Consumer perception towards corporate social responsibility practices: a study of the Malaysian banking sector

Organisations can gain enormous benefits when they are perceived as being socially responsible to their stakeholders. One of the important stakeholder groups that appear to be particularly susceptible to the banks' Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives is their consumers. Thus, this research aims to investigate how banks' customers perceived CSR practices in the banking industry in Malaysia. Administering through a Google-form survey instrument, supplemented with a created link via Facebook and WhatsApp, a total of 240 responses were collected, resulting in a response rate of 80%. Data collected were analysed using statistical tools such as descriptive statistics, correlations and multiple regressions mainly on the predictive power of the constructs in this study. The notable results indicated 'consumer awareness' tended to be positively correlated to CSR practice and it was also one of the most important constructs contributing to the prediction of CSR with the exception of 'knowledge of consumers' and 'purchasing decision'. This suggests that bank managers need to take seriously 'consumer awareness' into the next level of analysis, in which social media has an essential role to play in disseminating important information relating to CSR practices and implementation, including the use of mobile learning as an educative tool.