Is CSR a magic word?: An exploring study of consumer behaviour in cosmetic market in Thailand

In the marketing field of study and practices, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been attracting many academics and marketers, as it could enhance the firms’ reputation and attractiveness to more loyal consumers. CSR... [ view full abstract ]

In the marketing field of study and practices, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been attracting many academics and marketers, as it could enhance the firms’ reputation and attractiveness to more loyal consumers. CSR and marketing activities have been one of the most popular themes for us, too. Then is CSR a magic word in the marketing action? This is our basic scope for this working paper.

We analyse antecedent factors for Thai consumers’ purchasing intention (PI) of three different brands, two foreign ones (Kanebo and Body Shop) and one domestic one (Oriental Princess). 400 recipients’ dataset gathered from a web based survey and a quantitative approach was applied to it.

As a result we find the following points, which could contribute to building marketing strategy and also could provide materials for the relevant field of study:
a) For both foreign brands, CSR has a significant impact on purchasing intention (PI) via loyalty.
b) However, for Oriental Princess, CSR does not have a significant impact on loyalty.
c) Out of three latent variables, quality has the biggest impact on loyalty with a high significance, whereas CSR shows the lowest impact on loyalty for Kanebo and Body Shop.