انجمن شرکتی به عنوان سوابق رفتار مصرف کننده: پویایی اعتماد در داخل و بین صنایع Corporate association as antecedents of consumer behaviors: The dynamics of trust within and between industries

1. Introduction Corporate association refers to beliefs, attitudes, and emotions of a company obtained through direct or indirect experiences (Madrigal, 2000). Association with a particular company in the memory of a consumer plays an important role in shaping corporate image and perception. Today when the competition between companies has become fierce and the differentiation between products is gradually decreasing, the ways in which consumers associate with companies cannot be ignored. In particular, consumers evaluate products and make purchase decisions with limited access to the relevant information and knowledge (Kardes et al., 2004). If this information is insufficient, they evaluate products through the corporate association with relevant companies in order to reduce the risk of selection (Ozanne et al., 1992). Therefore, companies use various marketing strategies to evoke corporate association, thereby utilizing it as a strategic asset that cannot be easily imitated (Gupta, 2002; Walsh and Bartikowski, 2013). Consequently, controversy about the effects of corporate association on product evaluation can provide managers with strategies to implement the most important associations. Such controversies can lead consumers to associate relevant companies with their professional capabilities, which reinforce their social responsibility (Pina et al., 2006). Most previous studies on corporate association have examined only the effects of corporate association on product evaluation (Berens et al., 2005; Gurhan-Canli and Batra, 2004), satisfaction (Walsh and Bartikowski, 2013), and purchase intention (David et al., 2005; Kim et al., 2017) as outcome variables. Also, no study has investigated the differences in associations according to the type of company. In addition, the extant research has presented only the result that corporate responsibility activities centered on social responsibility activities increased both consumer satisfaction (Becker-Olsen et al., 2006; McDonald and Rundle-Thiele, 2007) and company’s performance (Lee and Park, 2009). In particular, unlike general companies, foodservice industries have the distinct characteristic that the goods they sell to consumers are food items. Corporate association is therefore considered to play a very important role in consumers’ judgment regarding whether to use the relevant companies’ services. Moreover, consumers may greatly affect service quality through their interactions with companies (LengnickHall et al., 2000). Consumers of foodservice industries are significant human resource that can be regarded as employees partially, while voluntary and implicit consumer citizenship behaviors are highly important concept similar to extra-role behaviors of employees, as a significant consumer role at service encounter (Bendapudi and Leone, 2003; Gruen, 1995). Therefore, this study utilizes the variable of consumer citizenship behavior to determine whether it is affected by corporate association (Yi et al., 2013). Because the consumer’s active role in the process of services reduces companies’ additional costs and improves service quality, consumer citizenship behavior has heightened significance as a form of competitive advantage (Groth, 2005).