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Chinese Consumers’ Perceptionof Corporate Social Responsibility (Csr)

Better Essays

Journal of Business Ethics (2009) 88:119–132 DOI 10.1007/s10551-008-9825-x

Ó Springer 2008

Chinese Consumers’ Perception of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

Bala Ramasamy Mathew Yeung

ABSTRACT. The findings of this article increase our understanding of corporate social responsibility from the consumers’ perspective in a Chinese setting. Based on primary data collected via a self-administered survey in Shanghai and Hong Kong and results of similar studies conducted in Europe and the United States, we provide evidence to show that Chinese consumers are more supportive of CSR. We also show that Carroll’s pyramid of responsibilities can be applied in China. We evaluated the importance placed by Chinese consumers on the four …show more content…

(3) Are Chinese consumers able to differentiate between the various responsibilities of businesses as laid out by Carrol (1979)? In particular, are the underlying factors/measures of CSR found in Western countries, i.e. economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic responsibilities apply to Chinese consumers? (4) How and why does the relative importance among these factors in China differ from the Western context? The findings and implications of this study is important not only to Chinese businesses as they wrestle with CSR as a strategic component of business, but also to Western businesses as they plough large amounts of investments into China to take advantage of the burgeoning consumer market. The next section provides an overview of the literature on CSR and the consumer’s perspective in particular. In the third section, we explain the data and methodology used in this article. Next section provides the results of our analysis while fifth section discusses these results. We end the article by providing some implications for businesses and limitations of the study. Literature review CSR: definitional issues After several decades of research on CSR, McWilliams et al. (2006, p. 8) still concluded that ‘‘…there is a no strong consensus on a definition for CSR’’. The evolution of the definition becomes clear when one considers several definitions by past researchers. McGuire (1963, p. 144) for

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