Impact of corporate social responsibility and corporate reputation on consumer attitude toward food products and consumer behavioral intention

The paper will prove these relationships, the corporate social responsibility effects on corporate reputation, and corporate reputation effects on consumer attitude, and consumer attitud

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY

International School of Business

Cao Th ị Hải Âu

MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours)

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2014

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY

International School of Business

MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours)

SUPERVISOR: LƯU TRỌNG TUẤN, PhD.

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2014

Acknowledgement

I would like express my sincere thankfulness to Dr LuuTrong Tuan who is my research supervisor He helped me to understand the purpose of study research, as well as the process of research Thanks to his help, I can understand clearly about the topic I like and I can complete my thesis His guidance helps me a lot in performing the thesis,

studying theories, and collecting the data This thesis could not be finished without his supporting

I would like to thank Prof Nguyen DinhTho and Prof Nguyen Dong for giving

me helpful advices to correct my thesis I am grateful to Dr Nguyen Thi Mai Trang and

Dr Nguyen ThiNguyetQue with the useful comments for the thesis

I would like to thank to all staffs of ISB for supporting me during the thesis

processes with informing and guiding accurately and on time

I would also like to thank to all of my family members, friends who supported and are by my side throughout my life

Abstract

Corporate social responsibility is still a new definition to Vietnam, the paper studies about its influence on consumer attitude and behavioral intention To investigate the relationships, the paper needs to search these relationships through corporate

reputation The data is collected with a sample of 203 customers at super markets with the method mall-intercept Those customers are choosing food products and asked permit

to interview The paper will prove these relationships, the corporate social responsibility effects on corporate reputation, and corporate reputation effects on consumer attitude, and consumer attitude influences on consumer behavioral intention However, the

corporate social responsibility does not effect on consumer attitude The suggested

hypotheses are proved by data analysis and findings help to the roles of these variables

Contents

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Introduction: 1

1.2 Research Problem: 2

1.3 Research Objective and Questions: 4

1.4 Research Structure: 4

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 6

2.1 Corporate Social Responsibility: 6

2.2 Corporate Reputation: 8

2.3 Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Reputation: 10

2.4 Consumer Attitude toward the Company’s Food Products: 12

2.5 Corporate Social Responsibility and Consumer Attitude toward the Company’s Food Products: 15

2.6 Corporate Reputation and Consumer Attitude toward the Company’s Food Products: 18

2.7 Consumer Behavioral Intention: 20

2.8 Consumer Attitude toward the Company’s Food Products and Consumer Behavioral Intention: 22

2.9 Model: 24

2.10 Summary: 26

Chapter 3: METHODOLOGY 27

3.1 Research Approach: 27

3.2 Survey Research Method: 27

3.3 Questionnaire Design: 29

3.3.1 Scale Measurement: 31

3.3.2 Questionnaire: 32

3.4 Sampling Method: 33

3.5 Data Collection: 33

3.6 Data Preparation: 34

3.7 Summary: 35

Chapter 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 36

4.1 Cronbach’s Alpha: 36

4.2 Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA): 37

4.3 Regression Analysis and Multiple Regression Analysis: 38

4.4 Descriptive Analysis: 39

4.5 Measurement Assessment: 40

4.5.1 Cronbach’s alpha: 40

4.5.2 Exploratory factor analysis (EFA): 42

4.5.3.1 Testing hypothesis 1: 44

4.5.3.2 Testing hypotheses 2 and hypothesis 3: 47

4.5.3.3 Testing Hypothesis 4: 50

4.6 Discussion Results: 53

Chapter 5: CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATION 56

5.1 Findings: 56

5.2 Managerial Implication: 57

5.3 Limitation: 59

5.4 Future Direction: 61

REFERENCES 62

Besides, corporate reputation also influences on consumer attitude toward the company’s food products, as Schwager (2004) defines reputation related to attitude Sen and

Bhattacharya (2001) say corporate social responsibility is a key component of a firm’s marketing toolbox to build their corporate reputation; that means a positive relationship between corporate social responsibility and corporate reputation The research focuses on corporate social responsibility and corporate reputation influence on consumer attitude toward the company’s food products Attitude changing will lead to behavior changing of consumer (Eagly&Chaiken, 1993), consumer attitude toward the company’s food

products and consumer behavioral intention has a positive relationship Both theories of reasoned action (Fishbein&Ajzen, 1975) and of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991) consider behavioral intentions to be the most proximal determinant of behavior, and behavioral intention is proposed to be influenced attitude that consumer attitude toward the

company’s food products towards consumer behavioral intention By looking and

considering corporate social responsibility and corporate reputation of a company,

consumer can attitude toward their food products; that leads to buy and consume their food products as consumer behavioral intention As well as, producers can change their images by focusing on building their corporate social responsibility and corporate

reputation to lead to consumer attitude toward the company’s food products and gain customer’s consumer behavioral intention

