Journal of Business Ethics (2009) 85:285–301
DOI 10.1007/s10551-008-9729-9
Assessing the Prerequisite of Successful
CSR Implementation: Are Consumers
Aware of CSR Initiatives?
ABSTRACT. As a reflection of the values and ethics of
firms, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has received a
large amount of research attention over the last decade. A
growing area of this research is the CSR–consumer rela-
tionship. Results of experimental studies indicate that con-
sumer attitudes and purchase intentions are influenced by
CSR initiatives – if consumers are aware of them. In order to
create this awareness, business is increasingly turning to ‘pro-
social’ marketing communications, but such campaigns is met
with scepticism and their effectiveness are therefore uncer-
tain. Consequently, researchers in the field (for example,
Maignan, 2001; Mohr et al., 2001) have called for empirical
studies to determine the level of actual consumer awareness of
CSR initiatives. This study examines the Australian banking
sector, which engages in and promotes its CSR activities,
to help fill this gap. Results from our qualitative study with
bank managers, and our quantitative study with consumers,
indicate low consumer CSR awareness levels. Consumer
understanding of many of the social issues banks engage with
is also low. While CSR is effective in eliciting favourable
consumer attitudes and behaviour in theory, CSR has not
proven its general effectiveness in the marketplace. The low
consumer awareness of the various social issues in which firms
engage with their CSR programs suggests that firms may
need to educate consumers, so they may better contextualise
CSR initiatives communicated. However, better context
may amount to little if claimed CSR initiatives are perceived
as inconsistent with other facets of the business that reflect its
values and ethics.
KEY WORDS: banks, communication, consumer
awareness, corporate social responsibility
Introduction
Values, ethics and corporate social responsibility
(CSR) are linked in the culture and management of

