The theory of cognitive dissonance: A marketing and management perspective

Kantur, Deniz (Dogus Author)The theory of cognitive dissonance concentrates on creating knowledge about important psychological processes of individuals. Specifically, it focuses on the relationships among cognitions that are elements of knowledge that people have about their behaviors, attitudes, perceptions, beliefs, feelings, or environments. Since human nature is the main subject of all social sciences, the theory has awakened interest and led to significant research in different academic domains. This study makes a thorough analysis of the theory's application in psychology, management, and marketing fields with an aim to assess the contribution of the theory to the development of knowledge in these areas. It is observed that the theory is commonly used by marketers to explain consumer behavior while its adoption in the management field to examine human related issues is considerably underdeveloped. Accordingly, the aim of this paper is to extend the literature on cognitive dissonance by discovering the under-investigated areas and pave the way for further theoretical and empirical research. Identification of existing gaps and suggestions for further scholarly inquiries are also believed to contribute to the recent efforts to regenerate interest to topic and to boost its generalizability through its greater utilization in the development of knowledge

Investigating the mediating role of corporate reputation on the relationship between corporate social responsibility and multiple stakeholder outcomes

Arıkan, Esra (Dogus Author), Kantur, Deniz (Dogus Author), Maden, Ceyda (Dogus Author), Telci, Emine Eser (Dogus Author)In today’s highly volatile environment, companies strive to leverage the perceptions of their multiple stakeholders more than ever before with the aim to build a sustainable competitive advantage. Accordingly, corporate social responsibility and corporate reputation concepts are of vital importance for both academicians and practitioners, concerning their potential impact on internal and external stakeholders. Recognizing the intensified significance of a multi-stakeholder perspective, the current study attempts to contribute to the literature through examining the mediating role of corporate reputation on the relationship between corporate social responsibility and various outcomes of customers, employees, and investors as the key stakeholders. Based on a reputational ranking of companies conducted by a national magazine since 2001, nine companies were selected from service and manufacturing industries and an online questionnaire was conducted to a multi-stakeholder sample consisting of customers, employees and investors. The results showed that corporate reputation fully mediates the relationship between corporate social responsibility and organizational commitment, employee satisfaction, investor loyalty, purchase intention, and intention to seek employment. On the other hand, there existed partial mediation on the relationship between corporate social responsibility and customer perceived value, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, customer switching cost, customer commitment, turnover intention, intention to invest, and intention to spread word-of-mouth. The results have important implications for practitioners who seek to manage their relationships with multiple stakeholders through their engagement in corporate social responsibility activities and efforts to enhance their companies’ reputational status

Linking corporate social responsibility to corporate reputation: A study on understanding behavioral consequences

Arıkan, Esra (Dogus Author) -- Telci, Emine E. (Dogus Author)In today's highly competitive market environment, firms need to meet the expectations of multiple stakeholders and compete for reputational status. In this context, corporate reputation (hereafter, CR) plays a very specific role because stakeholders make their decisions based on the reputational status of the firm in question. Given the importance of CR as an important intangible asset that firms should carefully manage, understanding its antecedents and consequences is of strategic importance. Examining CR from a multi-stakeholder perspective, this study aims to investigate first the effect that corporate social responsibility (hereafter, CSR) has on CR as an antecedent and then the effects that CR has on the behaviors of customers, employees, and investors as different stakeholder groups. To test the hypothesized relationships, an online questionnaire is conducted to a convenience sample of 172 respondents and the results are computed using multiple regression analyses. The results confirm not only that as an antecedent, CSR has a strong positive effect on CR but also that CR has a strong positive effect on the behaviors of customers, employees, and investors