Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Customer - Impact of Csr on Customer Satisfaction

The purpose of paper is to analyze the relationship between corporate social responsibility and customer satisfaction in insurance sector in India. This paper reviews the literature on CSR effects and satisfaction and improves our understanding of the importance of corporate socially responsible action and what insurance companies are doing in CSR in order to satisfy their customer. This will help company to best allocate company resources to increase CSR activities in order to satisfy customer and will allow marketers to reduce customer churn and hence increase market share and profits

Different researcher at different point of time has emphasized impact of CSR by different factors such as customer loyalty, customer retention, their intentions; their attitudes etc. but very few researchers have considered the relationship between corporate social responsibility and customer satisfaction. And there is conflicting view regarding this topic between all researchers.

Luo and Bhattacharya (2006) studied fortune 500 listed companies and concluded that there is a direct link between corporate social responsibility and customer satisfaction. But in some cases this prove to be wrong , a study by Pomering and Dolniear (2006) indicated that customer may prefer more self serving initiatives rather than waiting to avail the services to be rendered . Thus in some cases companies going to get simultaneous improvement in customer satisfaction may waste their precious resources towards cause that do not benefit them in giving customer satisfaction. Another study done by Imran Ali (2010) in which it is concluded that there is no relationship between CSR and consumer retention, consumer purchase intention and consumer satisfaction. However, a review of literature carried by Maignal and Ferrell (2004) identified a no. of studies on CSR programs and their positive effects on customers. Studies by Barone et all (2000). Creyor Ross (1997) and Berger and Kanetkar (1995) said that customer actively supports the companies engaged in CSR activities. And few more research had done regarding CSR and customer satisfaction.

However research done by N. Senthikumar, A. Ananth and A. Arulraj (2011) on impact of CSR on customer satisfaction in banking service concluded that corporate social responsibility positively influences customer satisfaction towards banking service quality. The study reveals that customer satisfaction is the most significant predict of banking service quality.

Moving on same track, we are going to study the Impact of CSR on customer satisfaction towards Insurance sector in India to find out the that CSR shows a positive influence on consumer satisfaction as it was shown in banking sector.