Springer 2008
Alan Pomering
Sara Dolnicar
a firm (Joyner and Payne, 2002). CSR is ‘the
commitment of business to contribute to sustainable
economic development, working with employees,
their families, the local community and society at
large to improve their quality of life’ (World Busi-
ness Council for Sustainable Development, 2004).
As an ethical business philosophy, CSR might be
thought of as the minimisation of negative exter-
nalities of a firm’s operating activities and the max-
imisation of beneficial impacts on society (for
example, Mohr et al., 2001). While attempts to
justify CSR on purely normative grounds were open
to criticism, particularly from neo-classical econo-
mists like Friedman (1970) who saw such practice as
a breach of the manager’s fiduciary duty to the firm’s
owners, the establishment of a link between CSR
and financial performance (Orlitzky et al., 2003) has
now provided the ‘business case’ for CSR, what
Mintzberg (1983) calls ‘enlightened self-interest’, as a
powerful justification for firms engaging in CSR
initiatives. For this business philosophy to be suc-
cessful then, and this success sustained, it must ulti-
mately be rewarded in the marketplace by
consumers through their purchase behaviour. For
consumers to act as ‘rewarding and punishing
authorities’, who, through their purchase decisions,
‘influence the profits of competing firms, and indi-
rectly also the direction of the economy’ (Hansen
and Schrader, 1997, p. 447), however, it is important
they are informed of which firms are and are not
socially responsible.
Marketplace polls report that consumers not only
expect businesses to be socially responsible, but they
also want to be informed about what firms are doing,
and will support firms that pursue CSR initiatives. A
23-nation poll of public attitudes to CSR found that
286 Alan Pomering and Sara Dolnicar
Australians have amongst the highest CSR expectations
of business (Environics, 1999). Cone Inc. (2004)
found that 86% of American respondents said
companies should tell them how they support social
issues. In the UK, 74% of respondents indicated that
more information on a company’s social and ethical
behaviour would influence their purchasing deci-
sions, and 86% thought companies should actively
communicate their CSR activities (Dawkins, 2004).
These survey results show a strong consumer
demand for CSR information and imply that CSR
information could significantly affect consumer
behaviour, leading to what Hansen and Schrader
(1997, p. 444) describe as ‘consumer responsibility’.
CSR’s ability to produce positive consumer atti-
tudes and purchase behaviour has been extensively
investigated, particularly using the experimental ap-
proach, where consumer awareness represents the
independent variable that is experimentally manip-
ulated (see for example, Auger et al., 2003; Brown
and Dacin, 1997; Creyer and Ross, 1997; Sen and
Bhattacharya, 2001). Consequently, ‘awareness’
plays a major role in previous research into CSR
effectiveness. While the effect of awareness has been
demonstrated in laboratory settings, it remains un-
clear whether real consumers are aware of CSR
activities when facing real consumption decisions,
leaving a gap in our understanding of the CSR–
consumer nexus. If consumer awareness is low, the
effect of CSR initiatives on purchasing behaviour is
only of theoretical, not practical, relevance. This has
prompted several researchers (for example, Maignan,
2001; Mohr et al., 2001) to call for research to
determine the true level of CSR awareness among
consumers.
This study primarily aims to investigate this
knowledge gap, as it presents a key inhibition to the
rewarding and punishing influence of consumer
responsibility. It also aims to gain an insight into
consumer CSR information demands, including
identifying the most trusted media opportunities for
CSR communication. Our study acknowledges the
ethical issue of whether CSR should be used cyni-
cally for ‘public relations’ benefits, especially when it
is not representative of the values and ethics of the
firm, but does not include discussion of this issue
here. Instead, our approach recognises that firms face
a difficult task in seeking to publicise particularly
sensitive areas of their business, such as their CSR
programs, and we investigate issues around the
effectiveness of such communication behaviours
(Pomering and Dolnicar, 2007). Given the unveri-
fiable, or ‘credence’ nature of many CSR claims,
such information obtained directly from firms is
likely to be treated with a greater degree of scepti-
cism than more provable ‘search’ and ‘experience’
claims.
We examine these questions in the context of the
Australian banking sector, chosen because (1) it rep-
resents the single-most active business sector with
respect to CSR, illustrated by the fact that Westpac has
dominated Australia’s annual Corporate Responsi-
bility Index since its introduction in 2003. Other
banks now imitate Westpac’s positioning approach.
(2) For the consumer, banking is a high-involvement
service, characterised by being important to the con-
sumer, risky, and infrequently purchased. Note that
the purchase in this case does not refer to day-to-day
banking interactions but the decision to become a
customer of a bank. This is typically a very infrequent
decision and bank customers tend to stay loyal to their
banks over long periods of time. As a consequence,
consumers engage in complex buying behaviour
(Kotler et al., 2006). Investigating a high-involvement
category is important because consumers process
information actively before making a purchase deci-
sion. It can, therefore, be assumed that CSR infor-
mation would also be processed as part of the decision
making process. In a low-involvement case, cognitive
processing is minimal, and therefore CSR should have
little, if any, effect on purchase decisions. (3) The
consumer has an ongoing relationship with their bank.
Consequently, the bank has considerable potential for
customer contact and marketing communications via
numerous high-contact (Lovelock et al., 2004) ‘touch
points’, including customer interactions with bank
staff in retail branches, and lower-contact interactions
via, for example, Internet banking, automatic teller
machines and account correspondence. (4) The
Australian banking sector has experienced consider-
able consumer disaffection over the past decade, due
to unpopular operational practices, such as the intro-
duction of fees and the closure of retail branches in
rural areas (Kohler, 2003).
As a result of this disaffection, banks thus see CSR
as a suitable avenue to re-engage with communities
and improve their corporate images. While Porter
and Kramer (2002) argue that CSR objectives can
 Assessing the Prerequisite of Successful CSR Implementation
produce competitive advantage, and Auger et al.
(2003) and McWilliams and Siegel (2001) emphasise
that if CSR is to act as a point of differentiation in a
competitive ‘tiebreaker’ situation, awareness of a
firm’s CSR activities is crucial. Claims of socially
responsible behaviour that conflict with consumers’
perceptions of banks, based on their marketplace
knowledge, may not be accepted, however. Where
CSR programs are cynically perceived to be used as
a corporate image tactic, rather than a genuine
reflection of a firm’s values and ethical commitment,
such claims may backfire. Our study does not
measure the depth of such scepticism or cynicism,
but seeks instead to highlight the effectiveness of
CSR communication efforts. Nor does our study
examine the ethicality of banks’ informing con-
sumers of their CSR activities; such ethicality is
assumed, given consumers’ need for information to
be able to act as citizen consumers, rewarding ethical
firms and punishing unethical firms, and firms’
obvious benefit in making such information avail-
able. We contribute to knowledge by determining
the true level of CSR awareness among consumers
in an industry sector in which member firms actively
disseminate CSR information to influence percep-
tions of corporate image, and hence consumer
favour. We see consumer awareness as the required
precondition for consumers rewarding businesses for
ethical behaviour. Such reward is critical as it helps
to make ethical business philosophy compatible with
profit maximization aims and therefore sustainable.
Prior work
This section reviews prior work underpinning the
present study, specifically in the areas of firms’ CSR
communication strategies, consumer awareness of
CSR initiatives, consumer CSR information
demands, as well as the extent to which consumers
trust alternative communication channels for such
information.
Regarding the role of awareness, Mohr et al.
(2001) note that academic research into consumer
response to CSR activities typically either assumes
consumers awareness, or artificially creates it under
experimental conditions. Among such studies are
those of Brown and Dacin (1997), Creyer and Ross
(1997), and Sen and Bhattacharya (2001). Brown
287
and Dacin find that a company’s CSR record creates
a general context, for the evaluation of its products.
Creyer and Ross, focusing on ethics rather than
CSR, demonstrate that preference for a company’s
products is linked to the extent the company’s eth-
ical behaviour exceeds consumer expectations. Sen
and Bhattacharya reiterate the general context result
of Brown and Dacin, and conclude that consumers’
positive response to CSR is mediated by their self-
company congruence, and moderated by their sup-
port for the specific CSR domain, but the impact on
consumers may lessen if CSR is perceived to be at
the expense of product quality.
Maignan (2001) criticises the above studies for
drawing conclusions on too narrow a conceptuali-
sation of CSR and focusing only on one or two
CSR activities. Commenting on Brown and Dacin’s
(1997) findings, Maignan (2001, p. 58) acknowl-
edges that, while typical of philanthropic responsi-
bility, the two activities manipulated as the
independent variable (corporate giving and com-
munity involvement) ‘do not represent the full
spectrum of CSR initiatives’, leading her to con-
clude that past research offers very limited insights
into consumers’ views of CSR behaviour. Instead,
extant studies typically focus on one or two ‘social’
dimensions, which are then often taken to be an
expression of CSR.
Mohr et al. (2001, p. 48) state that there is a
distinct lack of studies which measure general con-
sumer awareness of CSR initiatives, presumably
because ‘CSR is a broad and complex concept that is
challenging to measure’. Auger et al. (2003) move
towards filling this gap. In a cross-cultural choice
experiment focusing on the athletic shoes and soap
product categories, Auger et al. find that, while
consumers are reasonably confident in their knowl-
edge of the functional features of the products they
currently buy, they have difficulty recalling some of
the most basic ethical characteristics of these same
products. Of subjects from Hong Kong, for exam-
