تاثیر مسئولیت اجتماعی شرکت در تقویت برابری برند Does corporate social responsibility contribute to strengthen brand equity? An empirical study

1 Introduction Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) can be understood as the sincere responsibilities and actions of corporate bodies towards the society. The corporate houses are artificial persons constituted under the legal framework having definite mission and henceforth they enjoy few privileges and have definite responsibilities for their society. As the size of the business expands, the expectation of the society increases too and there is a trustworthy relationship which is built between the business and the society. Few of the researchers have defined CSR as follows: BCSR not only benefits the corporate brand but also the society at large^ (Vallester et al. 2012). BCommunity wellbeing is enhanced via discretionary business practices which has been a commitment of Corporate Social Responsibility^ (Kotler and Lee 2005, as cited by Kraus and Brtitzelmaier 2012). European CSR activities are more structured and impactful as compared to Indian CSR. As per CSR Europe (a European business network for Corporate Social Responsibility), CSR in European countries promote Bsustainability,^ Bresponsible business conduct^ or Bbusiness and human rights^ and also creates the environment where CSR activities can embed the social commitment and responsibility within the DNA of the companies. CSR in India has never been the voluntary obligation of the Indian companies though few of the business houses were doing it to get the social support. Observing this the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Government of India informed through Section 135 and Schedule Seven of the Indian Companies Act 2013, all companies in India, which either has a net worth of rupees five hundred crore or more or a turnover of rupees one thousand crore or more or net profit of rupees five crores, are supposed to spend at least 2 % of their average net profit for the immediately preceding three financial years on CSR activities. In India there is a restriction to project CSR contributions directly for the sake of brand communication. But in producing higher brand value, most of the contemporary business organisations incorporating CSR initiatives as the strong part of their overall corporate strategies (Hoeffler and Keller 2002). It has been observed that brand attitudes and perceptions of the potential customers (Kim et al. 2015; Mueller 2014; Öberseder et al. 2013) get influenced by CSR led social value addition and social development programmes (Kolodinsky et al. 2010). A well accepted fact is that business is not only supposed to produce and manage customers but also they must be dedicated to retain the customer for lifetime, consequently the CSR has become the significant topic for research (Tsai et al. 2010). Across the globe there is the challenge to engage the customer in a better way for generating higher level of consumer association and strong consumer-brand connection (Blombäck and Scandelius 2013; Moon et al. 2015; Popoli 2011; Rangan et al. 2012; Tingchi Liu et al. 2014). It has been observed that the consumers’ brand love, brand respect and brand recall helps in achieving enhanced corporate brand equity.