Consumers' beliefs about firm’s CSR initiatives and their purchase behaviour

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships among corporate social responsibility (CSR) beliefs, support intentions and purchase behaviour of consumers. Although there is a rich stream of research reporting the relationship between CSR beliefs and support intentions, there is scant reporting on the mediating role of support intentions between CSR beliefs and purchase behaviour of consumers, hence presenting an opportunity to contribute to the marketing knowledge-base. Design/methodology/approach – This study employs a quantitative research design to test the relationships among CSR beliefs, support intentions and purchase behaviour. The associations among these three constructs are tested using Hayes Process tool which is a versatile computational tool for observed variable – mediation, moderation and conditional process modelling. Findings – The results provide support for the relationships among CSR beliefs, consumer support intentions and purchase behaviour. Of the four measured CSR beliefs, philanthropic ethical and legal aspects of CSR beliefs demonstrated the association with support intentions. The results also showed that only ethical beliefs have direct relationship with purchase behaviour. Additionally, support intention provided full mediation for the relationship between philanthropic beliefs and purchase behaviour as well as for legal beliefs and purchase behaviour. Originality/value – This study is carried out in a unique context of New Zealand which is a melting pot of cultures from around the globe. This study presents empirical support to show that ethical, philanthropic and legal beliefs influence support intention and purchase behaviour for the sample of consumers in the context of New Zealand. Hence, communicating ethical, philanthropic and legal-related CSR beliefs provides the means to create consumer perceptions of competitive advantage when adopting a CSR activities for marketing product and service offerings.