ple, 90% could not recall the ethical features of their
current bath soap, and only 5% could recall the
ethical attributes of their athletic shoes. By com-
parison, Australian subjects had slightly higher recall
of 80% and 10% respectively.
A lack of awareness and understanding of com-
panies’ CSR achievements is one explanation for
the disconnection observed between attitude and
288 Alan Pomering and Sara Dolnicar
actual behaviour (Mohr et al., 2001; Bhattacharya
and Sen, 2004). Bhattacharya and Sen (2004, p. 14)
also report from focus group and survey research
that, apart from a handful of ‘CSR mavens’, ‘large
swaths of consumers do not seem to be aware that by
and large most companies engage in CSR initia-
tives’. According to Mohr et al. (2001), consumers
have difficulty acquiring and storing CSR informa-
tion about the firms they buy from. Dawkins (2004,
p. 4) identifies the problem at an earlier stage of the
process – the corporate communication stage –
proposing that effective communication of firms’
CSR programs is ‘a rare achievement’. Roberts
(1996, p. 80) suggests that socially conscious attitudes
may not result in behaviour, because ‘scant data exist
on how most companies perform on any number
of social criteria that might affect a consumer’s
decision’.
While Auger et al. (2003, p. 299) also highlight a
lack of consumer awareness of firms’ CSR records,
they go further, noting that ethical awareness levels –
that is, knowledge of the ethical and social issues
around which firms are framing their CSR initiatives –
are surprisingly low, especially given the ‘occasion-
ally extensive media coverage afforded to ethical
issues’. They conclude that consumers may act very
differently when CSR information is provided.
While prior work indicates that consumer
awareness levels of CSR initiatives are not very high,
Dawkins (2004) concludes that consumers are in fact
quite interested in learning more about CSR ini-
tiatives and that, consequently, CSR-related mar-
keting communications present an opportunity to
shape organisational image and brand beliefs. ‘Pro-
social’ marketing initiatives can form a market-
differentiating strategy (McWilliams and Siegel,
2001), build brand equity (Hoeffler and Keller,
2002), and lead to customer loyalty and other posi-
tive post-purchase outcomes (Bhattacharya and Sen,
2003).
In a Danish study, for example, Schultz and
Morsing (2003) found the use of CSR engagement
for marketing communication purposes distasteful to
some consumers, even though, ironically, consumers
may otherwise possess little if any detailed knowl-
edge about a firm’s CSR activities. Due to the
sensitive nature of CSR communications, Schultz
and Morsing conclude that CSR initiatives cannot
be advertised in the same way as products, services or
brands typically are, thus posing a much more
complex challenge to marketers. Drumwright (1996,
p. 71) finds that ‘company advertisements with social
dimension have been among the most controversial
of marketing approaches,’ seen on the one hand as
‘marketing’s greatest contribution to society,’ while
on the other, ‘as marketing’s most unabashed
exploitation.’ Highlighting the risks of such per-
ceived exploitation, Morsing (2006, p. 176) reports
that despite the Danish telecom giant TDC’s repo-
sitioning from a high-profit shareholder driven
company to a more socially responsible organisation,
with an extensively communicated CEO-endorsed
CSR commitment and several CSR initiatives,
TDC’s CSR message has been ‘met with scepticism,
disbelief, and accusations of window-dressing.’
Communicating CSR initiatives is problematic.
Trust in the information source is critical for CSR
communication success (for example, Maignan and
Ferrell, 2001). Consumers have a natural tendency
to be sceptical of advertising, more so than towards
other information sources (Obermiller and Span-
genberg, 1998). Consumers also react to marketers’
perceived attempts to persuade, as explained by
Friestad and Wright’s (1994) Persuasion Knowledge
Model. Communicating CSR through traditional
advertising is perceived by many consumers as over-
accentuating the good deeds of the company, which
can lead to scepticism about the message, and cyn-
icism towards the firm’s motives. Webb and Mohr
(1998, p. 237), for example, find that cause-related
marketing, where the firm contributes an amount of
money per unit sold to a non-profit partner orga-
nisation, is the ‘easiest way for a company to educate
the consumer about its philanthropic activities, yet
the involvement of advertising, a particularly dis-
trusted form of communication, amplifies cynicism’.
While consumers express the desire for information
on firms’ CSR records, the communication of CSR
initiatives is therefore a challenge for the CSR
marketing communicator. Morsing and Schultz
(2006) find that consumers prefer CSR initiatives to
be communicated through so-called ‘minimal
release’ channels (such as annual reports and web-
sites) over the use of traditional communication
channels. Given these informational issues, we might
only guess at the levels of consumer awareness of
firms’ CSR initiatives in the marketplace. While
Auger et al. (2003) report consumer knowledge of
 Assessing the Prerequisite of Successful CSR Implementation
the ethical features of products they purchase, and
the actual ethical issues involved, is low, the precise
level of this unawareness remains uncertain.
Assuming the responsible consumer needs this
information in order to make critical, economy-
directing purchase decisions, we investigate an
industry sector that claims it is actively engaged in
CSR initiatives in order to address this gap.
Methodology
Regardless of consumer support for particular CSR
domains and perceived trade-offs with functional
attributes (such as price and quality), prior work
suggests that the lack of consumer response to firms’
CSR initiatives has two primary sources. Companies
have not strongly communicated their CSR initia-
tives (Carrigan, 1997; Dawkins, 2004; Work
Foundation, 2004). Or companies have communi-
cated their CSR initiatives, yet consumers are una-
ware of them, which could be due to a multitude of
reasons including bad communication campaigns,
lack of attention by consumers, inability of con-
sumers to place CSR information into relevant
context, etc.
If organisations do not even attempt to commu-
nicate their CSR initiatives, high consumer aware-
ness would not be expected to develop (although it
may well develop though word of mouth or other
channels of communication which are not under the
direct influence of the organisation). If organisations
do communicate their CSR activities, it may be
assumed that consumers will be at least somewhat
aware of them. This assumption underpins most
prior work in CSR, where information is provided
to respondents and the effect on purchase intentions
is measured as outcome. This study investigates
whether this assumption is supported empirically,
and examines a business sector in which active
engagement in attempts to communicate CSR
activities is common. Note that the assumption of
CSR advertising effectiveness is not trivial, as the
main object of communication is typically enhanc-
ing the product, service or brand, not the CSR
initiative. It is therefore possible that CSR adver-
tising efforts are not successful because consumers
pay attention only to the core information relating to
289
the product, service or brand rather than the infor-
mation on CSR initiatives.
Stage 1: Qualitative study of corporate communication
behaviour
We conducted personal interviews with the ‘big
four’ Australian banks’ executives with responsibility
for CSR programs to gain insight into their CSR
activities and communication strategies. We con-
ducted personal interviews in order to identify
which CSR knowledge consumers could theoreti-
cally have if communication programs achieved their
goals, and to understand fully the ‘supply side’ of
these banks’ CSR communications.
Personal interviews followed a pre-tested question
protocol, and each were approximately 60–90 min-
utes long. These were later cross-referenced to
written material outlining the brand’s CSR com-
munications, such as websites, annual CSR reports
and employee newsletters.
Questions sought insights into the following areas:
how the bank defines its responsibility to society;
why the bank defines a responsibility to society
beyond that of its responsibility to shareholders;
within which domains and through what activities
that responsibility is articulated; to whom the bank
communicates about its CSR record; what gets
communicated; how this is done; whether commu-
nication objectives are in place and results measured;
and whether the bank believes it has an educative
role in informing consumers about CSR issues.
Stage 2: Quantitative study of consumer awareness
The second stage of the study involved a consumer
survey to gain insight into the ‘demand side’ of CSR
communications. We used an Australian permission-
based Internet panel to conduct the fieldwork. The
approximately 120,000 panel members are recruited
through a number of channels to be representative of
Australia’s population based on census statistics. We
assumed a 40% response rate, and 1,000 randomly
drawn panel members were invited to participate.
The online interface was closed when the required
number of responses was achieved. The final sample
290 Alan Pomering and Sara Dolnicar
consisted of 415 respondents. Respondents were
qualified by their use of an Australian banking ser-
vice provider to participate in the survey.
The following questions were included in the
survey:
1. Specific verbal CSR recall was used to measure
specific CSR awareness of respondents. We
developed a list of 20 social initiatives of
Australia’s big four banks, using the banks’
websites and information from the inter-
views. One example for such a list item was
‘Partners with Good Shepherd Youth and
Family Services’. Respondents were asked
to assign each initiative to a particular bank,
or to state that they were unsure which
bank was engaging in this initiative.
2. Specific graphical CSR recall served as the sec-
ond measure of specific CSR awareness.
The question structure for this question was
similar to the verbal recall question, except
it contained 16 graphical stimuli (logos of
CSR partners). This approach is particularly
realistic, since partners’ logos typically
appear in the banks’ marketing communica-
tions, such as websites, point-of-sale displays
in retail branches, and correspondence.
3. General awareness of CSR initiatives was mea-
sured using the question: ‘Are you familiar
with any initiatives your bank is involved in
which are aimed at improving social or envi-
ronmental conditions in your community?’
Respondents were asked to answer using a
full binary (yes/no) answer format. Note that
it may have been interesting to include an-
other question which would aim at under-
standing whether consumers have even more
