기업의 사회적 책임활동을 통한 기업이미지 및 고객가치 향상이 고객충성도에 미치는 영향

Affecting Customer Loyalty by Improving Corporate Image and Customer Value through Corporate Social Responsibility Activities

Purpose - Recently, a variety of activities for practicing the continuing management of domestic and foreign companies have been conducted and further, corporate social responsibility for maximizing the value of stakeholders such as customers, cooperative companies, and the local community emerges as a key business strategy. Accordingly, the issue of whether corporate image and customer value through corporate social responsibility activities positively affect customer loyalty and customer attitude is investigated in this study. Research design, data, and methodology - Corporate social responsibility activities are classified into legal and moral activities, environmental protection activities, economic activities, and community service activities; further, customer values are classified into emotional value, functional value, and social value, to determine the parameters. In addition, the strategic approach direction of social responsibility activities is justified as a strategy for effectively achieving the expected results that corporations seek by proving the effect of these parameters on customer loyalty. Results - The study results can be summarized as follows. First, legal and moral activities, environmental protection activities, economic activities, and community service activities are four types of CSR activities affecting meaningful improvements in corporate image. Second, legal and moral activities affect factors that meaningfully improve customer value, including factors such as emotional value, functional value, and social value, while environmental protection activities affect improvements in the factor of social value only. Third, corporate image affects meaningful improvements in customer value. Fourth, corporate image affects improvements in customer loyalty positively. Fifth, the three factors of customer value, that is, emotional value, functional value, and social value affect meaningful improvements in customer loyalty. Sixth, customer value acts to partly mediate the effect of companies' CSR activities on customer loyalty. As shown in the study results above, it was verified that CSR activities affect meaningful improvements in corporate image and customer value and, in turn, corporate image and customer value affect meaningful improvements in customer loyalty. In addition, it was verified that customer value acts to partly mediate the effects of companies' CSR activities on customer value. Conclusions - Accordingly, the results of this study suggests as follows. First, it was clearly verified that customers' recognition of CSR efforts has a positive effect on corporate image, customer value, and loyalty because CSR activities improve the relationships between customers and corporations by providing customers with value. Second, it was suggested that corporations implement social contribution activities strategically according to the theory that the higher the rate of CSR activities, the better the corporate image and repurchase intention would be, which is a theory verified through practical analysis. Corporations should do this by constructing positive relationships from the value perceived by customers. To summarize the study results in a brief manner, it is suggested by the results of the study that a corporation should conduct CSR more actively to make customers recognize the positive image of their products and services.