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

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