This paper aims to look at the relationship among Assertiveness, a National value dimensions (NVD) component, CSR practices, and brand association in Bangladesh. Perceptions of the managers from different organizations in Bangladesh, an emerging economy, have been determined and recorded using a 7-point Likert scale. Purposive sampling has been used to select 113 respondents representing banking, the central bank, NGO, medical, academia, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, and other service sectors. It is found that Bangladeshi managers are non-assertive implying the fact that the claim of Hofstede stating that Bangladesh is a masculine or, assertive society is invalid in this anti-globalization era (post-2008). The results of stepwise regression prove that CSR to stakeholders, a dimension of overall CSR performance, is positively associated with brand association. Results also show that interaction between assertiveness and CSR to stakeholders has a negative and moderating effect on brand association in Bangladesh. If corporate CSR activities are taken in line with the findings of this article, the country will be able to build better resilience against natural and other disasters, a target under SDG 13. At the same time, it will help organizations to enhance their brand image; and more specifically, strengthen associations of consumers with the brand itself.
Assertiveness has long been researched as a psycho-logical construct, which also has immense importance in marketing researches (Manolică et al., 2019). It is imperative that degree of assertiveness is examined for Bangladesh, which is established as a ‘Masculine society by Hofstede (“Bangladesh,” 2020). It is of keen interest to researchers of this paper since literature shows that there is association among assertiveness and CSR practices in different countries (Ho et al., 2012; Kucharska and Kowalczyk, 2019; Peng et al., 2012; Steensma et al., 2000; Thanetsunthorn, 2014). Moreover, the world has changed since the global financial crisis of 2008 and movements against econo-mic globalization, popularly termed as “Anti-global-ization” movement, has taken pace (Bremmer, 2014; Meyer, 2017). Therefore, the link between managerial assertiveness and CSR performances, in this anti-globalization era, warrants a detailed examination. While digging into the literature, we found that only a handful of literature examining assertiveness of Bangladeshi individuals, that too in the fields of psychology and drug addiction (Lee and Ciftci, 2014; Rahman et al., 2016). However, none of these papers tried to individually test assertiveness of Bangladeshi society. Therefore, an investigation into this area is well warranted.
Moreover, CSR activities have been found to have links with purchase intention, evaluation of a brand by its customers (determined through the intention to pay a premium price) and product evaluation (Brown and Dacin, 1997; Nete-meyer et al., 2001; Ricks, 2005). However, the impact of CSR activities to Brand Association is under researched. Therefore, the authors became interested to test the interactional relationship between assertiveness and CSR practices of Bangla-deshi firms and their impacts on Brand association. This paper does not only test the aforementioned relationships, rather establishes itself as a guide to understand the level of assertiveness, CSR practices and Brand Association as well.
Literature Review
Assertiveness - The definition of Assertiveness can be interpreted from the definition of Galassi and Galassi and presented in that behavior of a person which indicates the ability of that person to express his/her attitude, opinions and rights in a firm and honest manner while respecting the same of the other person during interpersonal interaction with the latter. Even though this is a psychological construct coming from counseling psychology, it may have interesting and meaningful application in marketing in dealing with consumer policy and consumer complaints. Interest-ingly assertiveness training can be offered to indi-viduals and it has also been found that such training can improve self-esteem, positive reactions from others and decrease the level of anxiety related to different social situations for the trainee and can also be used in treating sexual, marital, anxiety of students and even chronic schizophrenics.
Assertiveness Research and Their implications in the field of Marketing - The interaction of assertive-ness behavior and marketing has been indirectly tested in different researches. For example, assertiveness training to an experimental group and tried to determine the efficacy of training by exposing the experimental group and a control group to high pressure sales techniques of a salesman who tried to persuade both groups to purchase magazines. The difference between the experimental and the control group was not found to be significant. However, there was a difference and the difference was in the expected direction.
Manolică et al. (2019) published a thesis where the focus of the study was to highlight consumer behaviors of assertive and non-assertive consumers in terms of the differences in their responses to advertisement appeals, purchase intentions, information sources on which each of the aforementioned consumer groups rely the most while making purchase decisions of high and low-involvement products (Manolică et al., 2019). Their findings suggest that about 70% of their respondents were assertive consumers. They also found that level of education, family and friends, interests and hobbies of respondents had influences on determining if their behavior is going to be more or less assertive. Furthermore, they found that assertive consumers prefer the cognitive advertisement. One of the most interesting findings of their study is the fact that nonassertive consumers also prefer thinking processors. Hence, differences between assertiveness and non-assertiveness are really thin here. However, they have presented a tall list of the ways in which assertive and non-assertive behaviors of consumers have to be dealt with. As expected, there are lots of differences in the styles of dealing with these two different consumer groups. Therefore, assertiveness research had really opened new avenues for the marketers to effectively market their products and services based on behavioral aspects of consumers.
