Investigating the Impact of Ethical Ideologies on Consumer’s Evaluation of Product and Company with regard to Moderating Role of Corporate Social Responsibility

Extensive research has been done on social responsibility and its effects on business. The importance of this concept for organizations is also emphasized. Despite the fact that corporate social responsibility has become one of the leading managerial issues worldwide, researchers in both business and academia have not considered its application to the growth of societies. The current study is aimed at filling this gap by investigating the consumer’s perceptions of corporate social responsibility and its role in the relationship between consumer’s ethical ideologies and evaluation of organization and product. The current research is applied in terms of purpose and it is correlation in terms of the approach. The research population consists of HajKhalifeh confectionery consumers in Yazd. Due to the unlimited statistical population, 355 questionnaires based on Morgan table, were collected using simple random sampling. The reliability of the questionnaire was assessed by calculating Cronbach's alpha coefficient and confirmed by 0.931. LISREL and SPSS software were used for data analysis. The results show that idealistic consumers have a positive understanding of the corporate social responsibility activities and they will eventually have a positive evaluation of the product and the organization. In contrast, relativistic consumers are not sensitive to the corporate social responsibility and do not perceive them positively, which leads to their negative evaluations of the product and organization. In other words, the type of ethical ideology of consumers leads to different perceptions of corporate social responsibility and to a positive or negative evaluation of the product and the organization.