1.2 Research Problem:

Vietnam is a communist country that has opened the economics door to integrate into the global economy by joining ASEAN in 1995, AFTA in 1996; especially Vietnam has joined WTO since 2007 that opened a new way for Vietnamese economy, as well as gave many opportunities and challenges to Vietnam companies Besides the advantages the economics integrating has given, Vietnam had to face many disadvantages,

difficulties in the process of its development Vietnam has allowed foreign products that exported to Vietnamese market Vietnamese consumers contact with many trademarks of products, as well as variety quality of products Vietnamese also has another

consideration about Vietnamese products One of industrial is food manufacturing is affected Vietnamese customers don’t believe in Vietnam food products They prefer foreign food products such as milk products for babies; they believe that food products from famous trade mark have good quality and they trust the guarantee that the famous organizations posted in the food products’ labels The Vietnam food production lost their customer because they lose consumer trust To attract customers to Vietnam food

products, the Vietnam food productions need to build their own strategy to gain customer trust The paper supposes to give two supposed factors that maybe influences to attitude toward food products of costumers in Vietnam market Additions, the link between

attitude and intention has been explained by Ajzen (1991), and this relationship is also improved a positive one The paper studies the indirect impact of supposed variables corporate social responsibility and corporate reputation on consumer behavioral intention through consumer attitude toward food products

Every company has its own aim; that is profit The profit comes from consuming

products That their marketing strategy All of four variables in the paper are areas of marketing Because food producers lack of corporate social responsibility and corporate reputation, customers don’t care their food products and avoid buying their food product The paper investigates the relationships of these variables Food producers can build their corporate social responsibility and corporate reputation to influence on consumer attitude toward the company’s food products From that, customers can buy their food products,

as previous research about the positive relationship between consumer attitude toward the company’s food products and consumer behavioral intention

The purpose of building corporate social responsibility is to enhance corporate reputation, also to gain consumer attitude toward the company’s food products Food producers can attract consumer behavioral intention by their corporate social

responsibility and corporate based on the positive relationship of consumer attitude

toward the company’s food products and consumer behavioral intention Corporate social responsibility and corporate reputation help food producers to build a long term

relationship with the customers based on gaining consumer attitude toward the

company’s food products; the customers would think about their brand when making a decision on buying food products

1.3 Research Objective and Questions:

The aim of research is to explore the relationships between supposed factors and studied variables Simultaneously, the study shows how the independent variables

influence on the dependent variables In additions, the data analysis will help to improve these assumptions

1 How do the supposed factors influence on consumer behavioral intention?

2 What kind of relationship between independent variables and dependent variables?

3 How strong are these correlations?

To answer the above questions, the author performs step by step to find the final result The process is described in research process section The organized form of the paper is indicated in the next section

Chapter 2 presents literature review, which indicates the contents of concepts and the relationships The supposed hypotheses and the model of the paper are listed in this

chapter

Chapter 3 details the process of methodology that describes 8 steps in total In succession, these are research process, research problem, research approach, survey research method, questionnaire design, sampling method, data collection, and data preparation

Chapter 4 shows the method used to analysis the data and the way of data analysis, as well as gives the results This chapter describes how the data is analyzed by using data single and multiple regression analysis of SPSS 1.6 software

Chapter 5 summarizes the consequences of the paper, as well as gives

recommends, and supposed the future directions

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW The chapter explains the concepts of the paper and describes the relationship between variables by using the ideas from previous researchers It shows the previous studies that mention about the impact of independent variables affecting on dependent variables

2.1 Corporate Social Responsibility:

There are diversity definitions to describe corporate social responsibility One of them is a concept whereby firms incorporate environmental and social concerns in their business performances on a voluntary base; this definition is given by the European Commission that published a Green paper in 2001 According to Brown and Dacin

(1997), an entity’s activities and its social duties and stakeholder obligations describe its corporate social responsibility These activities include responsible business practices, employee volunteering, corporate giving and cause-related marketing; a company which has social responsible goals, also wishes to bring benefits to its stakeholders that are its employees, individuals, customers, organization and community (Berger, Cunningham and Drumwright, 2007)

There are many definitions of corporate social responsibilities Angelidis and Ibrahim (1993) define corporate social responsibility is the policy and practice of

corporate social involvement to satisfy social needs They find the three types of

corporate social responsibilities in their research; these types are sponsorship, related marketing, and philanthropy These activities show organizational empathy to the

cause-community, as well as its stakeholders Meanwhile in Carroll’s Pyramid Model, he

mentions four different kinds of responsibilities indicating CSR; these are economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic (Snider, Hill, & Martin, 2003) Customers carefully consider a brand, which promises social commitments to their consumers, who would be influenced about their brand reputation (Pérez, Alcañiz, & Herrera, 2009)

Jamali (2008) says that organizations use corporation social responsibility as a mean to develop itself, to attract stakeholder’s attention, and contribute to develop social standards Meanwhile corporate social responsibility is also defined an engagement of an entity to enhance higher and higher living conditions while still protecting benefit of the company, as well as of people both within and outside the firm (Hopkins, 2007)

Corporate social responsibility is also known as the way the organization treat its

stakeholders and community ethically and responsibly As Carroll (1979) writes, making good profits is a social responsibility when the company thinks that its business is a part

of social economic system He also gives four dimensions, such as economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic, that described in the model of corporate social responsibility Where the economic responsibility involves to getting profits, the company is responsible

to the benefits of stakeholders The ethical responsibility means about following the laws

of government, relevant international, state, federal, and local Meanwhile ethical

responsibility talks about moral of an organization; it tries to avoid harm or social injury The firm respects moral of community, individuals; as well as does good things even the laws don’t stipulate these in papers Finally, philanthropic responsibility shows that the

company has the good treating people, loving human policy, many activities and extra behaviors contributing community, society, and cultural enterprises (Carroll, 1979)

