger and/or higher educated customers; perceived responsibility towards public authorities - only in the case of customers who are male, older, less educated and/or residing in larger cities; by perceived responsibility towards shareholders - only when for customers who are older, higher educated and/or residing in larger cities. The findings have practical implications for enhancing corporate brand loyalty in the regional retail banking sector market by outlining those CSR policies, actions and attitudes which should have priority within local banks’ marketing communications.
2020
While considered as the pillar of our modern capitalistic societies (Decker & Sale, 2009), the banking sector is going through a rough period since the 2008 economic crisis. The decline of public trust in the financial services negatively impacted many of the banks marketing performance indicators (Hurley et al., 2014; Järvinen, 2014. In order to tackle this problem and better engage in their social role as motor of all economic activities, banks are turning towards CSR as a potential solution. The quantitative research will study the impact of banks' customer perception of CSR initiatives on Brand Affinity, Customer Satisfaction and likelihood to change providers as well as the mediation effect of Trust on this impact. A survey was used to collect data and the sample was chosen using simple random sampling. To study the impact of the perception of CSR initiatives on the different outcome variables, a Pearson correlation analysis was undertaken. The mediation effects were interp...