The impact of corporation social responsibility on relational benefit: The perspective of brand image

Relational benefit is the key of relationship marketing. Exploring the source of relational benefits has great theories and practical value. This paper explores the affect mechanism between corporation social responsibility and relational benefit. Firstly, we find consumer perceived corporation social responsibility consists of product responsibility, environment responsibility and social responsibility. Secondly, we investigate the relationship among corporation social responsibility, brand image and relational benefit by structure equation model. Findings indicate that brand perceived quality, brand personality image and brand social image, have positive and significant effect on confidence benefit, identity-related relational benefit and honor benefit. Product responsibility has positive impact on brand perceived quality. Environment responsibility has positive impact on brand personality image and brand social image. And social responsibility has positive impact on all the three dimensions of brand image. Implications for theory and management are discussed in the last section.