The stakeholders such as the community, customers, employees, employers, etc that are in relationship with a firm, can examine these dimensions of corporate social responsibility of its Besides, corporate social responsibility is structured by two factors that are doing good things and avoiding impairments; those describe as a societal

marketing concept, (Petkus and Woodruff, 1992) Concepts as following the laws, not breaking rules, supporting special cased in society as well as doing charities, protecting the environment, taking care of employees and people in the community fairly and

ethically, implementing company’s responsibility to the society, etc also key out the defining corporate social responsibility

2.2 Corporate Reputation:

The reputation can be valued as the consequence from doing marketing by

contributing a company’s branding in some fields It also show to an indication of

behavior and actions in future Sometimes, it is a possible difficulty for a company to entry into a field of management; or reputation is a kind of goodwill in accounting By producing good product to satisfying experiences from customers builds a reputation of

an organization, (Simon, 1985) Meanwhile Weigelt and Camerer (1988) say the

reputation is a result of many actions in the past that help to assign an image of an entity

According to Davies, Chun, Silva and Roper (2003); all the organizational actions from the past perform its reputation; those activities supply to stakeholders about images

of the organization, and predict the probable activities and strategy for the marketplace in the future (Fombrun and Riel, 1997) Smaiziene and Jucevicius (2009) reckon corporate reputation including all impressions of customers and a company’s stakeholders about the company by what the company did and does; so corporate reputation is difficult to copy because it is a unique and intangible asset Corporate reputation is also what relevant public knows about a firm, they can judge about an organization through a social

phenomenon that the organization tries to build to its image Bromley (2001) defines reputation as a distribution of opinions about a company According to Herbig and

Milewicz (1993); corporate reputation is the conglomeration or the perceptive assessment

of many groups about the actions of the company Corporate reputation is viewed as the external stakeholders’ perception about an organization (Davies & Miles, 1998)

Gotsi and Wilson (2001) state corporate as a reflection of view of consumer in a long time about a company Meanwhile, people’s actions toward an organization are

influenced by their beliefs and opinions; that are created into a collective system by the lasting sensing of a firm holding by an individual, a group or network, says Balmer

(2001) The importance of these factors of corporate reputation is indicated by definition

of reputation, as the below formula (Doorley and Garcia, 2007) Corporate reputation can

be considered as all organizational images that summarize from organizational

performance with organizational behavior plus organizational communication as the below formula

Reputation = sum of images = (Performance + Behavior) + Communication

Schwaiger (2004) says that building and corporate reputation sometimes requests using operationalize images with only connotative attribute Organization images can effect on customer central nervous with planned perception; that lead to behavior and valuation of consumers The stakeholders, who are impressed by the emotive responses

of community, consumers, investors, staffs, can give estimation about a company based

on its corporate reputation Fombrun and Shanely (1990) pronounce corporate reputation

as the overall approximation of the organization Hall (1992) says that corporation

reputation is messages that the company wants to communicate with its stakeholders or targeted experiences that the company wants to provide to them, and a firm’s reputation includes emotions and knowledge, what each person has about an organization

2.3 Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Reputation:

According to Fombrun and Shanely (1990), CSR initiatives are means for

organizations to utilize to gain the favorite reputation as its strategy Companies also use CSR as a key component of their marketing weapons because it responds to consumer expectations, improves corporation performance and reputation (Sen and Bhattacharya, 2001) Nan and Heo (2007) also state that CSR initiatives are well established in

marketing literatures as affecting a variety of outcomes; including a firm’s image or reputation Polonsky and Speed (2001) also say that the philanthropic type of CSR is proposed as the most effective initiative to build corporate reputation through association

of causes

In addition, the perceptive intimacy of corporate social responsibility and

corporate reputation is studied and talked about by many papers and researchers The potential relationship between corporate social responsibility and corporate reputation is researched more and more, that helps to increase concepts and studies about it

Hiilenbrand and Money (2007) state corporate social responsibility and corporate

reputation are mutually arising factors and they are different concepts The studies firstly directed to the basal stakeholder group; that are the company’s staffs, employees This group communicates to the firm previously because they work for the company They judge about the organizational reputation previously by its policy is for its employees Fombrun and Shanley (1990) state when a firm builds a good policy, social welfare to their employees; that means it is building its corporate social responsibility; that will lead

to a good corporate reputation Such as the better corporate social responsibility the entity raises, the better reputation the entity gets back Garberg and Fombrun (20066) also affirm gaining a good reputation is a result of outcome of corporate social responsibility

