The Mediating Effects of CSR on Market Orientation Responsiveness in Housing Companies’ Business

Market orientation research assumes that the company's knowledge of customer needs has an impact on their responsiveness to customer requirements. From a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) perspective, it is not enough to be responsive to customers' expressed needs, as accountability should be proactively integrated in core business operations including taking responsibility for stakeholders. As CSR effects on market orientation have received limited interest in research, this study investigates the mediating role of CSR on company responsiveness to customer needs from a market intelligence perspective.

Attention is paid to Swedish public housing companies to manage the transformation from being socially-driven to becoming economically-driving based on return of investments. Traditionally, the public HCs’ offered living conditions based on the principle that all people are entitled to good housing, which meant that they gained a price-setting role in the housing market. Their social role and economic importance are especially critical in declining markets. The new legislation expects of companies to act market oriented and based on economic principles. Suggested is that customer needs are handled by CSR. In this study the three elements of CSR (social, economic and environmental) are investigated to improve knowledge of their separate mediating role on market orientation. To improve comparability both public and private HCs in declining markets are investigated.

The purpose of this study is to examine how CSR elements have mediating effects on public housing companies’ activities in the markets.

The quantitative method is applied. The result is based on a survey sent to 289 Swedish public housing companies.

The results show that the all dimension of CSR are more positively correlated with market orientation responsiveness in public HCs.

This study deal with public housing companies and intend only to highlight the effects of CSR as having mediating influence as crucial for company´s customer commitment.