The term corporate citizenship has been the subject of considerable interest since the beginning of the last decade. Nevertheless, few pieces of research have investigated whether the adoption of practices considered to be socially responsible can be used by companies as a marketing tool. This being the case, a study involving 208 companies in the retail sector was carried out with a view to investigating to what extent the adoption of corporative citizenship practices has an impact on the behaviour of a company's customers and its employees. The research was based on studies by Maignan e Ferrell (2001a) and the model developed by Archie Carroll (1991) was used to measure four dimensions of corporate social performance (economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic). In order to achieve the proposed objectives, Pearson coefficient analysis and such statistical techniques as multiple regression analysis have been used. The results indicate that the adoption of corporate citizenship practices have a weak impact on customer loyalty and a stronger effect on employee commitment. It was therefore possible to conclude that corporate citizenship can be used by companies as an internal and external marketing tool.
Social responsibility; corporate citizenship; societal marketing; customer loyalty; employee commitment