Docherty and Hibbert (2003) say about the relationship between corporate social responsibility and corporate reputation, there are many studies show strongly that

corporate social responsibility performances are caused surely to corporate reputation aspiration of an organization This relationship is considered with a degree of delicacy The images and reputation of the firm will be broadcasted to community by articles and discussions on philanthropy with its corporate social responsibility activities (Porter and Kramer, 2002) Meanwhile Mutch and Aitken (2009) pronounce that corporate social

responsibility plays an important role in making sure of corporate reputation in general Corporate social responsibility activities programs highlight their multiple duties in

relation to corporate reputation The individual companies that promise will play their role in society as a good entity, would carry out these corporate social responsibility activities to contribute their reputation According to Gotsi and Wilson (2001), when the arms of a company conflict each other, the good way to solve the problem is using

corporate social responsibility as a tool not only to help the firm avoid the troubles, but only to build and improve its corporate reputation That means that corporate social responsibility is also a reputation enhancer In general, all organizations want to use corporate social responsibility activities as a weapon to promote its reputation; that is organizational desirability

H1: Corporate social responsibility positively influences on corporate reputation

2.4 Consumer Attitude toward the Company’s Food Products:

Attitude is stated as the level of measurable influence that a person becomes

familiar with using an object (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1972) According to Mathieson

(1991), attitude is drawn as a wish of costumers by performing their goods consumption, and Ajzen and Fishbein (1972) describe attitude as positive or negative feelings what lead

to target behavior in work setting of workers Davis, Bagozzi and Warshaw (1989) focus

on a system’s utility, attitude is consider as an enhancer for improving working

productivity if studied with a cognitive perspective

According to Schau, Stevens, Dauphinee and Vecchio (1995), attitude is defined

as a concept including four components, such as affective, cognitive, the value, and the component of difficulty Affective is concerned with positive arousing emotions that are called positive feelings towards statistics Cognitive includes the processes of perception, memory, judgment, and reasoning; it shows the capacity of a person of knowledge and thinking skills in the life; as well as contrasted with emotional and volitional processes The value is the worth of something in terms of the useful amount; it shows a perceived value of something in general life The component of difficulty is defined that it focuses

on the perception of a subject Attitude is something that people cannot observe it by their senses directly; it is counted based on both beliefs as feelings and behavioral

predispositions toward the armed things Attitude also is defined as estimating bias what decide the behavioral intention of a person positively or negatively

Attitude is defined in diversity ways; and the most important definition is about notion of evaluation One of definitions about attitude is all of the emotions and feelings what people experienced and gained when they learn the processing of the studied thing, (Gal and Ginsburg, 1994) In the paper, attitude can be said as perceptions of consumers about an organization that can be measured as perceptions based on the affective and cognitive skulls of knowledge Petty and Krosnick (1995) based on the notion of

evaluation say that how attitude is viewed depends on the evaluation of objects, such as beholders, issues, etc commonly That follows from positive to negative up to the

dimension ranging Two angles of this evaluation (base and structure); are the

investigating about attitude These two components of attitude are considered as the label

of attitude strength

Hoyer and MacInnes (1997) pronounce that attitude is eternal measurement of an issue, problem, person or action through a process of associating the object Attitude is internal evaluation of a person about something such as a company’s product; this causes the important role of attitude in marketing research Researching about consumer attitude shows that one property of attitude is relatively stable and this causes to fixed tendency that lets to special behavior of costumers (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975) Because of the stable angle of attitude, Oskamp (1999) reckons that corporate should build a strategy by using forecasting about consumer’s behavior toward their products and services Theories

of Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) about attitude in social psychology literature help others to continue to study about attitude in research marketing

Attitude is defined as the judgment level that an individual associates by using an object (Ajzen&Fishbein, 1972) Besides that, attitude is also identified as a person’s positive or negative feelings about performing a target behavior in a work setting

(Mathieson, 1991) Mackenzie, Lutz and Belch (1986) define attitude as “a predisposition

to respond in a favorable or unfavorable manner to a particular advertising stimulus during a particular exposure situation” Hoyer and MacInnis (1977) say that individual attitude toward an object also influences on their attitude toward another object that is related to the first one That means if costumers favorite a company because of its

corporate social responsibility activities; it will lead to their attitude toward the

company’s products or services; or it can be said that corporate social responsibility activities are transferred as messages making attitude of costumers toward the branded products and services

Phelps and hoy (1996) claim that attitude toward something is a tendency in a positive or negative manner to that thing by perceiving through all its information and image shown to the individual Fazio (1995) pronounces that the approachability of attitudes has important significances for understanding the functioning of attitudes

Attitudes can sometimes be automatically activated from retention about just

encountering an attitude object The effectiveness of this consequence grows up as the accessibility of people’s attitudes toward the attitude object increased (Fazio et al, 1986) Based on these sayings, consumer attitude toward the company’s food products means that consumers perceive about the brand food products through information about that entity

2.5 Corporate Social Responsibility and Consumer Attitude toward the Company’s Food Products:

In the time a firm uses its corporate social responsibility initiatives to gain

consumer recognition about the firm’s corporate social responsibility reputation,

Lichtenstein, Drumwright and Braig (2004) have studied that a firm’s corporate social responsibility reputation influences on consumer responses directly For instant, the company perceived corporate benefit and affective attitude (Marin & Ruiz 2007)

