Daniel Korschun

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.

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.

Emotional Convergence in Service Relationships: The Shared Frontline Experience of Customers and Employees

The literature establishes that customer and frontline employee (FLE) emotions converge during their encounters as a result of a transient, contagion-based process in which emotions flow from one actor to another. Recent evidence suggests, however, that this transient process does not produce emotional convergence among frontline dyads engaged in ongoing exchange, a surprising finding, given the wealth of evidence in support of the idea that customers and FLEs engaged in relational exchange strongly influence one another. In light of this evidence, we argue here that customers and FLEs engaged in ongoing exchange experience similar emotions not as a result of the transient transfer of emotions, but because they develop the tendency to undergo a similar emotional response to relationship events, a phenomenon we call the shared frontline experience. Informed by the social psychology literature, we support this idea by advancing a conceptual model that highlights the role of relationship closeness, personality similarity, and dyadic attachment style in producing the shared frontline experience. The proposed model also suggests that firms stand to benefit from the shared frontline experience of customers and FLEs if they provide the dyad with autonomy, a decision not without risk. Future research directions suggested by this perspective are discussed.

Spillover of social responsibility associations in a brand portfolio

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the spillover effect of social responsibility (SR) activity at the product brand level on the full brand portfolio. Extant research has established that SR activity can be beneficial to companies by influencing consumers’ SR associations with the company and its product brands. However, most studies only look at the outcomes of SR implemented at the corporate level (i.e. corporate social responsibility [CSR]). This paper provides a new and expanded perspective by exploring how SR at the product brand level reverberates throughout the full brand portfolio. Drawing on associative network theory, the authors propose a conceptual model that predicts when and how SR associations with a product brand spillover to corporate brand and other product brands and the consequences of this spillover. Design/methodology/approach – Two experiments were conducted to test the conceptual model. The authors used utilitarian products (frozen yogurt, ice cream, and soft drink) in the first ...

When and how country reputation stimulates export volume

We examine the linkage between country reputation and export volume by matching data from a global survey in twenty countries around the world with actual export data to fifty of their trading partners. We argue that country reputation can be a novel means to reduce quality uncertainty and relational uncertainty, thereby enhancing export volume. We test the hypotheses using the well-established structural model of international trade. We find that each improvement in a world ranking of a country’s reputation for products in a target country is associated with a 2% increase in exports to that particular country (an effect equivalent to the importing country decreasing a tariff by as much as 2.9%). Furthermore, different aspects of country reputation – for its products and its people – attenuate distinct forms of uncertainty, and thereby stimulate export volume in distinct ways. We examine the linkage between country reputation and export volume by matching data from a global survey in twenty countries around the world with actual export data to fifty of their trading partners. We argue that country reputation can be a novel means to reduce quality uncertainty and relational uncertainty, thereby enhancing export volume. We test the hypotheses using the well-established structural model of international trade. We find that each improvement in a world ranking of a country’s reputation for products in a target country is associated with a 2% increase in exports to that particular country (an effect equivalent to the importing country decreasing a tariff by as much as 2.9%). Furthermore, different aspects of country reputation – for its products and its people – attenuate distinct forms of uncertainty, and thereby stimulate export volume in distinct ways.

How Power Affects Consumers’ Tipping Behavior: An Extended Abstract

This article examines how power influences tip amounts. We propose that people tip differently depending on the level of power that they feel at any specific moment. The first experiment shows that when tipping is visible to the receiver, low-power individuals tip more than do those high in power. The second experiment shows that the quality of service does not significantly affect the tip amount for low-power individuals but it does for high-power individuals. This research provides insight as to why there is a lack of consensus in the literature regarding the relationship between service quality and tip size.

Taking a Stand: Consumer Responses to Corporate Political Activism

Corporations are taking public positions on divisive political issues with remarkable frequency. We call this corporate political activism, a largely recent phenomenon that highlights the widening role that corporations have in modern society. While the conventional wisdom suggests that companies should avoid political activism at almost any cost, we find evidence in the consumer context that this may not always be true. Over three experiments, we find that consumer reactions depend in part on the orientation of the company. Consumers have heightened expectations that values-oriented companies (i.e., those which describe themselves as being guided by core beliefs and values) will take a stand, while expectations are lower that results-oriented companies (i.e., those that describe themselves as making decisions purely on how it will affect performance) will take a stand. Our findings reveal that companies which violate these expectations run the risk of losing customers.

CSR as an Adaptive Selling Tool: a Novel Framework and a Robust Analysis Proposal

In this working chapter the authors document an additional way that CSR can be used by employees to improve customer relationships. That is, employees can use CSR as an adaptive selling tool. Employees use CSR as an adaptive selling tool to the extent that CSR fits with what their understanding of the company identity is, and to the degree that customers support the CSR program.