general associations about banks engaging in
CSR without even being able to state a spe-
cific initiative. The value of such a question
was highlighted by a reviewer, but we were
at this stage not able to include it in the sur-
vey. We discuss this possibility of interesting
follow-up research relating to this idea in the
Conclusions section.
4. Consumers’ interest in bank-related information
was measured by asking respondents which
kind of information they would like to be
regularly informed about by their bank.
A list of nine bank-related pieces of infor-
mation was provided, relating both to the
core product (for example, fees and charges)
and CSR initiatives (for example, support
for the arts).
5. Current information received was measured by
asking respondents to respond on a binary
scale to: ‘Does your bank regularly inform
you about…’ Respondents were presented
with the same list as described above (in 4),
in order to compare information needs/
demands with banks’ current information
supply.
6. Information source trust. As source trust is
important in information processing (for
example, Maignan and Ferrell, 2001), and
influences strategy for optimal communica-
tion, we asked respondents which informa-
tion sources they would trust for learning
about their bank’s performance on social is-
sues, and which information sources they
would trust for learning about financial prod-
ucts, fees and interest rates. Respondents
were presented with a list of options, includ-
ing ‘family and friends’. Respondents were
asked to respond by ticking ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
7. Information source use was measured by asking
respondents to state for each of the above-
listed information sources to answer: ‘From
which information sources have you learned
a lot about your bank?’ Respondents
responded by ticking ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
8. Awareness of social issues. Prior research sug-
gests that higher levels of knowledge about
social issues lead to a greater response to
CSR activities (see for example, Auger
et al., 2003). Respondents had a list of 12
social issues (for example, financial skills of
indigenous Australians) which appeared on
bank websites in relation to their CSR ini-
tiatives. Respondents indicated their per-
ceived level of awareness of each issue on a
seven-point scale ranging between ‘very
low’ and ‘very high’.
9. Consumers’ evaluations of CSR responsibilities
were measured using four items from a 16-
item, four-factor scale (Maignan, 2001)
covering all areas of business responsibility
identified by Carroll (1991): economic,
 Assessing the Prerequisite of Successful CSR Implementation
legal, ethical and discretionary. On a seven-
point scale ranging between ‘strongly
disagree’ and ‘strongly agree’, respondents
rated the following statements: (1) To what
extent do you believe businesses must maxi-
mise profits? (2) To what extent do you
believe businesses must play a role in our
society that goes beyond the mere genera-
tion of profits? (3) To what extent do you
believe businesses must refrain from bend-
ing the law even if this helps improve per-
formance? and (4) To what extent do you
believe businesses must be ethical even if it
negatively affects economic performance?
10. Consumers’ stated support of socially responsible
businesses was measured by asking respon-
dents, on a seven-point scale, ranging
between ‘strongly disagree’ and ‘strongly
agree,’ to rate the following statements: (1)
I would pay more to buy products from a
socially responsible company; (2) I consider
the ethical reputation of businesses when I
shop; (3) I avoid buying products from
companies that have engaged in immoral
action; (4) I would pay more to buy the
products of a company that shows caring
for the wellbeing of our society; and (5) If
the price and quality of two products are
the same, I would buy from the firm that
has a socially responsible reputation.
Results
Stage 1: Qualitative study of corporate communication
behaviour
Banks typically defined their responsibility to society
in utilitarian terms of profitability and shareholders,
achieved via considering the needs of other stake-
holders. A universal thread in the four executives’
responses was the recent acknowledgement that
different stakeholders could affect the business’s
overall performance. In the words of one executive,
the need for CSR was precipitated by a crisis:
Banks were hated, banks could do no right. Around
2000, we realised we couldn’t continue to operate
291
without listening to customers and key stakeholders…
If we’d have been less arrogant as a corporation, we
probably wouldn’t have found ourselves in this sort of
situation.
The CSR was articulated via various domains,
from environmental management to philanthropic
support of the arts. The development of the com-
munity’s financial literacy, especially for society’s
more disadvantaged members, was captured in sev-
eral banks’ CSR programs, as was responsible lend-
ing. Activities within these domains included
employee volunteering, matched giving programs,
financial support for sport, the arts and medical
research, and engaging employees with environ-
mental concerns. Employee support was generally
seen as an important first step to securing customer
support, with low staff satisfaction levels prior to
CSR program introduction cited by several inter-
viewees. Several interviewees stressed the impor-
tance of internal communications and getting all
employees to ‘live the values’, reflected in this
comment:
We had to get our house in order first, to live the
values, so our values were evident in every interaction
with us.
Banks typically provided information about their
CSR activities to internal and key stakeholder groups.
In an effort to improve employee satisfaction and
leverage that satisfaction to influence service transac-
tions with customers and customer satisfaction, CSR
was seen as an important internal marketing issue.
Employee–customer relationships could be deepened
through value-driven personal selling, aimed at
‘restoring customer faith’, as one bank executive re-
ferred to it. One interviewee commented on her
bank’s point-of-purchase communications:
Ultimately what we really want to do in this area is
make this a point of competitive differentiation. We
want people to go: ‘Well, all the banks seem pretty
much the same, but this bank has got a great product
and I know they are an ethical and responsible com-
pany, therefore, I will choose them.
Intranets and staff magazines disseminated the
message internally, while websites and locally
focused in-branch poster and brochure promotions
communicated the stories out to customers. One
292 Alan Pomering and Sara Dolnicar
executive reported that most of their bank’s advertising
was brand related or financial product related, but in
its point-of sale promotional materials the bank fo-
cused on what it was doing in the community and
for its staff. Another executive described how print
advertising was undertaken to acknowledge and
thank employees – the bank’s ‘family’ – for their role
in the success:
It was basically our way of trying to advertise that we
got to number one [in the annual Corporate Repu-
tation Index], without advertising the fact that we got
to number one. We’re very, very cautious.
The banks typically perceived distinct external
stakeholder audiences, and communicated accord-
ingly. Finance industry analysts and shareholders, for
example, were considered key recipients of more
formal and detailed reports, such as Westpac’s Stake-
holder Impact Report and websites. Consumers were
exposed to CSR information primarily within the
retail branch network – particularly through local
community initiatives which local staff might par-
ticipate in – or through mass communication
advertising campaigns, such as the ANZ’s Seeds of
Renewal television campaign, promoting the bank’s
support for rural communities.
While interviewees generally acknowledged that
specific objectives were set for CSR communica-
tions, these were generally framed in terms of
delivering on general business objectives, such as
increasing staff satisfaction. One bank, having
designed the internal marketing program Living the
Values, said they used a ‘cultural diagnostic tool’ to
measure how successfully they were communicating
the Living the Values theme. While all interviewees
agreed their banks had not yet positioned the brand
around CSR, the opportunity for such marketing
communication was under consideration:
CSR has become an issue that matters; it’s a very
different time and space for the bank, especially under
the new CEO.
The banks are at different stages in how they see
their CSR ‘sense-giving’ role. On whether banks
saw an educative role for their CSR communica-
tions. One executive said:
That’s what we try to do. Often when we participate,
or fund research, we’re doing it with the explicit intent
of growing the maturity of the consumer or financial
markets around understanding these initiatives.
Sounding a cautionary note, however, another
offered:
I’m not sure if customers want to know all that detail.
As a customer of the bank, am I more concerned about
the open and honest structuring of the cost of your
services?
The interviews with CSR executives in four
major Australian banks led the researchers to con-
clude that: (1) banks were using CSR to help
respond to a crisis in marketplace confidence; (2)
banks’ CSR communications were primarily aimed
at internal customers; (3) banks communicated their
CSR initiatives at the local branch level; (4) banks
communicated to specialist audiences, for example,
shareholders and finance industry analysts, via their
websites and special reports; and (5) banks’ overt
communication of their good deeds via advertising
campaigns was tempered with caution for a poten-
tially sceptical marketplace.
All four banks are communicating their CSR
activities to the general public, making them suitable
entities for the consumer awareness study.
Stage 2: Quantitative study of consumer awareness
Awareness of CSR initiatives
The verbal and graphical recall questions (the vari-
ables used to measure consumers’ specific awareness
levels) were analysed from two perspectives. We
used the number of correct assignments of CSR
initiatives with banks, then analysed how many
respondents stated that they were unsure about the
answer. This latter response option indicated not
only that a respondent was unable to provide the
correct response, but also that they were aware of
their inability to make a correct assignment.
Figure 1 provides the results for the number of
correct assignments, and shows that the level of
specific awareness is very low. Two-thirds of all
assignments of logos and banks were incorrect. The
pattern is very similar for both the verbal and the
graphical stimuli.
The results from the analysis of the number of
respondents who ticked the ‘unsure’ answer options
 Assessing the Prerequisite of Successful CSR Implementation 293