Corporate social responsibility indicates in several behaviors, activities, or output; the organizational manager may use it to form the organizational moral risk; these can

influence to the community and public about the company (Kitzmueller and Shimshack, 2012) The directors can use corporate social responsibility as the strategy to affect to consumer product responses and product attitudes, as well as the beliefs of customers and product attributes They also pilot that the corporate social responsibility roll is more and more important in gaining the consumer perception, may lead to a positive consumer attitude

According to Fombrun and Shanely (1990), corporate social responsibility is a kind of institutional signal used by the public to construct the company’s reputation Menon and Kahn (2003) also announce that corporate social responsibility effects on building corporate reputation of the company The organizational value system is

transmitted to the customers through corporate social responsibility engagement (Sen and Bhattacharya, 2001); addition, Menon and Kahn (2003) assume corporate social

responsibility helps to acquire consumers’ positive perception about the organizational specialties

Sheik and Rian (2011) claim that the influence of corporate social responsibility; that considered as the cause; on consumer attitude is controlled by two factors: the

company’s cause fit and customer’s affinity toward the specific cause The corporate social responsibility is defined as the cause specificity in the model of Sheik and Rain (2011) It is also delineated as the level of separateness or understanding of the cause

While the company agrees to support it and stakeholders might demand and pay for it based on purely monetary incentives The cause specificity of corporate social

responsibility effects on customer’s attitude toward the company’s products directly or indirectly Consumers are willing to favor the organizational products with a positive cause affinity if they presume that company has a preference of its products strengthens the cause itself The cause affinity and cause fit are intermediaries that impulse the direct impact happened Meanwhile, the indirect influence of cause affinity helps to promote the impact of general corporate social responsibility on consumer attitude Because the

corporate social responsibility information can be tempered by the cause affinity

positively; the cause specificity of corporate social responsibility influences the consumer attitude toward the company’s products (Sheik and Rian, 2001)

A study of Barlow and Wogalter (1993) claim that the relationships between

companies and their customers exist based on the concept of the social contract

Individuals focus on the revelation that is highly noticeable about an organization, and this leads to their attitude toward the firm When all the organizational information is broadcasted, they consumers get benefits from this performance They would notice about the quality of the organizational products, as well as its side effects by filtering the important information Consequently, the customers perceive about the organizational image; that affects to consumer attitude The reflection of corporate social responsibility practices supports the intermediate effect of consumers’ perceived corporate social

responsibility practices on their attitudes toward the firm by corporate social

responsibility activities (Barlow and Wogalter, 1993)

According to Torres et al (2007), perceived corporate social responsibility

performances and consumer attitude toward the company’s product can change time by time Wang (2009) also examines the relationship between consumer attitude and

corporate social responsibility activities based on the advertising and quality of service (in another industry) His result gives that consumer attitude toward the company’s

products (or services) of individuals enhance corporate social responsibility

announcement The relationship between consumer attitude toward the company’s

services or products and perceived corporate social responsibility practices is improved

by Wang’s research along with other relationships

H2: Corporate social responsibility positively influences on consumer attitude toward the company’s food products

2.6 Corporate Reputation and Consumer Attitude toward the Company’s Food Products:

About researching impact of corporate reputation on consumer attitude toward the company’s products, there are various researchers on reputation showing the consumer attitude is created by corporate members with their company’s reputation The study of Schultz et al (2000) shows that the consumer attitude is important to the entire

organization, the stakeholders are ready to contribute the main issues of both corporate reputation and internal communication

Castaldo et al (2009) assume that companies, which have a reputation for being socially responsible, will attract consumers to their products while companies with a bad

reputation regarding CSR efforts will be punished by the consumers through, for

a variable, which together with the level of public awareness, determines a firm’s

corporate image Schwaiger (2004) conceptualizes reputation as related to attitude,

therefore containing affective as well as cognitive components and described solely by denotative attributes

To determine how good the corporate reputation from the organizational images, the customers base on the organizational history, their activities through time, its

historical perspective, etc By the process, the reputation of the firm is found in

consumers’ mind (Fombrun and Riel, 1997) Bick et al (2003) pilot that; a good corporate reputation affects to the attitude and behavior of customers Therefore, attaining the good corporate reputation ensures the survival situation of the organizations and supports the growth of the corporate brand in a long term Meanwhile, Frooman (1999) says that

because the strong influences of corporate reputation on the attitudes, decision, and

behaviors of stakeholders, the companies compete each other by building a strong

reputation The strong signaling effect of reputation is a good strategy in the competitive challenge The high quality and reliability of products and services can be enhance by a good reputation, the efficiency of marketing efforts are also support by a strong corporate reputation Perceived risks associated with consumer buying decisions are reduced; this influences behavioral intentions (Yoon et al, 1993)

Lafferty and Goldsmith (1999) reckon an excellent reputation can increase

customer trust when they made the purchasing decisions This helps to gain consumer satisfaction and loyalty, reduce the buying disagreement of customers They will perceive well about the organizational products with a good attitude Not only in the consume marketing, as Caminiti (1992) claim, a good reputation also attract candidates to apply to the company, in the recruiting market Roberts and Dowling (2002) pronounce that in the supplier markets, the good corporate reputation not only effects on gaining consumer attitude, but also helps in negotiation with business partners on contracting and

monitoring Additionally, with a strong reputation, entities can access to the markets easier when believes of consumer, as well as investors, is higher and higher in the

