Consumer Behaviour

Existing literature shows that consumer loyalty; consumer attitude; product evaluation;

and word-of-mouth are aspects that play an important role in consumers’ buying

behavior and are likely to be influenced by companies’ CSR initiatives. The purpose

of this thesis is to test whether companies’ CSR initiatives have impact on university

students’ buying behavior with regard to these four aspects. Four hypotheses are

formulated accordingly.

The quantitative research method is chosen to serve the research purpose. Data is

collected through self-complemented questionnaire. Questionnaires have been sent to

Karlstad University’s students who are the samples of this thesis.

The finding of this thesis shows that company’s CSR initiatives have significant

influence on all four aspects. However, some indicators, which are suggested by the

existing literatures as important, are not proved to play an important role on our

respondents’ behavior of purchasing.

These indicators are resistance to switching to competitor to the aspect of consumer

loyalty; product price to the aspect of product evaluation and shared information of

employee behavior to the aspect of word-of-mouth. This means these indicators

unlike what the existing literature claims are not relevant in the university students’

buying behavior.