A study on the influence of corporate social responsibility on brand equity among Singaporeans.

With the rising trend of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) globally, it is important for companies to understand the effects that CSR policies can have on their brand equity. The extant research has studied the relationship between CSR and brand equity among western consumers to some extent but there is a lack of such research in the Asian context. This paper examines the effects that a company’s CSR activities can have on its brand equity among Singaporean consumers. We study how CSR policies in applicable to customers, environment and the suppliers affect brand equity and its specific domains using the model established by Aaker (1991). We also examine the role that scepticism has in moderating the effect of CSR on brand equity. We generated a number of hypotheses from a careful review of the literature and collected data for the study via an online survey and analysed the results using the appropriate statistical methods. Most of our findings support our hypotheses and we found that CSR policies do have a positive effect on brand equity among Singaporean consumers. The different areas of CSR have varying effects on the specific brand equity domains but generally, CSR policies that apply to customers have the strongest effect on increasing overall brand equity as well as most of the specific brand equity domains among Singaporean consumers. Counter-intuitively, scepticism does not have a moderating effect on the effect CSR has on brand equity among Singaporeans. This deviation is largely attributed to the fact that scepticism can have both positive and negative effects depending on the specific brand equity domain in question. By understanding the effects that CSR policies have on brand equity and its specific domains, companies can employ suitable methods to highlight certain areas of their CSR policies to achieve specific marketing objectives in the Singapore market.BUSINES