Corporate Philanthropy Affecting Consumer Patronage Behavior: The Effect of Reciprocity and the Moderating Roles of Vicarious Licensing and Strategic Fit

Erin Cho, Jihyun Lee and Yuri Lee
Additional contact information
Erin Cho: Strategic Design Management, School of Design Strategies, Parsons, New York, NY 10011, USA
Jihyun Lee: Department of Fashion Marketing, Textile & Fashion Campus of Korea Polytechnics, Daegu 41027, Korea
Yuri Lee: Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design/Research Institute of Human Ecology, Seoul National University, Seoul 08826, Korea

Sustainability, 2017, vol. 9, issue 7, 1-15

Abstract: This study investigates the manner in which corporate philanthropy affects consumer patronage toward a brand. In so doing, we propose reciprocity as a key mechanism, which manifests the effect of corporate philanthropy on patronage behavior, and examine how vicarious licensing and strategic fit would mitigate the relationship between reciprocity and patronage behavior. The results indicate that reciprocity significantly increases one’s intention to participate in the philanthropic activities that a company supports and the intention to purchase its products. Vicarious licensing is found to lessen the effects of reciprocity on participation intention and purchasing intention. Strategic fit strengthens the path from participation intention to purchasing intention.

Keywords: philanthropic responsibility; reciprocity; licensing; strategic fit; participation intention; purchasing intention (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/7/1094/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/7/1094/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:9:y:2017:i:7:p:1094-:d:102463

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().