La responsabilidad social como creadora de valor de marca: el efecto moderador de la atribución de objetivos

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) actions may improve brand value. However, consumers should previously be aware of these actions and its communication should project a social motivation of the firm. This paper focuses on these two requirements by analysing the relationship between CSR actions awareness and brand value. The moderating role of attribution is also tested. Results show that CSR actions awareness positively and significantly improves the two components of brand value: attitude towards the brand and brand uniqueness perception. The moderating role of attribution is also confirmed for the first relationship when objectives are perceived as altruist. Managerial implications are derived from these results stressing the needing of a strategic perspective to integrate CSR and brand management that should be directed by honesty and long-range commitment. From a methodological perspective, the added value of this paper lies in the fact that the interaction among latent variables are modelled through LMS (Latent Moderated Structural Equations) that generates efficient estimator for the parameters and non-biased standard errors.