Ajzen and Fishbein (1980) state behavioral intention as a usual concept; that used in social behavior research Behavioral intention concerns to the behavioral direct decision,

it will supply the given behavior when an appropriate valuation of intention is received The consumer behavioral intention leads to consumer behavior Perloff (2003)

conceptualize behavioral intention as the purpose of a special behavior performance, a plan to place behavior on effect Intention is a symptom of a person readiness that is ready to carry out a chosen behavior Assumes that behavior intention, behavior, an, action are in the same group under the same will of heading (Ray, 1973)

Ajzen (1991) develops two theories about behavior; the theory of planned behavior is constructed to expand the theory of reasoned action that includes a determinant, it is perceived behavioral control The theory of planned behaviors includes five terms, such

as behavior; behavioral intention; attitude toward the behavior; subjective norms; and perceived behavioral control The reasoned action theory mentions that customers

consciously measure the results of alternative behaviors, and then collect one of them to choose the most favorable consequence Planned behavior theory shows that customers consider the degree of the ease or difficulty in planned behavior making (Blythe, 2008) Also, in the reasoned action theory, Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) say that behavioral

intention is defined by attitude toward the behavior and subjective norms

Behavior is defined as actions of consumer with regard to an attitude object

(Solomon, 2009) Shiffman et al (2010) give a definition about behavioral intention, behavioral intention is the likelihood that customers tend to perform the action in future

when you making purchasing decisions Oliver (1997) encourages more for behavioral intention as an affirmed likelihood of engaging in a certain behavior Liu and Jang (2009) reckon that the product and service quality can influence on perceived value and

customer behavioral intentions directly They also define the relationship between

organizational attributes and consumer behavioral intention, in other words the product and service quality and consumer behavioral intention might be mediated by perceived value and perceived overall product and service quality

Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) pilot that behavioral intention always leads to actions in the future and often combine up with behaviors In addition, the behavioral intentions also signifies the consumer would like to recommend to others about the positive

meaning, maybe encourage friends and relations to experience with the loyalty This helps the company gains the future consumption (Zeithaml et al, 1996) Cronin et al (2000) confirm that behavioral intention is predicted by an important indicator, it is perceived value If the costumers feel satisfied when spending some products or services, with their behavioral intention, they also tell good information about the products and advice their relations to purchase them

2.8 Consumer Attitude toward the Company’s Food Products and Consumer

Behavioral Intention:

According to Morrel and Jayawardhena (2010), consumer attitude leads to

consumer intention which predicts consumer behavioral intention The intention leads to

consumer behavior based on consumer attitude Ajzen and Fishbein (1975) state that; the behavioral intention is determined by the consumer attitude toward the company’s food products through purchasing and using the brand Consumer behavioral intention results from deeply held values and attitudes (Patwardhan, Flora, and Gupta, 2010) Homer and Kahle (1988) find that the influence flows from values to consumer attitude to specific behavioral intention theoretically The behavioral intention is the most important

consumer behavior determinant and that depends both on consumer attitude toward performing the behavior and effect of consumer opinions about behavior (Price, Arnould,

&Zinkhan, 2004) Attitude plays a critical role in consumer behavioral intention, and it is really important because it actuates customers to behave in relatively logical ways (Babin and Harris, 2009)

Theory of planned behavior confirms that a specific behavior is affected by the behavioral intention; meanwhile the behavioral intention is explained by attitude toward the behavior, toward attitude objects (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975) In theory of reasoned action, behavioral intention is defined by attitude toward subjective norms Ajzen (2005 also affirms surely that there is a relationship between attitude and behavioral intention, which described in theories of reasoned action and planned behavior Schiffman et al (2010) define an attitude as “a learned predisposition to behave in a consistently

favorable or unfavorable manner with respect to a given object” (p.246) An attitude can predict behavioral intention of a person in making specific decision, such as buying a product or service, this saying Yoo and Lee (2009) list in their research They also reckon

if a customer has positive attitude toward a brand product, he (or she) is ready to buy the company products; which can said as consumer behavioral intention Petty et al (1997) claim that an individual acts toward some environmental expressions, such as

organizational brand, product, and trade mark, etc.; based on their attitude toward the company Chiou et al (2005) suppose that between attitude and behavioral intention have strong correlations based on the previous ideas

H4: Consumer attitude toward the company’s food products positively influences on

consumer behavioral intention

2.9 Model:

From the assumptions given above and the relationships between factors and dependent variables described in the listed theories, the author can summarize these hypotheses in the below model

The above model describes the relationships between variables of the paper

Below are the supposed hypotheses

H1: Corporate social responsibility positively influences on corporate reputation

H2: Corporate social responsibility positively influences on consumer attitude toward the company’s food products

H3: Corporate reputation positively influences on consumer attitude toward the company’s products

H4: Consumer attitude toward the company’s food products positively influences

on consumer behavioral intention

In the model, the hypothesis 1 is described that corporate social responsibility influents on corporate reputation positively It also shows a positive relationship between these two variables; the measures of them will help to inform how strong corporate social responsibility effects on corporate reputation The hypothesis 2 indicates the positive relationship between corporate social responsibility and consumer attitude toward the company’s products; and the hypothesis 3 shows the impact of corporate reputation on consumer attitude toward the company’s products Both of the hypotheses say two

independent variables affect to one dependent variable, data multiple regression analysis

is used to measure these relationships, to help determine whether they exists or not Finally, the hypothesis 4 claims the influence of consumer attitude toward the company’s

products and consumer behavioral intention This is the last effect of the chain reaction of the model