Assertiveness in certain situations is also required. It is found through prior studies that assertive and non-assertive consumers do not behave in some ways when they are frustrated with the products and or services of a company. Specifically hypothesized reactions of different categories of individuals; such as: assertive, non-assertive and aggressive, to frustration. They mentioned that non-assertive individuals are less likely to complain as a reaction to their frustration towards a company as opposed to their assertive counterparts. Once customer complaint is received, companies can take necessary action to correct it and make the customer satisfied (Jumaryadi, 2019). The action of managing complaints, or complain management, is also said to be an effective tool in deciding the right strategy to offer the best products or services to the customers (Filip, 2013). Therefore, it is understandable that if customers do not complaint but are frustrated with products of a producer and churn, companies will not have the opportunity to effectively re-design their products and services in order to retain dissatisfied consumers. Hence, assertiveness, in this case, can be a boon to the marketers, not a bane.
The above discussion suggests that consumers asser-tiveness have decisional impact on managers of different firms. Managers as well as employees do interact with consumers on a daily basis. Therefore, managerial and/or, employee assertiveness also matters in the interpersonal context of the business inter-actions. Of course, managerial assertiveness may affect organizational decision making and the brand itself in different ways. However, this paper is only interested to find if managerial assertiveness affects organi-zational CSR practices and if such practices, in turn, can positively affect the brand as a whole.
Assertiveness as a dimension of managerial behavior and its impact on CSR activities - It has been found that geographic regions and national culture can explain differences in CSR performances of different corporations. For example, South East Asian companies lag behind in the dimension of CSR performances in comparison to the firms located in the South Asian and Asia Pacific regions (Thanetsunthorn, 2014). Thanetsunthorn (2014) stated that the differ-ences are most likely to be caused by the national value differences, such as: the masculinity of the society (Thanetsunthorn, 2014; Wiley, 2009). Other researchers also found an empirically proven relation-ship between culture and CSR performances (Ho et al., 2012; Peng et al., 2012; Thanetsunthorn, 2014). There are also similar findings listed in different research articles; for instance: masculine countries do not sufficiently appreciate cooperative strategies, mascul-inity hinders helping behavior and masculinity culture possessing assertiveness and competitiveness negat-ively affect CSR practices (Kucharska and Kowalczyk, 2019; Steensma et al., 2000). Masculinity of a society has been well researched by Hofstede and many other researchers (as listed above). In fact, all of the cited researches of this paper related to masculinity borrowed the preliminary concept from Hofstede. Hofstede explained masculinity as the relative importance given by a society to issues such as income, recognition, advancement, which reflects assertiveness itself (Badawy et al., 2017; Hofstede, 1983). It is further explained as “The social impli-cations of having been born as a boy” (Minkov and Hofstede, 2011).
The above discussions establish the fact that existing literature proves that the masculinity or, assertiveness of individuals in a society or, a country do affect CSR practices. The later section discusses CSR activities in more details and tries to identify how existing literature connects CSR activities or, practices with organization as a brand itself.
CSR practices and Brand Association - CSR has many dimensions. One of which is Corporate Philan-thropy. It has been defined as a voluntary charity or, charitable or, social work by an organization under-taken by the organizations slack resources (Sánchez, 2000). Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is also defined as a citizenship function of an organization which includes moral, ethical, and social obligations between the customers and the corporation itself (Wang, 2008). Thompson (2018) described 5 com-ponents of CSR:
Employing ethical strategy and principles in business operation
Donation, Charitable activities, devoting time and money of the corporate personnel to support community services/endeavors, supporting worthy causes, helping the disadvantaged by reaching out to them
Protecting the environment and refraining from or reduce activities which cause harms to the environment
Taking actions which improves the quality of life of the employees
Creating a workforce that embraces diversity in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, etc. (Thompson, 2018).
