A contingent perspective on the advantages of stores' strategic philanthropy for influencing consumer behaviour

The importance and implications of organisational‐level charitable giving, or strategic philanthropy, are often overlooked in international consumer literature. Drawing on the utilitarian human capital perspective from economics, the social norm theory from sociology, motivation theory from psychology and the strategy–environment coalignment paradigm in organisational science, this research develops a contingent framework for strategic philanthropy. The empirical results indicate that if drug stores put more emphasis on strategic philanthropy as perceived by customers in the community, customers will have stronger social ties with the store and be more loyal to the store. In addition, it was found that the impact of strategic philanthropy on patronage loyalty is moderated by customer characteristics (gender and ethnicity) and context factors (service quality and cause severity). Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.