Corporate ability and corporate social responsibility in a developing country : the role of product involvement

In this study, the authors sought to investigate the effects of corporate ability (CA) associations, corporate social responsibility (CSR) associations, and their interaction (CA × CSR) on consumer responses regarding corporate evaluation and product evaluation in a developing country like China. Moreover, they attempt to demonstrate that these effects are moderated by the level of consumers’ product involvement. Results of an experiment show that both CA and CSR have positive main effects on consumers’ evaluations. However, their interaction is significant only in the low product involvement condition. Both CA and CSR main effects are stronger in low product involvement condition. Besides focusing on CA associations such as technological innovativeness and manufacturing ability, product or brand managers should also focus on the development and implementation of CSR initiatives so as to capture the synergistic effect of the two corporate associations, particularly for low involvement products.