Tingchi Liu et al. (2014) citing works of other researchers, have broadly categorized CSR activities into TWO categories:
a. CSR to Society and
b. CSR to Stakeholders (Mohr and Webb, 2005; Tingchi Liu et al., 2014)
CSR to society primarily refers to different activities of an organization that helps enhance a societyswell-being (Turker, 2009). The pressure on companies to behave in socially responsible ways has significantly increased in recent times (Mohr and Webb, 2005). Moreover, it has also been claimed by researchers that CSR activities, if addresses social issues, leave a positive impression about the company in the minds of consumers (Murray and Vogel, 1997). This study has been supported by the findings of Ricks (2005), who found that philanthropic activities, a component of CSR as expressed by Thompson (2018) and CSR to Society as expressed by Turker (2009), undertaken by firms can increase brand association (Ricks, 2005; Thompson, 2018; Turker, 2009). Studies also reveal that consumers evaluate corporations through corpo-rate social responsibility coupled with corporate ability and the products of those corporations through their findings of that corporate evaluation (Brown and Dacin, 1997). Todays consumers are even ready to pay a premium to purchase products of a brand if it is a “Good Corporate Citizen” (Netemeyer et al., 2001). Sen & Bhattacharya (2001) reported that purchase intention of consumers may be effected by CSR activities of the firms (Sen and Bhattacharya, 2001). CSR behaviors, which have intentions to augment social interests have been found to have positive associations with the brand image of famous brands (Singh et al., 2008). Societal contributions of corpo-rations like - activities to restore local communities, fundraising, supporting rebuilding works of schools, buildings, sponsoring orphans, making statements to the people which are encouraging and compassionate have been found to have enhanced the brand image of firms significantly (in a study conducted after 2004s tsunami in Phuket, Thailand) (Henderson, 2007). Interestingly, corporate social responsibility has been considered to be a similar concept as corporate reput-ation by some researchers as well (Hillenbrand and Money, 2007). Alamro and Rowley (2011) have also found a significant positive impact of corporate reputation on brand preference (Alamro and Rowley, 2011). These discussions do prove that CSR to Society is not only an important component of CSR, but also enhances corporate reputation, brand image, brand preference, corporate and product evaluation and even brand association.
CSR practices also acts as an important agent in strengthening the relationship between firms &stakeholders and such practices often go beyond economic benefit for the firms themselves (Peloza and Shang, 2011; Turker, 2009). In fact, communication of CSR activities also improves brand awareness and forms stronger bonds between the firms and their stakeholders (Maignan and Ferrell, 2004). Such relationships and bonds between the firm and the stakeholders themselves are referred to as CSR to Stakeholder (Mohr and Webb, 2005). Firms, those are involved in CSR activities, enjoy several additional advantages from its stakeholders. A short list of them is given below (Alamro and Rowley, 2011; Creyer, 1997; He and Li, 2011; Hsu, 2012; Rodríguez and del Mar Armas Cruz, 2007; Sen, 2006; Tingchi Liu et al., 2014; Torres et al., 2012):
a. Receiving higher financial gains (Return on assets)
b. Demand of the products produced, regardless of their nature, becomes comparatively more inelastic provided that the firm concerned is involved in ethical CSR practices
c. Buyers buy more products of these firms and hold positive image regarding their (the firms) employ-ment &investment practices
d. If stakeholders and customers of these firms are satisfied, brand preferences of the firms improves
e. Global brands, those are respectful to their social responsibilities towards local communities and magnify the positive impacts of their CSR acti-vities to their stakeholders of which customers are a part, can enjoy increased brand equity
f. CSR activities can positively influence corporate reputation provided that the customers are satisfied
g. It has also been proven that brand identification mediates the relationships between CSR activities and service quality; which implies that if a brand is known to customers, CSR activities of that brand can enhance service quality.
However, there are evidences which suggest that corporate abilities are more influential than CSR associations on the perception and evaluation of the firm and its products (Brown and Dacin, 1997). Folkes and Kamins (1999) also fund that firms with inferior products are not evaluated as highly for their CSR activities as their superior counterparts (Folkes and Kamins, 1999; Tingchi Liu et al., 2014).
Brand Association - To understand Brand Associa-tion, at first, it is worthwhile to look at the definition of Brand. As mentioned in Kotler (2004), the American Marketing Association (AMA) has defined brand as "a name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a combi-nation of them, intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or a group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors" (Kotler, 2000). Brand is similarly defined as the name and/or symbol that differentiates a product or service of one seller or, group from the other (Aaker, 1996). The relationship dimension of Brands definition has been specified by McNally and Speak (2004) as a relation-ship which involves trust (McNally and Speak, 2011). In a similar tone, Post (2005) defined brand as a bond of loyalty created through a psychic connection bet-ween the buyer and the firm and contains perceived value addition (Post, 2005). Brand has also been defined as a promise (Morel, 2003). A more detailed criteria has been developed by Nilson (1998). Nilsons criteria includes items such as: a clearly stated value, clearly identifiable differences with other brands, attractive, and a noticeable identity (Nilson, 1998). Wijayas (2011) presented a definition, which can be considered as the culmination of above discussions. According to Wijaya (2011), brand is an impression that is left on the hearts and minds of consumers and produces a specific meaning and feeling (Wijaya, 2013). Wijayas definition connects different concepts of brands presented earlier; such as: symbols, logos and/or, marks, which are imprinted in the hearts and minds of the consumers and which creates a feeling of trust and a promise of value.
