The Effect of Korean CSR in China on Chinese Consumers Purchase Intentions for Korean Products

Abstract

Since the 1990s, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) issues have been attracting more and more attention from companies and researchers alike. The purchasing behavior of consumers is directly related to not only a company’s financial performance, but also the future development of the company. Much of the previous research regarding CSR has mainly focused on the perspectives of enterprises. This paper aims to study the impact of CSR on purchase intention in three aspects - consumer, company and country. We decided to use Samsung to describe the impact of CSR on consumer purchase intentions in China. The results of this study revealed that CSR has a positive impact on the consumer-company identification, corporate reputation and country of origin image. Consumer-company identification turned out to be amore important moderator between CSR and consumers’ purchase intentions than country of origin image and corporate reputation.