2.10 Summary:

In the “Examining company experiences of a UK cause related marketing

campaign” Docherty and Hibbert (2003) definite the relationship between corporate social responsibility and corporate reputation Besides, they also pronounce that there are many researches that study about the impact between these variables The paper supposes that this relationship exists in Vietnam food product market Sheik and Rian (2001) show the impact of corporate social responsibility on attitude of costumers The paper supposes that the cause specificity of corporate social responsibility effects on the consumer

attitude toward the company’s products in Vietnam food market Bick et al (2003) reckon that the attitude of consumers is influenced by good corporate reputation positively Whether this relationship happen in Vietnam market or not; the paper helps to improve this suggestion The hypothesis 4 describes the impact of consumer attitude toward the company’s food products on consumer behavioral intention This relationship is

explained by Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) in the theory of planned behavior

This chapter gives the example about previous researches about these supposed relationships If the study can improve these hypotheses really exist in Vietnam market, those issues can impact on marketing strategy, leadership, and performance The

following chapter will describe about methodology of research

Chapter 3: METHODOLOGY

3.1 Research Approach:

The research uses quantitative data collective in this investigation This method is used to measure corporate social responsibility, corporation reputation, consumer attitude toward the company’s food products, and consumer behavioral intention Each variable uses Likert Scale with five points as detail: Strongly disagree 1; disagree 2; neither 3; agree 4; strongly agree 5 The questionnaires are adopted from other researchers such as Smirnova (2012); Fombrun, Gardberg, and Sever J., M (1999); Huang (2004); and

Zeithaml, Berry, and Parasuraman (1996) to measure these variables The customers will

be asked with five choices for each question and when answering, they will choose one of five choices that listed below the questions The customers who are buying in super markets will be chosen when they were deciding to buy branded food products After collecting the date from the consumers, the author will process SPSS version 16.0 to analysis the data to gain the result for the research paper The results will be explained to show the meaning of each number That would show how strong the independent

variables effect on the dependent variables How strong the relationships between factors are

3.2 Survey Research Method:

The mall-intercept personal survey was chosen as the survey method for the paper This method has a lower cost and more easily entry to a large number of the population

Using this method helped researcher to speak directly to participants, it would gain a higher response rate After asking the permit of the costumers for bothering those several minutes, the author processed the collecting the data quickly; this makes sure the percent

of response feedback is 100% The customers were asking directly by the author, so the questionnaires are explained directly to them to make sure they could understand the whole questions The pretesting the questionnaires was not processed because collecting data was collected directly from costumers, they had been interviewing face to face, the questions could be explained clearly directly the consumers at the same when they don’t understand something in the questionnaires

The respondents were intercepted in shopping in malls Data was collected by spot

or inviting shopper to a research facility located in the mall to complete the interview Every second customer choosing and buying food products at food product shelves in super-markets in Hochiminh City would be stopped and invited to fill the questionnaire

as based on mall-intercept personal survey

The chosen sample were super-markets (such as Maximart, Co-op mart, etc.), which were chosen as malls to intercept shoppers who were choosing and buying food products and food product shelves in Hochiminh City The list of super markets (in the data collection part) showed the detail of each super market was chose to collect the date

The sample was created through was a small group of customers who selected to complete the questionnaire This small group of people would be representative of a large

people 203 shoppers would be asked to make the sample group, with age range from

20-55 years old that had equal ratio men and women

3.3 Questionnaire Design:

A five-point Likert scale (Strongly disagree 1 disagree 2 neither 3 agree 4 strongly agree 5) was used for participants to answer the questions of all the constructs to measure corporate social responsibility, consumer attitude toward the company’s food products, consumer behavioral intention, and three terms emotional appeal, products and services, and workplace environment of corporate reputation The customers would choose one of five points for their answers for all the questions

To measure CSR, corporate reputation, consumer attitude toward the company’s products, and consumer behavioral intention, questionnaire design indicates the scaled of measurement that was adapted from measures of Smirnova (2012); Fombrun, Gardberg, and Sever J., M (1999); Huang, Lee and Ho (2004); and Zeithaml, Berry, and

Parasuraman (1996) The questionnaires measure corporate reputation; that were built by Fombrun, Gardberg, and Sever J., M (1999); they described the process of questionnaire building very clearly in “The reputation quotient(SM): A multi-stakeholder measure of corporate reputation” Initiative questionnaires, they built the whole questions with six terms that are needed to measure to value the corporate reputation of a company,

including emotional appeal, products and services, vision and leadership, workplace environment, social and environment responsibility, and financial performance Because

of the requirement of the paper, the research only measured how corporate reputation of a firm influences on customer’s attitude toward the company’s food products, then leaded

to effect on consumer behavioral intention; only three terms were chosen, those are

emotional appeal, products and services, and workplace environment The questionnaires

of these terms were used to measure the food company’s corporate reputation The

questions of the term social and environment responsibility were used as an instrument for measuring corporate social responsibility of the food organization Besides, the

question number two of questionnaires for corporate social responsibility was borrowed from Smirnova (2012) in “Perception of corporate social responsibility in Kazakhstan”