80
70 Verbal recall items
the logo for the Starlight Children Foundation
70 66 Graphical recall items Australia correctly. Although parenthood status was
60
50
not asked, this age bracket covers the parenting life
% 40
stage of respondents.
30 The specific awareness tasks are very detailed, but
20 16 16 general awareness of banks’ CSR activities could also
7 7
10 3 3 5 3
1 0 1
influence consumer behaviour. Analysis of the
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0
general awareness question supports the findings
ct

:1

:2

:3

:4

:5

:6

:7

:8

:9

1
:1

:1
rre

related to specific awareness: general awareness was

ct

ct

ct
ct

ct

ct

ct

ct

ct

ct

ct
re

re

re

re

re

re

re

re

re
co

re

re
or

or

or

or

or

or

or

or
or
In

or

or
C

C low. Only 7% of respondents stated they were

C

C
Figure 1. Percentage of correct assignments of verbal
and graphical CSR initiatives to banks.
for both verbal and graphical recall items support the
above findings, in terms of the generally low level of
awareness for CSR activities. On average, respon-
dents stated unsureness about 13 of the 20 verbal
stimuli. Forty per cent of respondents stated they
were unsure about every one of the verbal items
presented. Across all 14 graphical recall items,
respondents stated on average they were unsure
about 12. Fifty per cent stated they were unsure
about 14 of the 16 graphical items presented.
The two most-recalled verbal items were ‘spon-
soring of Cricket Australia by the Commonwealth
Bank of Australia’ (13%) and ‘Beyond Survival
Workshops for women’ offered by Westpac (7%).
The most-recalled graphical items were ‘the Aus-
tralian of the Year’ (12%) supported by Common-
wealth Bank of Australia, and ‘the Starlight Children
Foundation Australia’ (6%) supported by the ANZ
Banking Group.
For most of the recall items that achieved the
highest recall values, it is likely that the respondents
who recalled them correctly represent a very specific
market segment. Chi-square tests indicate that
respondents who recalled the sponsorship of Cricket
Australia correctly were significantly more fre-
quently under the age of 45 (p < 0.01) and were
more likely to have a university degree (p < 0.01).
While the percentage among men was 16, and only
eight among women, this difference did not lead to a
significant test result when all answer options were
included. When testing correct versus incorrect
answers only, men gave the correct answer signifi-
cantly more frequently (p < 0.05) than women. A
significantly higher proportion (p < 0.01) of
respondents between 29 and 45 years could assign
familiar with any initiatives their bank was involved
in at all.
The results relating to consumer awareness do not
mirror the advertising campaigns which were run-
ning on several banks’ CSR activities during the
fieldwork stage of the project. The fieldwork was
conducted at the close of the summer cricket season,
and this may account for a proportion of respondents
who could recall the Cricket Australia bank brand
association correctly. However, such a correlation
was certainly not evident for the recall of a funding
initiative for small rural communities. This was
recalled by the fewest respondents – a surprising
result because it was featured in a national television
advertising campaign just before the fieldwork was
conducted.
Customising CSR activities to clearly defined
market segments may be a communication approach
superior to broadly communicating a CSR activity
which is not directly relevant to the majority of the
public through the mass media.
Consumer interest in bank-related information
When asked which kind of information respondents
would be interested in obtaining regularly from their
bank, the vast majority were – not surprisingly –
interested in information related to the core banking
products (accounts, interest rates, fees and charges).
The first-mentioned CSR initiatives, confidentiality
followed by environmental initiatives, were related
directly to consumer concerns. Only 19% stated they
were interested in being informed about their bank’s
sponsorship activities, and only 13% were interested
in information about equal employment opportunity
initiatives of their bank. Figure 2 provides the full
ranking of information needs.
Figure 2 also contains respondents’ assessment of
the kind of information regularly provided to them
by banks. While the banks generally satisfied the
294 Alan Pomering and Sara Dolnicar

