An examination of corporate citizenship on customer loyalty in the banking industry: a PLS-SEM analysis

Purpose - This research aims to address the need for a more in-depth empirical investigation of exploring the link between the adoption of corporate citizenship (CC) practices and different aspects of customer behavior in a developing country. Also, it develops a research framework and assesses the mediating role of brand image, brand love, brand reputation and brand trust between customer perceptions of CC and customer loyalty. Design/methodology/approach - Working with a sample of 290 private bank customers in Iran, partial least square-based structural equation modeling is used to test the conceptual model. Findings - The findings reveal significant and positive relationships between CC, brand image, love and reputation. Indirectly and in the relationship between CC and customer loyalty, there are significant relationships through the serial roles of image-reputation, image-love and image-trust. Most importantly, the findings add value to the current knowledge by exploring the mediating effect of brand image, love, reputation and trust between CC and customer loyalty. Finally, this study has resulted in an updated prediction model of private banking customer loyalty. Originality/value - This study makes a unique theoretical contribution to the literature by evaluating and comparing the mediating role of image, love, reputation and brand trust between CC and customer loyalty using the hierarchy of effects model.