The questionnaires for measuring consumer attitude toward the company’s food products were borrowing from Huang, Lee and Ho (2004) The paper of them researches about consumer attitude toward gray market goods Then the questions were adopted and changed to consumer attitude toward the company’s food products because of the

requirement of the paper In other words, the concept “the company’s food products” replaces the concept “gray market goods” in the questionnaires Zeithaml, Berry, and Parasuraman (1996) used their questionnaires to measure behavioral intentions battery in five terms, such as loyalty, switch, pay more, external response, and internal response Because the stakeholders of this paper are customers, the measure of consumer

behavioral intention is borrowed one of those five terms The loyalty park is the most suitable for this paper, and then the questions are adopted

3.3.1 Scale Measurement:

To measure two independent variables (corporate social responsibility and

corporate reputation) and two dependent variables (consumer attitude toward the

company’s food products and consumer behavioral intention), the questionnaires were adopted from many researchers The measure of corporate social responsibility includes four questions that focus on how the company treats people (such as stakeholders, their staffs, the customers, and community), how it engages in protecting the environment This describes how good the customers percept about the organization’s corporate social responsibility The questionnaire for corporate reputation includes three elements, ten questions in total In detail, three terms name emotional (that indicated by three

questions: 1/ I have a good feeling about the company; 2/ I admire and respect the

company; 3/ I trust this company); products and services (that described by four

questions to study who valuation of customers about the company’s products and services quality); workplace and environment (three questions with the tenor shows the feeling of the company workplace) By answering these questions, the consumers showed their perception about the company’s corporate reputation The measure was used to value the variable consumer attitude toward the company’s food products; includes four questions They valued how the customers percept about the firm that the consumers buy its

products Finally, the factor consumer behavioral intention is measured by four questions such as:

1/ Consider the company’s food products my first choice to buy food products

2/ Say positive things about the company’s food products to other people

3/ Recommend the company’s food products to someone who seeks my advice about buying food products

4/ Encourage friends and relatives to buy the company’s food products when buying food products

These questions describe not only how the customers make purchasing decision, but only how they affect their behaviors on their relations The data was collected based

on these constructs

3.3.2 Questionnaire:

The questionnaire with total has four parts, the first part to measure CSR includes four questions (beginning with the question: the company maintains high standards in the way it treats people), the second has three sections with ten questions for measuring corporate reputation, the third measure has four questions (such as: General speaking, buying the company’s food products is a better choice, etc.) for consumer attitude toward the company’s food products, and the last one includes four questions (with the last question: Encourage friends and relatives to buy the company’s food products when buying food products) to measure consumer behavioral intention

The elements of corporate reputation are emotional appeal, products and services, workplace environment are measured by ten questions Emotional appeal variable has three questions appeal (such as: I have a good feeling about the company, etc.); products

and services measure variable includes four questions: 1/The company stands behind its products; 2/The company develops innovative products; 3/The company offers high-quality products; 4/ The company offers products that are good value for money The final workplace environment is measured by three questions (beginning with: Workplace environment is well-managed)

3.4 Sampling Method:

The questionnaire has total 22 questions to measure four variables, and the data collection received 203 responses in total To be get a high significant, the collecting sample size should be at least 100 participates (Hair et al, 2010) They suggested that amount of responsible must higher than the amount of question five times The

questionnaire includes 22 items; then the sample size is greater than: 5*22= 110

responsible 203 response is satisfied the technique requirement

3.5 Data Collection:

The data was collected at the super-market in food products shelves Firstly,

asking permissions of customers to collect their response the questionnaires was

initiative Survey face to face was taken to make sure they understood and answered all the questions Secondly, the collecting data was processed by asking the customers

question by question And then, the data was gathered and classified as order Finally, the data was input in the software; then processed analysis

Ten super markets were visited one by one twice in twenty days, in different times The names of super markets that were used to collect the data, indicate in the table

of the list of super-markets was chosen to collect data in appendices

The data was collected in 20 days; each super-market was visited many times in two days The time and amount of times collecting data shows clearly on the worksheet The worksheet in appendices indicates the amount of customers’ responses in everyday with the chosen super market

3.6 Data Preparation:

The total amount of response is 203 units After collecting 203 responded from

203 shoppers answering the questionnaire, the data was coded for the processing The SPSS program was used for the data analysis and all data is entered using a table format

In this process, the hard copy data was transferred into a form suitable for data analysis SPSS software was applied to analysis the data with namely from 1 to 5 based on the five-point Likert scale, that shopper choosing for each response

Each question in the questionnaire would be given a number code with its shorted name to input into the SPSS file for analysis process The variable corporate social

responsibility is coded as CSR; the four questions to measure corporate social

responsibility are in succession CSR1, CSR2, CSR3, and CSR4 The instrument of

corporate reputation has ten questions; they name one by one CR1, CR2, CR3, CR4, CR5, CR6, CR7, CR8, CR9, and CR10 The variable corporate reputation is shorted by