Corporate social responsibility, customer trust and corporate reputation in the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence in the car industry in Vietnam market

Abstract

The aim of this study is to explore the impact of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities in building customer trust and company reputation with limited resources in the Covid-19 pandemic context. Data was collected through questionnaires sent from August 2021 to November 2021 in major cities of Vietnam, then we evaluated hypotheses in the research model by using the SEM technique. The results show that CSR activities including four facets: economic responsibility, legal responsibility, ethical responsibility, and philanthropic responsibility have positive impacts on customer trust as well as influences directly and indirectly on corporate reputation. Simultaneously, three dimensions of trust including expertise trust, integrity trust, and social benevolence trust also have strong impacts on corporate reputation with different levels, therein social benevolence trust has the strongest impact on corporate reputation. Based on this finding, some management implications are also discussed to show how corporations can allocate appropriate resources for different CSR activities so that they could leverage the benefits from the CSR strategy in their business.