How Brand Symbolism, Perceived Service Quality, and CSR Skepticism Influence Consumers to Engage in Citizenship Behavior

Abstract

Brand symbolism, which stems from the vitality of the brand and feeds self-symbolism and social symbolism, has become an increasingly important strategy for firms to enhance consumer behavior. Building on attachment theory, social identity theory, and cognitive consistency theory, and using data from 439 customers of Starbucks in Lebanon, we used an integrative model to examine how brand symbolism, perceived service quality, and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) skepticism jointly affect two types of Customer Citizenship Behavior (CCB): helping other customers and policing other customers. The findings revealed that brand symbolism has a significant positive impact on CCBs and is a stronger predictor of policing other customers than helping other customers in the hospitality context. Further, perceived service quality acts as a mediator between the brand symbolism and CCB dimensions. This study discovered that CSR skepticism negatively moderates the direct and indirect effects of brand symbolism on CCBs through perceived service quality. The findings contribute to the literature by examining the boundary conditions of how and under what conditions brand symbolism affects CCBs by enrolling perceived service quality as a mediator variable and CSR skepticism as a moderator variable in the brand symbolism–CCB relationship.

A cross cultural investigation of retailers commitment to CSR and customer citizenship behaviour: The role of ethical standard and value relevance

“…Our findings revealed that consumers' perceptions about retailers commitment to CSR could improve customer citizenship behaviour. These findings corroborate the widely held belief (Dalal and Aljarah, 2021;Kim et al, 2020;Mohammad Shafiee and Tabaeeian, 2021;Nguyen and Pervan, 2020) that CSR has a significant effect on customer citizenship behaviour. This implies that the more activities a retailer is seen to be involved in, such as establishing a fair pricing policy and generating employment, the greater its CCB.…”

How do customers' perceptions of corporate social responsibility contribute to sustainable customer citizenship behaviors? The mediating mechanisms of corporate brand pride and self‐brand connection

“…Until recently, previous studies have concentrated only on the direct effect of CSR on customer citizenship behavior (Dalal & Aljarah, 2021; Kim & Kim, 2018) or the simple mediating impact of variables such as brand attachment and brand image (Hur et al, 2020). Therefore, this study investigated the relationship between CSR and customer citizenship behavior.…”

Electronic Word-of-Mouth and Customer Purchase Intention for Hotel Services in Delta State, Nigeria

“…Therefore, a client must establish an emotional connection with a brand to engage with it on social media (Taiminen & Ranaweera, 2019). Attachment is the strong emotional connection consumers have with specific brands that prevents them from moving to other products and creates more enduring relationships between consumers and companies (Taiminen & Ranaweera, 2019;Dalal & Aljarah, 2021). There are three types of attachment: social structure, relationship, and identity attachment (Ghorbanzadeh & Rahehagh, 2021).…”