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

87%
Interest rates, fees & charges
74%

58%
Details on different products and access methods
47%

53%
Customer safety, confidentiality
22%

35%
Environmental improvements or recycling efforts
10%

Y 31%
Executive pay levels
3%

19%
Support for the arts, sport, education, charity etc.
14%

18%
Improvements in job security or employee development
2%

17%
Support for communities overseas
4%
Interested
13%
Support for employees based on gender, race etc. Provided
2%

Figure 2. Consumers’ information demand and supply.

needs for product-related information, major infor-
mation provision gaps emerged in the area of CSR
communication. Most strikingly, consumers wanted
to know more about executive pay levels: approxi-
mately one third of the respondents stated that they
would like to receive more information about
executive pay levels and only 3% stated that they
have been provided with this information. This
mirrors the high level of scepticism Australians have
about banks in general (Kohler, 2003). Informing
consumers about the safety and confidentiality of
their data was identified as a second area in which
banks should improve their communication with
consumers. Another ‘information gap’ emerged in
the area of the banks’ environmental improvements
or recycling efforts.
These results indicate that the information needs
of consumers are not currently met. Although only a
minority of consumers showed interest in regularly
receiving CSR information, this market segment, of
between 10 and 20%, represents a group that could
potentially influence the demand for CSR initiatives
among other less information-sensitive consumers.
Price, Feick and Higie (1987, p. 330) attribute this
potential to the ‘web of word-of-mouth’. In con-
sidering the demand-side effects of informed con-
sumers, Price et al., 1987, pp. 328–329) contend that
‘even a significant minority of informed buyers who
gather and use information in their personal pur-
chases’ can encourage business to ‘alter product
offerings to appeal to them, and other consumers
will accrue the benefits of informed consumers’
market vigilance’. The reluctance of banks to match
consumer demands for information on key operating
activities, such as executive remuneration, may be
interpreted as a lack of commitment to the values
claimed in publicised CSR initiatives, undermining
the legitimacy of those claims.
Information source trust
Interesting insights were gained from responses to
the question about which sources of information
respondents would trust (see Figure 3). Major dif-
ferences in trustworthiness exist between different
information sources under the control of the bank.
Forty per cent of the respondents stated that they
trusted their bank’s website, but only half as many
(20%) trusted bank advertising. Bank employees
were trusted by 26%; banks’ direct mail by 24%; and
information available at the branch by 21%. How-
ever, sources not within direct control of the bank
played a major role, if not the dominant role, in
 Assessing the Prerequisite of Successful CSR Implementation 295

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

46%
Independent experts 41%
6%
40%
Bank’s website 58%
62%
39%
Family/ friends 52%
33%
34%
Newspaper articles 31%
16%
27%
Television news 12%
18%
26%
Bank employees 41%
30%
24%
Bank’s direct mail (including email) 29%
32%
21%
Information available inside bank branches 37%
35%
20%
Bank’s advertising 29%
44%
19%
Magazine articles 18%
7%
13% Trustworthy - social issues
Other internet sites 12%
6% Trustworthy - product info
8%
Radio announcers 3% Used
4%

Figure 3. Consumers’ trust in information sources and information source use.

