Corporate Social Responsibility and Customer Patronage in the Telecommunications Context

Abstract

This study centered on corporate social responsibility and customer patronage in the telecommunications context. It was conducted to examine the effects of community development, corporate philanthropy, environmental responsibility, legal responsibility and ethical responsibility on customer patronage of telecommunication services. The study adopted survey research design. A structured questionnaire was used to obtain primary data from 246 telecommunication service subscribers. Data analysis was done using descriptive statistics while hypotheses testing was carried out using multiple linear regression. The findings of the study revealed that corporate philanthropy (β = .444; p-value = 0.000 < 0.05) had the highest significant positive influence on customer patronage of telecommunication services, followed in order of relative importance by environmental responsibility (β = .384; p-value = 0.003 < 0.05), community development (β = .352; p-value = 0.000 < 0.05), ethical responsibility (β = .301; p-value = 0.000 < 0.05) and legal responsibility (β = .210; p-value = 0.001 < 0.05). On the basis of these findings, therefore, the study provided practical implications for possible implementation.