The Customer Satisfaction in a Non Profit Context: the Role of Social Responsibility and its Communication

In recent management literature the concept of CSR has evolved gradually enlarging its domain and giving birth to several theories, theoretical frameworks, approaches and terminologies (Garriga and Melé, 2004). Given this theoretical plurality on the topic, the way marketing scholars have approached the social responsibility of marketing at first (starting from the forerunner contribution of Kotler, 1972) and then the effectiveness of CSR on firms’ marketing performances (e.g. Brown and Dacin, 1997; Ellen, Mohr and Webb, 2000; Creyer, 1997; Sen and Bhattacharya, 2001; Ross, Patterson and Stutts, 1992; Smith and Alcorn, 1991) is still fragmented and narrowly focused on specific facets of the broader spectrum of corporate social responsibility (Maignan and Ferrell, 2004; Mohr, Webb and Harris, 2001). Despite this growing debate, CSR’s effectiveness on consumers’ behaviors is still controversial (e.g. Brown and Dacin, 1997; Ellen, Mohr and Webb, 2000; Creyer, 1997; Mohr and Webb, 2005; Öberseder, Schlegelmilch and Gruber, 2011) and the relationship between social responsibility and customer satisfaction seems to be less considered in the current literature. Another under debated topic concerns the influence of different communication channels on stakeholders’ perceptions and awareness of CSR actions (Brown et al., 2006). Although several authors sustained the salience of CSR communication in minimizing stakeholders’ skepticism (Du, Bhattacharya and Sen, 2010) or in generating stakeholders’ positive associations (Morsing and Schults, 2006) and have in some cases demonstrated its ineffectiveness (e.g. Bhattacharya, Sen and Korschun, 2008; Du, Bhattacharya and Sen, 2007; Sen, Bhattacharya and Korschun, 2006), the literature still lacks contributions that indicate which communication channels are suitable in strengthening the corporate image as socially responsible (Du, Bhattacharya and Sen, 2010). Furthermore, the contributions cited so far are focused on for profit contexts and do not consider explicitly non-profit organizations for which the social responsibility is particularly relevant given the tutelage that the law generally grant for their acknowledged social value. The purpose of this article is to bridge the gaps introduced above. Focusing on a non-profit organization we first verify the existence of a relationship between CSR and customer satisfaction; second we evaluate the effectiveness of the social report in generating CSR awareness toward the members; third, we give some insights about the contribution that other communication channels and media (different from the social report) give in strengthening the cited awareness.