Samenvatting

Banks in the Netherlands are involved in Corpore Social Responsibility (CSR). What banks do for Corporate Social Responsibility and how they do it is not always clear. Different motives for Corporate Social Responsibility exist and as an effect, it remains questionable how customers would react to CSR initiatives from their banks and what it could do to their behaviour. Therefore, for this thesis the following research question was created: How can CSR initiatives by Dutch banks affect purchase intention?
In order to be able to answer this research question both desk research and field
research were conducted. The desk research was used in order to gain more information on theoretical models researching CSR in relation to Purchase Intention. The desk research created the foundation for the conceptual model for this research. The conceptual model was created with the motives loyalty, morality, awareness and environment as central motives for CSR. In order to answer the research question, a questionnaire was designed for potential
Dutch banking customers. This questionnaire researched how customers react to motives for CSR and how it could affect their purchase intention. The two Dutch banks Triodos Bank and Rabobank were consulted for this research. Results from the questionnaire have shown that for customers, motives for CSR such as Awareness and Environment led to the most positive attitudes towards the bank. However, according to the respondent’s purchase intention they were not very likely to purchase a service from either Triodos Bank or Rabobank in the future.
Based upon this information it appeared that certain motives for CSR are perceived more positively by customers than others. Although the motives Awareness and Environment created more positive attitudes towards the bank’s CSR initiatives, the purchase intention was not high for both banks. The questionnaire proved that customers who thought the banks invested enough in CSR initiatives had an increased Purchase Intention compared to the customers who thought banks did not invest enough in CSR. Additionally, there are other
important factors that can influence the Purchase Intention of a customer such as the perceived value of the product or service of the bank and the brand awareness.