Konstantinos Ioannidis

Corporate Social Responsibility and Brand Trust: Examining Corporate Social Responsibility and Brand Trust in the Online Environment Konstantinos Ioannidis

This book examines the relationship between the perceived corporate ethical behaviour and Brand Trust in the innovative online environment. Hitherto there has been extremely limited literature about this issue and Delgado's Brand Trust model is associated for the first time with the characteristics of an ethical company. The existing bibliography is sketched, touching upon the interaction of CSR and Brand Trust in the novel communicative context of the Internet. Mixed methodology, by means of small-scale survey and in-depth interviews, was used in order to integrate the quantitative and the qualitative results for an overall interpretation of the research issues. Internet is found to be the most appropriate medium for communicating CSR to contemporary, more ethically oriented consumers that expect from companies to manifest social responsibility and concern. Through the use of SPSS, data analysis supports the initial presupposition that Brand Trust and perceived ethical behaviour correlate strongly.