The effect of corporate social responsibility activities on customer loyalty: An application in food and beverage

It is a fact that competition intensively exists in food and beverage sector, which is a sub-component of service indusrty. It is necessary to understand and analyze customer behaviour for companies to survive in such a competitive environment. Because costumers nowadays, want companies to direct their operations to fulfill their expectations. Thus companies are in the effort to fulfill their corporate social responsibilities. With the change of customer behaviour, companies want to keep their current and future customers. In this content, companies have been sensitive to all stakeholders and make an effort to fulfill their corporate social responsibilities which have been expected from them. This study aims to reveal the relationship between CSR and customer loyalty in food and beverage industry by taking into account the changing of customer behaviour. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were utilized in this study. At first, semi-structured interviews were conducted with managers working in the companies within the content of the research (restaurants which have tourism business license 1st or 2nd class; restaurants as special facilities with tourism business license and restaurants which are members of the Chamber of Commerce in Eskisehir). Then a questionnarie developed by using findings of analyzed data collected from the interviews. The questionnarie has been presented to expert judgement and then a pilot study conducted on a sample that is similar to the sample in the population. After the questionnaire has taken its final form, survey was conducted by using the face to face technique with the customers of the companies whose managers were interviewed . As a result of this study, the perception of CSR of companies have been identified. It was found that companies see themselves responsible for environment, customers, community and employees and they do activities in this direction. The study findings revealed that CSR activities have a positive impact on customer loyalty. The factor that has the greatest impact on customer loyalty were found to be CSR activities towards employees. Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Customer Loyalty, Food and Beverage Enterprises