FROM CSR TO CUSTOMER LOYALTY: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION IN THE RETAIL BANKING INDUSTRY OF A DEVELOPING COUNTRY

The objective of the current paper is to investigate the impact of customers’ perceptions of their service providers’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) on customer loyalty, bringing relevant and useful insights regarding the nature of this relationship in the retail banking industry, and in the particular context of a developing country. The objective was accomplished by planning and implementing a consumer survey among a sample of 1449 Romanian retail banking customers, using an item-pool drawn up from the literature. The observed variables were grouped into several reflective latent variables, and afterwards included into a multiple regression model. The results indicate that customers’ loyalty towards retail banking companies is significantly and positively impacted by how customers perceive their providers’ CSR. Moreover, analyzing each category of responsibilities individually, banks’ responsibility towards their customers can be emphasized as being the most important dimension in our research context. The results convey practical implications for customer loyalty enhancement in a European developing country’s retail banking industry, by identifying those CSR dimensions on which organizations should focus on within their CSR policies implementation and communication.JEL Codes - M14; M3