The Relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility and Customer Purchase Intention: Empirical Evidence from Vietnam

Corporate social responsibility is becoming increasingly important to organizations, and it has received a lot of attention from the general public and marketing academics. This study aimed to look at the many aspects of corporate social responsibility and see how brand reputation and brand love play a role in the relationship between corporate social responsibility and customer purchase intent. To reach the end, this research applied the theory of social exchange and corporate social responsibility to explain the relationship between the variables. The Partial Least Squares was applied to analyze data collected from survey questionnaires in the Hanoi market (Vietnam) to test the proposed hypothesis. The study resulted in 239 valid survey questionnaires which can be used to test hypotheses by applying SmarPLS software. The results indicated that there are three key elements of corporate social responsibility from customers’ perspectives: responsibility to customers, responsibility to the environment, and responsibility to the community. Interestingly, brand reputation and brand love contribute as mediating roles in the correlation between corporate social responsibility and customer purchase intention. Finally, the authors discussed the findings and the implications of this research in both theoretical and practical aspects, as well as the limitations that future research can focus on.