By the bachelor's thesis, we wished to research the perception of corporate social responsibility of consumers in the case of banks in Slovenia and check how this affects consumers' loyalty. Banks are increasingly engaging with social responsibility strategies and sustainable development, and consumers are more and more receptive to the perception of socially responsible activities of companies. 203 participants were included in the research, who provided information via an online questionnaire about their perception of social responsibility for the selected bank and answered questions about satisfaction, loyalty and costs of changing the chosen bank. Previous researchers are not completely uniform about the perceived impact of social responsibilities on loyalty, but more of them are stating that the mediating variable between the two concepts is satisfaction, which indirectly affects the loyalty of consumers. However, since the banking industry is known for a long-term relationship between the brand or the bank and consumers, in order to additionally analyse loyalty, we have included switching costs in our research model as a control variable. The results of our research showed that perceived social responsibility has a moderate effect on satisfaction, while satisfaction has a strong effect on loyalty. We also found that satisfaction has a mediating influence between variables of perceived social responsibility and loyalty. Understanding the meaning of perceived social responsibility is important in forming communication and marketing strategy, as it has a long-term effect on a better relationship with consumers and enables a competitive advantage in the long run.
|
