사회적기업에 대한 소비자의 연상이 기업태도에 미치는영향: 신뢰의 매개효과와 자아 일치성의 조절효과 중심으로

초록

Companies related to social economy have been garnering attention. As partof the policy to increase the number of jobs, social enterprises have becomeincreasingly vitalized, while more mature awareness for a responsible, civilsociety has driven robust discussion and interest in the areas related to socialeconomy such as social enterprises, impact investment, and social ventures. This study distinguishes consumers’ association with social enterprises interms of social responsibility actions that pursue social values and corporatecompetency that represents the professional capability of corporate businessmanagement. This study then tries to define and compare how each of thoseareas affect corporate attitude, in terms of their magnitude and direction. Moreover, this study attempts to empirically verify the structural impact oftrust and self-congruity on general consumers’ formation of corporate attitudeon social enterprises. This study seeks to discover the implications inmarketing for social enterprises from the consumer’s perspective, also suggeststhe direction for marketing strategy and a specific action plan to ensure thesustainability of social enterprises. For the empirical verification, this studyuses a sample of 432 general consumers who possess understanding of socialenterprises. The results of the verification can be summarized as follows. First, in theassociation of general consumers on social enterprises, the associations oncorporate action for social responsibility and corporate competency were bothshown to have positive impact on the consumers’ level of trust for the social enterprises. Such trust was also shown to have mediated a positive effect onthe consumers’ corporate attitude towards social enterprises. Second, sociallyresponsible activity by corporations were shown to have a directly positiveimpact on corporate attitude, whereas corporate competency was not to shownto have direct impact on corporate attitude. This demonstrates how theimpression that social enterprises will faithfully carry out social values(including those for environment-friendliness, community contribution,corporate ethics, and legal responsibility) is so set in stone in the associationsof the general consumers it leads to the mediating affect of trust and thedirection effect on corporate attitude. In contrast, the general consumers’association with corporate competency (defined by level of innovation, highquality service or products, appropriate pricing, work environment, and fairemployment) was shown to have significant impact on the level of trust insocial enterprises, but not a direct impact on corporate attitude; only throughthe mediating effect of trust was the corporate competency shown to have animpact on corporate attitude. Third, the self-congruity of general consumerswas show to have significant moderating effect between socially responsibleactivity and corporate attitude, but no significant effect between corporatecompetency, trust, and corporate attitude. In particular, the sample group witha high level of self-congruity was shown to have a stronger moderating effectcompared to the group with a low level of self-congruity. This suggests that in order to induce more positive corporate attitude ingeneral consumers, it would be important for social enterprises to effectivelyalign their respective brand image with the self-congruity of the consumers inorder to facilitate the social enterprises’ approach to the market. Such resultsimply that in order to expand their business competence, social enterprisesshould increase their effort to approach the market from the consumers’perspective. In order to do so, the social enterprises should engage in a newform of marketing that makes active use of self-congruity, such as elevatingthe level of their socially responsible activity above and beyond theexpectations of the consumers, actively promoting the value of sociallyresponsible activities, and expanding consumer involvement. This new form ofmarketing would mean shedding the existing sentimental preconception that social enterprises are driven by goodwill alone or that they rely on governmentsupport; rather, social enterprises must now segment and target theircustomers to provide offerings tailored for each group in a more sophisticatedmarketing initiative.

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