How Does Corporate Social Responsibility Affect Consumer Response to Service Failure in Buyer–Seller Relationships?

•CSR is more effective under communal (vs. exchange) relationship norms.•CSR is ineffective if consumers perceive company CSR motives as self-serving.•CSR enhances customer satisfaction and loyalty intentions in communal relationships via consumer inferences of a company's warmth.•CSR can be framed to signal competence for effectiveness in exchange relationships, but at a cost to warmth in communal relationships.•CSR can help companies to recover customers when service failure occurs.

The researchers investigate how corporate social responsibility (CSR) affects customer response following service failure within the context of buyer–seller relationships. A series of three experiments demonstrate that CSR is more effective under communal (vs. exchange) relationship norms, consistent with the alignment of CSR with the communal norm of concern for the needs of others. The effectiveness of CSR is also shown to vary as a function of company motives and CSR framing, serving as theoretically and managerially relevant boundary conditions. Together, these findings increase our understanding of how and when CSR will have a positive impact on consumers and, in turn, companies via customer satisfaction and loyalty.

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