Antecedentes y consecuencias de compartir información mediante boca-oído electrónico sobre actividades de responsabilidad social corporativa

Abstract

In recent years, a large number of companies have used social networks as two-way communication platforms, both to transmit information instantly and to encourage dialogues between consumers and between consumers and the company (Nisar &Whitehead, 2016). The information that companies transmit on the social networks is not only related to the promotion of their products and services, but also to the communication of corporate information derived from the development of CSR activities (Jeong, Paek and Lee, 2013). Such is the importance that the communication of CSR activities has acquired that it has become an area of study within the field of corporate communication (Vidaver-Cohen and Brønn, 2015). However, this communication is not without risk due to the special nature of this information. Consumers may be sceptical about the true intentions of the company to carry them out, since they may think that the company engage in CSR because it is part of a corporate strategy of self-promotion and of showing itself to interest groups in a benevolent way and altruistic (Kim and Ferguson, 2018; Lee, Zhang and Abitbol, 2017). Therefore, it is a challenge for experts in corporate communication to identify which factors allow to increase credibility in the communication of CSR activities and that this is a persuasion tool that allows modifying the consumer's attitude and behaviour towards the company (Kim, 2019). Therefore, this doctoral thesis has two main objectives. First, to examine to what extent the presence of CSR information on the company's website contributes to the generation of CSR associations and, therefore, can increase the likelihood that consumers will share such information on social media. Second, analyse the influence that the source that communicates the CSR information and the company's reputation has in generating CSR attributions and, therefore, its influence on the consumer's identification with the company and the intention to share this information on social networks. In response to the proposed objectives, this research develops two empirical studies based on experimental methodology. The first experiment manipulates a factor between subjects (presence of RSC information vs. absence of RSC information). The results confirm that the fact that the company includes CSR messages in its communications allows consumers to generate more CSR associations, and that they are willing to share this information motivated by a need to improve their concept of themselves, show a desired identity and establish social ties with other individuals. The second experiment has a 3x2 design between subjects, where the source of the message (company that performs the CSR action, beneficiary entity of the CSR action and independent third party to the company) and the reputation of the company (positive vs. negative). The results confirm that the CSR information transmitted by the same company that performs the action is perceived in a more strategic way than when the same information is transmitted by the entity that benefits from said action. In the same way, the positive reputation of the company that carries out the CSR action increases the attributions of CSR as corporate values. The conclusions of this work contribute to the existing literature on CSR communication, being of great interest to those companies that want to improve the communication of their CSR actions in online environments. An interesting line of research opens on how to involve the beneficiary entities of CSR actions in corporate communication strategies.