Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): Investigating Impacts on Customer Response at Two Stages of the Tour Experience

Abstract

Recently, there has been increasing interest in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) among governments, business, and consumers (Beckmann, 2007; Carroll & Shabana, 2010). In particular, consumers are already making day to day decisions based on environmental/social considerations and are moving to extend this purchase behaviour into tourism products (Miller, 2003). This interest has spurred on greater investment in CSR related activities, more visibility of CSR activities in the media and more questioning about the worth of such initiatives. As a result, tourism and hospitality organisations are spending more time and money on CSR initiatives including marketing communications (Sheldon & Park, 2011). A critical issue for firms is the selection of appropriate responsible marketing tools that best match the firm’s business interests (Piercy & Lane, 2009) and are influential in creating more positive customer response. To date, little is known about which type of responsible marketing tools work more effectively to influence customer evaluations and behavioural outcomes, and under what conditions this influence occurs. This thesis aims to investigate: how does the ethical responsibility of tour operators influence customer evaluations and behavioural outcomes at different stages of the tour experience?