the communication of CSR initiatives: almost half of
respondents trusted independent experts, and infor-
mation obtained from newspapers and TV news was
evaluated as trustworthy by about one-third of
respondents. This indicates that banks might con-
sider an increased public relations effort to com-
municate their CSR initiatives, as opposed to
advertising campaigns, which are more prone to
consumer scepticism (Obermiller and Spangenberg,
1998). This recommendation is supported by the
difference between the stated trust regarding infor-
mation about CSR and product-related information.
Newspaper and magazine articles, TV news
and radio announcers were perceived as more
trustworthy sources of information about social
issues compared with bank-controlled information
sources.
Figure 3 contains the information sources used by
respondents. Two-thirds used the Internet as an
information source in banking matters; and almost
half of the respondents stated bank advertisements,
followed by information provided in the branches
and through direct mail were used. Family and
friends (word-of-mouth) were used by one-third of
respondents. That our sample was collected through
an online panel is relevant here because, while it was
representative of the Australian population in all
major socio-demographics, it was clearly skewed
towards individuals who tended to use the Internet.
The high level of trust and use of the bank website
should therefore be interpreted with care, because of
the sample’s likely higher Internet use than the
general population’s.
Association with CSR-related personal characteristics
We conducted correlation analyses to test our
hypotheses that consumer awareness of social issues,
their evaluations of CSR responsibilities, and their
stated support of socially responsible businesses are
associated with their awareness of CSR initiatives.
Consumers generally reported a low level of
awareness of social issues. The percentage of
respondents who reported a ‘very high awareness’
of the 12 social issues taken from banks’ websites fell
between one and 9%. The greatest number of
respondents felt familiar with environmental issues –
unsurprising, given the emphasis on green issues
over the past several decades (for example, King and
Mackinnon, 2002), including the work of organi-
sations such as Greenpeace and discussions about the
effects of global warming. Between eight and 34% of
respondents reported a ‘very low awareness’ of the
12 social issues, with corporate funding of the arts
the least familiar.
296 Alan Pomering and Sara Dolnicar
Positive correlations emerged between consumer
awareness of social issues and their correct answers to
awareness recall items. The association with the
verbal recall items is statistically significant at the
0.05 level (Pearson correlation: 0.119), but not sig-
nificant for the graphical recall items. No association
was detected regarding consumers’ evaluations of
CSR responsibilities and consumers’ stated support
of socially responsible businesses. These results sug-
gest that focusing on individuals with specific
interests (sports, charities and so on) is currently the
superior strategy compared to trying to identify
‘generally socially responsible’ consumers, and trying
to customise CSR communications for this hetero-
geneous group.
Discussion
While CSR has been acknowledged to have positive
influences on consumers’ attitudes when awareness is
created under experimental conditions, several
researchers (for example, Maignan, 2001; Mohr
et al., 2001) have called for research to determine the
level of consumer awareness of CSR initiatives in
real marketplaces. This study addresses this call by
investigating Australian consumers’ awareness of and
dispositions toward banks’ CSR programs.
The qualitative phase of our study provided
insights into the main four Australian banks’ per-
spective on CSR: the Australian banking sector
views CSR initiatives as a promising strategy to re-
build relationships with key stakeholder groups,
particularly employees and consumers, damaged
over the past decade or so as a result of employee and
service reductions, and price increases, through fees
and charges. Consumer disaffection with the bank-
ing sector, and its source, was acknowledged in the
first stage of our research – as one interviewed
manager put it:
We were arrogant toward customers.
Several of the managers interviewed conceded
that the increased interest in engaging in and com-
municating CSR initiatives is also due to the com-
petitive pressure which newer community-based
banks have exerted as they have entered the market
and grown their customer bases. While it may be
easy for new brands to enter markets positioned as
community-friendly and unencumbered by negative
associations, repositioning a tainted brand is likely to
prove more challenging. The major banks risk
cynical consumers agreeing with the Public Rela-
tions Watch view that industry’s current infatuation
with CSR has been seen as simply a response to ‘the
worst orgy of corporate irresponsibility in at least the
past half century’ (www.prrwatch.org, 2006).
Although one of the interviewed executives
anticipated consumers would see little difference
between banks and would choose one they knew
had a great product and was ethical and socially
responsible, the stain of past, self-confessed arro-
gance towards customers may in fact disadvantage
the established banks which have been perceived to
act irresponsibly in the past, giving new entrants a
comparative advantage in CSR differentiation, at
least in the short term. Research into consumer
boycott behaviour indicates that animosity may be
maintained towards a perceived egregious organisa-
tion long after the organisation has ceased its egre-
gious behaviour (for example, Ettenson and Klein,
2003), indicating that the competitive disadvantage
of the established banks may even have longer-term
consequences.
Nonetheless, all the ‘big four’ banks, to varying
degrees, have now accepted CSR as a new com-
petitive frontier and are attempting to position their
brands as contributing more broadly to society.
Since these banks have taken the same approach of
using CSR to improve their position in the mar-
ketplace, however, merely engaging in CSR cannot
be expected to lead to a competitive advantage.
Engaging in different kinds of CSR initiatives is
necessary to successfully use CSR for market posi-
tioning purposes, and this appears to be what is
happening in Australia. Westpac, for example,
emphasizes having signed the Equator Principles
which commits them to not lend money to socially
irresponsible corporations, whereas ANZ positions
itself as supporting indigenous issues, such as build-
ing financial literacy, and providing scholarships
and employment opportunities for Aboriginal
Australians.
Results from the consumer awareness study
indicate that: (1) both general and specific awareness
levels of banks’ CSR initiatives are low, despite
communication efforts made by Australian banks;
 Assessing the Prerequisite of Successful CSR Implementation
(2) banks currently do not satisfy consumers’ interest
in receiving CSR-related information; (3) while
bank-controlled communication channels are per-
ceived as highly trustworthy with respect to prod-
uct-related information, independent sources, such
as the media, are more trusted regarding information
about CSR; and (4) differences in respondents’
interests are a possible basis for improving CSR
communication effectiveness through segmentation
approaches.
The banks’ moves to reposition their brands as
socially responsible may be based on the generally
positive results of recent CSR–consumer research,
but such results have been based on consumer
awareness of firms’ CSR records being either as-
sumed or artificially created rather than real. Also
presumed is that consumers are sufficiently familiar
with the pertinent social issues to be able to discern
the CSR initiative’s contribution to addressing the
issue. Low awareness of banks’ CSR initiatives may
therefore be due to CSR issues generally having low
salience for Australian consumers. One manager
interviewed expressed this as:
I think we – the Australian consumer market – are not
as developed or mature as our European counterparts.
The people living in very small crowded countries have
the immediacy of environmental concerns right in their
face. This has changed in the last few years, particularly
around water shortages, and people are much more
aware that they need to be thinking about these issues,
but they are not buying on the basis of them yet.
Increased salience, brought about by external
pressures, such as water shortages or other environ-
mental or social crises, may heighten the importance
of CSR as a purchase criterion. Current results
support this assumption, because respondents with
higher levels of interest in certain CSR domains
demonstrate significantly higher awareness levels.
A focus on consumer segments which are par-
ticularly interested in certain CSR areas appears to
be the most promising CSR communication strat-
egy. Little prior research has been undertaken
investigating the potential of market segmentation to
improve the effectiveness of communicating CSR
initiatives. Roberts (1996), while not investigating
the issue of CSR advertising effectiveness specifi-
cally, concludes that socially responsible consumers
exist, but that they cannot be easily profiled by
297
criteria such as socio-demographics. Mohr et al.
(2001) constructed four consumer segments on the
basis of their responsiveness to CSR and described
differences between them with respect to respon-
dents’ CSR expectations, their attitude towards so-
cially responsible firms, their general attitude
towards business, and their perceived attributions of
the firm’s motivation for being socially responsible.
While this study demonstrates the high degree of
heterogeneity in the marketplace with respect to
CSR, it provides little guidance to companies as all
variables under study are psychographic. Our results,
however, indicate that CSR messages have to be
matched to people’s interests. For instance, interest
in the sport of cricket does not primarily have any-
thing to do with CSR, but someone who likes
cricket may notice that their bank supports cricket in
their community, which leads to CSR awareness
and, consequently, can be expected to translate into
attitudes and even purchasing behaviour favourable
to the organisation engaging in such CSR initiatives.
Our findings are in line with conclusions drawn by
Sen and Bhattacharya (2001) who found that support
for the firm’s CSR was linked to people’s support for
the CSR domain. Sen and Bhattacharya conse-
quently recommend aligning CSR initiatives with
the firm’s competitive positioning and the positions
of its ‘key stakeholder groups on alternative CSR
issues’ (p. 238).
Low general consumer awareness of the many
social issues banks and other businesses engage with
through their CSR programs must be of concern to
businesses seeking advantage from the communica-
tion of their good deeds, since this is an important
antecedent for consumer appreciation of the firm’s
social contribution. However, should CSR simply
be about engaging with social issues that are salient
to particular market segments the firm wishes to
pursue? Should CSR be opportunistic in terms of
addressing the social problems bank customers are
most familiar with, or should CSR aim at helping
where help is most needed, whether or not the
public is acutely aware of these problems? The ANZ
bank, for example, has made the development of
indigenous community financial literacy the cor-
nerstone of its current CSR program, although the
majority of Australians are not familiar with the
financial literacy problems of indigenous Australians.
One way of weakening the trade-off between
298 Alan Pomering and Sara Dolnicar
‘opportunistic CSR’ and CSR initiatives less effec-
tive in promoting the bank’s core business, because
customers are not familiar with the social problem
addresses, is to educate bank customers and con-
sumers about the importance of social issue they may
be less familiar with. This approach – ‘growing the
maturity of consumers’ – has been identified by one
of the bank managers we interviewed, and has been
proposed by Auger et al. (2003) as one solution to
the problem of consumers being quite unfamiliar
with social, or ethical, issues. Otherwise, informa-
tion about responsible corporate behaviour may only
have little effect on their buying behaviour. If
marketing communications managers are to expect
greater persuasion effects from their CSR campaigns
their role of social-issue educator may need to re-
ceive greater attention. This is likely to be new and
challenging terrain for marketing professionals, a
requisite situation acknowledged by Schultz and
Morsing (2003).
While banks may not be communicating their
CSR achievements effectively at present, there is an
identifiable segment of consumers that want to learn
what social good their bank is doing. According to
one of the executives we interviewed the level of
demand for such information may be at odds with
banks’ current perceptions. Based on our results
regarding source trust for CSR information, how
the story is told may be more important than what
story is told. One specific area of interest for banks,
given the importance of frontline personnel in cus-
tomer interactions in service settings such as retail
banking, is the low level of trust our respondents
place in bank employees relative to other CSR
information sources. This is also of concern given
the bank executives we interviewed indicate the
importance of their employees as a key audience for
their CSR communications and conduit for the
CSR message getting across to customers. Employ-
ees, the banks believe, must be sold the message
before external customers could be expected to be
convinced. It may be that our ‘online’ panel of
respondents have been ‘pushed’ online by past
unsatisfactory contacts with bank personnel as well as
‘pulled’ online by the convenience and value this
low-contact medium offers, but since frontline ser-
vice staff act as the ‘sales force’ for businesses such as
banks, understanding why they are trusted so little
should be of managerial interest.
Conclusions, limitations and future work
This study investigated Australians’ level of aware-
ness of CSR activities undertaken by Australian
banks, and their dispositions towards these activities.
We examined consumers’ interest in receiving more
information on CSR activities, and the extent to
which they trust different sources of information
regarding CSR initiatives.
We chose the banking sector because of its pioneer
role in CSR, likely prompted by banks’ poor reputa-
tion and the low level of product differentiation, the
sector’s possibilities for both high- and low-contact
interactions with customers over ongoing relation-
ships, and because choosing a bank is a high-involve-
ment decision for consumers, calling for effortful
cognitive processing in the decision-making process.
The study contained a qualitative stage which
studied banks’ CSR activities and communication
strategies, and a quantitative stage which investigated
Australians’ awareness, their information needs, and
