Practices of corporate citizenship and market orientation: possibly related?

Abstract

Researchers show considerable interest in corporate citizenship as regarding relations with stakeholders, profitability, monitoring of markets and others. Research has recently emerged seeking to verify relationships that may exist between the adoption of practices of corporate citizenship and attention to a specific group of company stakeholders, the customers. This was the motivation for this empirical research which investigated a link between actions of corporate citizenship and adoption of practices for market orientation. Using scales of corporate citizenship (Maignan and Ferrell, 2001a) and market orientation (Narver and Slater, 1990), a survey was conducted in 172 retail companies in Belo Horizonte. Results reveal that as a company becomes more market oriented, concerns with economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic aspects of corporate citizenship increase. This work therefore should contribute to the process of adopting corporate citizenship in business market planning.