C. B. Bhattacharya

Consumer-Company Identification: A Framework for Understanding Consumers’ Relationships with Companies

In this article, the authors try to determine why and under what conditions consumers enter into strong, committed, and meaningful relationships with certain companies, becoming champions of these companies and their products. Drawing on theories of social identity and organizational identification, the authors propose that strong consumer–company relationships often result from consumers’ identification with those companies, which helps them satisfy one or more important self-definitional needs. The authors elaborate on the nature of consumer–company identification, including the company identity, and articulate a consumer-level conceptual framework that offers propositions regarding the key determinants and consequences of such identification in the marketplace.

Doing Better at Doing Good: When, Why, and How Consumers Respond To Corporate Social Initiatives

Although companies are devoting significant resources to corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, insights into the optimal formulation, implementation, and effectiveness estimation of CSR strategies are currently scarce. This article takes an indepth look at when, why, and how CSR works from a consumers perspective. In contrast to the simple, monotonie relationships between CSR and consumer purchase behavior evident in marketplace polls, this article proposes a more complex, contingent model of consumer responses to CSR. It articulates both the internal outcomes (e.g., awareness, attitudes, attachment) and external outcomes (e.g., word of mouth, purchase, loyalty) of CSR initiatives for not just the company, but also the consumer and the CSR issue/cause. This article delineates the key factors that are likely to moderate the extent to which the inputs lead to the internal outcomes and the internal outcomes lead to the external ones. This framework can help guide companies in not only formulating and implementing their CSR initiatives, but also measuring the effectiveness of these initiatives.

Understanding the bond of identification: An investigation of its correlates among art museum members.

Identification is defined as the “perceived oneness with or belongingness to an organization” of which the person is a member. The authors propose that customers, in their role as members, identify...

The Role of Corporate Social Responsibility in Strengthening Multiple Stakeholder Relationships: A Field Experiment

This research relied on a field experiment involving a real-world instance of corporate philanthropy to shed light on both the scope and limitations of the strategic returns to corporate social responsibility (CSR). In particular, the authors demonstrate that the impact of CSR in the real world is not only less pervasive than has been previously acknowledged but also more multifaceted than has been previously conceptualized. The findings indicated that contingent on CSR awareness, which was rather low, stakeholders did react positively to the focal company not only in the consumption domain but in the employment and investment domains as well. Stakeholder attributions regarding the genuineness of the company’s motives moderated these effects.

Antecedents and Consequences of Customer – Company Identification: Expanding the Role of Relationship Marketing

This article presents an empirical test of organizational identification in the context of customer-company (C-C) relationships. It investigates whether customers identify with companies and what the antecedents and consequences of such identification are. The model posits that perceived company characteristics, construed external image, and the perception of the companys boundary-spanning agent lead to C-C identification. In turn, such identification is expected to impact both in-role behavior (i.e., product utilization) as well as extra-role behavior (i.e., citizenship). The model was tested in a consultative selling context of pharmaceutical sales reps calling on physicians. Results from the empirical test indicated that customers do indeed identify with organizations and that C-C identification positively impacts both product utilization behavior and extra-role behavior even when the effect of brand perception is accounted for. Second, the study found that the organizations characteristics as well as the salespersons characteristics contributed to the development of C-C identification.

The Debate Over Doing Good: Corporate Social Performance, Strategic Marketing Levers, and Firm-Idiosyncratic Risk

Marketers and investors face a heated, provocative debate over whether excelling in social responsibility initiatives hurts or benefits firms financially. This study develops a theoretical framework that predicts (1) the impact of corporate social performance (CSP) on firm-idiosyncratic risk and (2) the role of two strategic marketing levers, advertising and research and development (R&D), in explaining the variability of this impact among different firms. The results show that higher CSP lowers undesirable firm-idiosyncratic risk. Notably, although the salutary impact of CSP is greater in firms with higher (versus lower) advertising, a simultaneous pursuit for CSP, advertising, and R&D is harmful with increased firm-idiosyncratic risk. For theory, the authors advance the literature on the marketing–finance interface by drawing attention to the risk-reduction potential of CSP and by shedding new light on some critical but neglected roles of strategic marketing levers. They also extend CSP research by moving away from the long-fought battle for a universal CSP impact and toward a finer-grained understanding of when some firms derive more risk-reduction benefits from CSP. For practice, the results indicate that the “goodwill refund” of CSP is not unconditional. They also empower marketers to communicate more effectively with investors (i.e., doing good to better manage the risk surrounding firm stock prices).

When Customers Are Members: Customer Retention in Paid Membership Contexts

This article seeks to gain an understanding of how members’ characteristics relate to lapsing behavior in paid membership contexts. Literatures such as social identity theory are used to propose hypotheses that are tested using a hazard rate model on archival data pertaining to 7,798 members of an art museum. The results indicate that the hazard of lapsing is lowered with increasing duration, participation in special interest groups whose goals are related to those of the focal organization, gift frequency, and increasing interrenewal times. Conversely, members who have downgraded their membership level in the past, those who have participated in special interest groups whose goals are unrelated to those of the focal organization, and those who received their membership as a gift are more likely to lapse.

Us Versus Them: The Roles of Organizational Identification and Disidentification in Social Marketing Initiatives

Whereas organizational identification is defined as a cognitive connection between a person and an organization, disidentification is defined as a sense of separateness. The authors conducted a mail survey to compare the attitudes and behaviors of people who identify or disidentify with the National Rifle Association or view it in a neutral fashion. The results show that whereas identification is related to peoples personal experiences, disidentification is related to their values surrounding the organization. Moreover, although both identifiers and disidentifiers talk, only identifiers take action.

Stakeholder Marketing: Beyond the Four Ps and the Customer

To better understand the full impact of marketing on society, there is an urgent need for new research that looks beyond customers as the target of marketing activities and firms as the primary intended beneficiary. A consortium of leading scholars and practitioners was convened to discuss how adopting a stakeholder perspective gives birth to a host of research questions that are relevant to the broader academic community.

Is your brand's loyalty too much, too little, or just right?: Explaining deviations in loyalty from the Dirichlet norm

Abstract This paper formally investigates the factors that relate to the deviations of brands actual loyalty levels from theoretical norms in packaged goods markets. An aggregate measure of brand loyalty, share of category requirements, commonly tracked by marketing managers is used for this analysis. The comparison is conducted against the estimated share of requirements provided by the well established Dirichlet model of purchasing behavior. We posit that a brands positioning strategy and marketing mix can influence the magnitude and the direction of the deviation from the norm. We use a two step modeling procedure where we first compute the deviation from the norm for each brand and subsequently conduct a regression analysis of this brand-level data to test the proposed hypotheses. We find that on average, brands that cater to some market niche, are bought in higher quantities, have lower prices, promote to a lesser extent, and have shallower price-cuts and enjoy higher than expected loyalty levels. We discuss possible implications of these results and offer guidelines that managers can use to better assess both the actual and the theoretical loyalty levels of their brands.