levels of trust in a range of information sources.
The main results show that awareness levels are
low; Australians’ information needs about CSR
initiatives are currently unmet. Since independent
sources of information are more trusted than com-
munication channels controlled by the banks, banks
might find it advantageous to direct the emphasis of
their CSR communication efforts away from
advertising to public relations. If advertising is to be
used however, careful thought must be given to the
executional factors used in order to reduce scepti-
cism. While consumers are generally sceptical to-
wards advertising, CSR advertising appeals induce
specific situational dimensions of scepticism and
cynicism to weaken message persuasibility. Given
variations in consumers’ abilities to process infor-
mation, and informational needs, market segmenta-
tion could be a promising approach to improve CSR
communications and increase the awareness among
consumers specifically interested in certain areas
supported by CSR initiatives. This awareness should
include information about social issues, particularly
their gravitas, in order to allow firms’ CSR initia-
tives to be seen in the context of their contribution
to reducing a social problem.
Our findings are limited in the following ways: (1)
in scope – the study is confined to the Australian
banking sector. Replication studies in other countries
 Assessing the Prerequisite of Successful CSR Implementation
and industries would be valuable, to increase under-
standing of the gap in awareness for the effective use of
CSR in gaining competitive advantage. (2) We col-
lected data through a permission-based Internet panel,
which, while representative of Australian population
in terms of socio-demographic census data, is biased
towards Internet users. The high level of trust and use
of the Internet cannot be assumed to hold for the
Australian population. (3) The dependent variable of
interest in our study was awareness, which does not
discriminate between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ attitude
resulting from awareness. Consumers who are aware
are often highly sceptical of the CSR messages com-
municated, and consequently, the successful transla-
tion from communication via awareness to purchasing
behaviour could be interrupted. (4) Our study does
not measure the depth of scepticism or cynicism to-
ward banks’ CSR claims, though, from bank execu-
tives’ comments, and growth in the popularity of
newer ‘community’ banks and non-bank financial
organisations, this is presumed to be quite high. (5)
We have not provided an analysis of the ethical obli-
gations of banks to provide information about their
CSR activities, but have instead concentrated on the
effectiveness of what CSR information is communi-
cated in this sector. Given that customers require CSR
information to act as rewarding and punishing
authorities, it makes practical sense for those firms that
are acting responsibly to do so. With increasing con-
sumer demand for such information, firms might
benefit by treating this communication task more
strategically, acknowledging the different cognitive
abilities and motivations of different segments of
consumers in doing so. The prospect of information
diffusion by more information-sensitive market ma-
vens, as discussed by Price et al. (1987), endorses such
an approach. Socially responsible firms should in-
crease awareness of their initiatives in order to raise the
minimum standard consumers learn to expect in a
particular product sector. Information, as these au-
thors note (p. 328), is ‘crucial to the operation of
efficient markets’, and this is an obvious ethical
outcome, as it allows consumers to reward ethical
business philosophies and, in doing so, contribute to
the sustainability of CSR initiatives because CSR
initiatives can be seen as compatible with profit aims.
Differentiating resultant attitudes from different
methods of awareness creation would provide an
interesting area of future research to improve our
299
understanding of the CSR–consumer nexus. Given
the variety of high- and low-contact communication
channels open to banks, the ‘what’, ‘when’ and
‘how’ of CSR information for optimum commu-
nication effects for different audiences offers fertile
ground for future study. Our findings regarding
most-trusted media sources and demands for CSR
information point to these being useful bases for
future segmentation studies.
Whether marketing communications managers
can educate their audiences about pertinent social
issue topics, and the gravitas of these issues, and what
methods might prove most beneficial in this chal-
lenge, provides another interesting avenue for fur-
ther research. Adding a social dimension to
traditional brand communications is attributed to
adding complexity to the consumer’s information
processing task (for example, Drumwright, 1996).
The field of cognitive psychology, in particular
information processing theories related to context
and cognitive resource matching, may be fruitful
directions for investigating how this complexity
might be reduced.
Another interesting area of research would be to
investigate a less detailed knowledge of banks’ CSR
initiatives by simply asking whether consumers are
aware of certain banks engaging in CSR. This ap-
proach would be in line with brand image studies
where the perception matters, rather than the actual
knowledge. The results of such a study may help us
to shed more light on how consumers store CSR
knowledge. Maybe they do so in a more diffuse way
then the one investigated in the current study.
Given that firms are increasingly seeking to in-
form and persuade consumers of their CSR initia-
tives via direct means (as reflected in the CSR
advertising campaign undertaken by Westpac just
after the completion of our study in which Westpac
claimed to be a socially responsible lender to busi-
ness), ways of improving the advertising effectiveness
of CSR messages should be researched in future.
One interesting perspective – which reflects the
need for bank customers and consumers to be
familiar with social issues before CSR initiative
addressing those issues can be effective – is that
proposed by resource matching theory (for example,
Anand and Sternthal, 1989). This theory proposes
that advertising effectiveness is highest when people
have the cognitive resources available that are
300 Alan Pomering and Sara Dolnicar
required to process the message (Keller and Block,
1997). While in the past the motivation to process
the message was used to operationalise the available
cognitive resources, future work in CSR should use
knowledge about social issues as the measure of
available cognitive resources and investigate the
effect of such knowledge on CSR advertising
effectiveness.
A final caveat is the acknowledgement of the
possibility that the reason the banks are failing to get
their message across is because their approach to
CSR is perceived as very mercenary and insincere.
The depth of this scepticism and its role in influ-
encing consumer judgments must be of critical
importance to the banking sector. Heightened
scepticism would indicate that CSR may not be the
effective corporate image tool the banks hope it to
be, and, as a corollary, banks must pursue more
ethical behaviours if they expect their CSR claims to
be accepted. Since the banking sector’s reputation
has been damaged in recent years, replication studies
in other product categories may reveal lower levels
of scepticism and, subsequently, greater effectiveness
of CSR communication strategies. Such studies
could verify Bhattacharya and Sen’s (2004) sugges-
tion that the effects of CSR on consumers may be
dampened by their cynicism towards certain indus-
tries. We might interpret consumers’ low awareness
of banks’ CSR programs as a surrogate for the
scepticism and cynicism induced by the banking
sector’s perceived inconsistent values, but further
research is needed to validate such an interpretation.
Acknowledgements
This study was completed with assistance of a Faculty of
Research Grant from the Faculty of Commerce, Uni-
versity of Wollongong, Australia. Preliminary results
have been presented that the Australian and New
Zealand Marketing Academy Conference in 2007.
References
Anand, P. and B. Sternthal: 1989, ‘Strategies for
Designing Persuasive Messages: Deductions from the
Resource Matching Hypothesis’, in P. Cafferata and
A. M. Tybout (eds.), Cognitive and Affective Responses to
Advertising (Lexington Books, Lexington), pp. 135–
159.
Auger, P., P. F. Burke, T. M. Devinney and J. J.
Louviere: 2003, ‘What will Consumers Pay for Social
Product Features?’, Journal of Business Ethics 42(3),
281–304.
Bhattacharya, C. B. and S. Sen: 2003, ‘Consumer–
Company Identification: A Framework for Under-
standing Consumers’ Relationships with Companies’,
Journal of Marketing 67, 76–88.
Bhattacharya, C. B. and S. Sen: 2004, ‘Doing Better at
Doing Good: Whey, Why, and How Consumers
Respond to Corporate Social Initiatives’, California
Management Review 47(1), 9–24.
Brown, T. and P. A. Dacin: 1997, ‘The Company and
the Product: Corporate Associations and Consumer
Product Responses’, Journal of Marketing 61(1), 68–84.
Carrigan, M.: 1997, ‘The Great Corporate Give-Away:
Can Marketing do Good for the ‘‘Do-Gooders’’?’,
European Business Journal 9(4), 40–46.
Carroll, A. B.: 1991, ‘The Pyramid of Corporate Social
Responsibility: Towards the Moral Management of
Organisational Stakeholders’, Business Horizons 34(4),
39–48.
Cone Inc.: 2004, Cone Corporate Citizenship Study. http://
www.coneinc.com, accessed May 2006.
Creyer, E. H. and W. T. Ross Jr.: 1997, ‘The Influence
of Firm Behavior on Purchase Intention: Do Con-
sumers Really Care About Business Ethics?’, Journal of
Consumer Marketing 14(6), 421–432.
Dawkins, J.: 2004, ‘The Public’s Views of Corporate
Responsibility 2003’, White Paper Series, MORI.
Available from http://mori.com, accessed 31 May
2006.
Drumwright, M. E.: 1996, ‘Company Advertising with a
Social Dimension: The Role of Noneconomic
Criteria’, Journal of Marketing 60(4), 71–87.
Environics: 1999, The Millennium Poll. http://www.
mori.com, accessed May 2006.
Ettenson, R. and J. G. Klein: 2003, ‘The Fallout from the
French Nuclear Testing in the South Pacific’, Inter-
national Marketing Review 22(2), 199–224.
Friedman, M.: 1970, ‘The Social Responsibility of
Business is to Increase Its Profits’, New York Times
Magazine 33(September 13), 122–126.
Friestad, M. and P. Wright: 1994, ‘The Persuasion
Knowledge Model: How People Cope with Per-
suasion Attempts’, Journal of Consumer Research 21(1),
1–31.
Hansen, U. and U. Schrader: 1997, ‘A Modern Model of
Consumption for a Sustainable Society’, Journal of
Consumer Policy 20(4), 443–468.
 Assessing the Prerequisite of Successful CSR Implementation
Hoeffler, S. and K. L. Keller: 2002, ‘Building Brand
Equity Through Corporate Societal Marketing’,
Journal of Public Policy and Marketing 21(1), 78–89.
Joyner, B. E. and D. Payne: 2002, ‘Evolution and
Implementation: A Study of Values, Business Ethics
and Corporate Social Responsibility’, Journal of
Business Ethics 41(4), 297–311.
Keller, P. A. and L. G. Block: 1997, ‘Vividness Effects: A
Resource Matching Perspective’, Journal of Consumer
Research 24, 295–304.
King, D. S. and A. Mackinnon: 2002, ‘Who Cares?
Community Perceptions in the Marketing of Corpo-
rate Citizenship’, in A. Jörg, S. Waddock, B. Husted
and S. Sutherland Rahman (eds.), Unfolding Stakeholder
Thinking, Chapter 12 (Greenleaf Publishing Limited,
Sheffield).
Kohler, A.: 2003, ‘Party’s over, Bank on It’, The Sydney
Morning Herald, 20 September 2003, http://
www.smh.com.au, accessed January 2007.
Kotler, P., L. Brown, S. Adam, S. Burton and G.
Armstrong: 2006, Marketing, 7th Edition (Pearson,
Prentice Hall, Frenchs Forest).
Lovelock, C. H.: 1983, ‘Classifying Services to Gain
Strategic Marketing Insights’, Journal of Marketing
47(3), 9–20.
Lovelock, C., P. Patterson and R. Walker: 2004, Services
Marketing, an Asia-Pacific and Australian Perspective, 3rd
Edition, Chapter 2 (Pearson Prentice Hall, Frenchs
Forest).
Maignan, I.: 2001, ‘‘‘Consumers’’ Perceptions of Cor-
porate Social Responsibilities: A Cross-Cultural
Comparison’, Journal of Business Ethics 30(1), 57–72.
Maignan, I. and O. C. Ferrell: 2001, ‘Corporate Citi-
zenship as a Marketing Instrument – Concepts,
Evidence, and Research Directions’, European Journal
of Marketing 35(3–4), 457–484.
McWilliams, A. and D. Siegel: 2001, ‘Corporate Social
Responsibility: A Theory of the Firm Perspective’,
The Academy of Management Review 26(1), 117–127.
Mintzberg, H.: 1983, ‘The Case for Corporate Social
Responsibility’, Journal of Business Strategy 4(2), 3–15.
Mohr, L. A., D. J. Webb and K. E. Harris: 2001, ‘Do
Consumers Expect Companies to be Socially
Responsible? The Impact of Corporate Social
Responsibility on Buying Behavior’, Journal of
Consumer Affairs 35(1), 45–72.
Morsing, M.: 2006, ‘Corporate Social Responsibility as
Strategic Auto-Communication: On the Role of
External Stakeholders for Member Identification’,
Business Ethics: A European Review 15(2), 171–182.
301
Morsing, M. and M. Schultz: 2006, ‘Corporate Social
Responsibility Communication: Stakeholder Infor-
mation, Response and Involvement Strategies’,
Business Ethics: A European Review 15(4), 323–338.
Obermiller, C. and E. R. Spangenberg: 1998, ‘Devel-
opment of a Scale to Measure Consumer Scepticism
Toward Advertising’, Journal of Consumer Psychology
7(2), 159–186.
Orlitzky, M., F. L. Schmidt and S. L. Rynes: 2003,
‘Corporate Social and Financial Performance: A
Meta-Analysis’, Organization Studies 24(3), 403–441.
Pomering, A. and S. Dolnicar: 2007, ‘Consumer Response
to Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives: An
Investigation of Two Necessary Awareness States’,
Conference Proceedings, ANZMAC, University of Otago.
Porter, M. E. and M. R. Kramer: 2002, ‘The Competi-
tive Advantage of Corporate Philanthropy’, Harvard
Business Review 80(12), 56–68.
Price, L. L., L. F. Feick and R. A. Higie: 1987, ‘Infor-
mation Sensitive Consumers and Market Information’,
Journal of Consumer Affairs 21(2), 328–341.
Public Relations Watch: 2006, http://www.prrwatch.org,
accessed May 2006.
Roberts, J. A.: 1996, ‘Will the Real Socially Responsible
Consumer Please Step Forward?’, Business Horizons 39,
79–83.
Schultz, M. and M. Morsing: 2003, ‘The Catch 22 of
Integrating CSR and Marketing: Findings from a
Reputation Study of Danish Companies’, Conference
Proceedings, MSI, Boston University, 17–19 September
2003.
Sen, S. and C. B. Bhattacharya: 2001, ‘Does Doing Good
Always Lead to Doing Better? Consumer Reactions to
Corporate Social Responsibility’, Journal of Marketing
Research 38(2), 225–243.
Webb, D. J. and L. A. Mohr: 1998, ‘A Typology of
Consumer Responses to Cause-Related Marketing:
From Skeptics to Socially Concerned’, Journal of Public
Policy and Marketing 17(2), 226–238.
Work Foundation: 2004, http://www.theworkfoundation.
com/, accessed December 2004.
World Business Council for Sustainable Development,
Cross Cutting Themes – Corporate Responsibility:
2004, http://www.wbcsd.org, accessed May 2004.
School of Management and Marketing,
University of Wollongong,
Northfields Ave., Wollongong, 2522 NSW, Australia
E-mail: Alan_Pomering@uow.edu.au