The above discussions on brand give indication that brand imprint itself in the minds and hearts of the consumer. The image that is imprinted in the minds of the consumers comes from different product and non-product related attributes of the brands. For example: features which make a product work, physical attri-butes of the product itself, packaging, design, user information, a community of users and price infor-mation. These attributes produce Brand Image (Keller, 1993; Wijaya, 2013). Brand association is considered as a dimension of Brand Image (Wijaya, 2013). It is defined as positive or, negative information about the brand connected to the nodes of the brain (Hossien Emari, 2012; Sasmita and Mohd Suki, 2015). It is also argued that brand association is an information collection tool, which is used to execute, differentiate and extend a brand (Sasmita and Mohd Suki, 2015; van Osselaer and Janiszewski, 2001). Cheng and Hsui Chen, (2001) argued that value that comes from a brand name is nothing but a set of associations, its meaning to people. Brand Association, as defined by Wijaya (2013), are the persons, symbols, colors those are strongly associated or, attached to a brand; such as: Nike is associated with the image of Tiger woods, Bush with Iraq War, CocaCola with cheerfulness (Wijaya, 2013).
In this article, the authors tried to identify the rela-tionship among assertiveness of the managers of Bangladesh, CSR performances of different firms and their associations with Brand Association.
Hypotheses:
The hypotheses those are formed based on this objective and review of the aforementioned literature are as follows:
H0 = There is no relationship present among assertive-ness, CSR to society, CSR to Stakeholders and Brand Association.
H1a = There is a significantly positive relationship present among assertiveness, CSR to society, CSR to Stakeholders and Brand Association
H2a = Interaction among assertiveness and CSR to society and CSR to Stakeholders have significant negative influence on Brand association
Research Design - The research paradigm for this study is Positivism. Hence, the authors are only using quantitative techniques to find answers which will be true if tested anywhere in the country on any set of managers. Therefore, the findings will be law like generalization of facts (Saunders et al., 2009).
This is an exploratory research. The authors have decided to go for Principal Component Analysis (PCA) as an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) tool for determining principal factors explaining Asser-tiveness of Bangladeshi managers. For testing relation-ships among variables, stepwise regression has been used. SPSS is used as the tool for applying the aforementioned tools. Data was centered in order to avoid multicollinearity problems of the interaction terms. Questionnaire and primary factors established in the research work by used for determining the degree of assertiveness of the respondents. Another set of questionnaire reflecting components of CSR to society, CSR to Stakeholders and Brand Association was also prepared primarily based on studies of Wijaya (2013) and Tingchi Liu et al. (2014).
Sampling Procedure - Purposive sampling methods were used to gather data from 113 executives of different level of management of different types of firms. Respondents were taken from banks, doctors of different managerial levels of medical institutions, academic institutions, nonprofit NGOs, Central Bank, manufacturers, Pharmaceutical companies, e-com-merce firms, etc.
Descriptive Statistics - Table 1 show descriptive statistics related to CSR to Society. The weighted score of this construct is 53.23 which indicate mode-rate CSR to society activities. As already described earlier, these activities include supporting local communities through fundraising, supporting rebuild-ing works of schools, buildings, sponsoring orphans following natural calamities, etc. Composite Score of this construct shows that Bangladeshi firms are moderately involved in these activities and there is room for more contributions.
Table 2 shows that the weighted average scores of CSR to stakeholders. The value is 33.81. The accom-panying range of the table ensures that this score indicates a moderate level of stakeholder centric CSR activities taken by firms of Bangladesh. The results indicate that Bangladeshi firms have moderate level of bonding with the stakeholders. As mentioned earlier, this bonding comes from effective communication of meaningful CSR activities with the stakeholders of the firm, being respectful to local communities, taking CSR activities which do not produce economic benefits or, goes beyond the profitability of the firm. Bangladeshi firms still have room for more contri-bution here.
Table 3 shows that the overall CSR performance scores for Bangladeshi firms. As expected, Bangla-deshi firms have performed averagely here. Meaning that the CSR performance of these firms is neither good nor bad. A lot of works can be done here as mentioned above.
Table 4 shows the weighted average score of Brand Association. The results show that the firms repre-sented by the respondents do have a moderate level of brand association. It means that they could not build a strong image in the mind of the consumers which can easily associate them with the brand. A lot of works can be done here.
Tables 5-10 shows descriptive statistics of assertive-ness construct. The results show that the respondents: (a) are highly submissive, (b) possess moderate level of Aggressive self-assertion (meaning that they seldom have a tendency to aggressively assert themselves or tries to aggressively place their opinion or, protests aggressively when his/her rights are violated), (c)possess moderate level of congeniality or friend-liness (d) possess violent characteristics when afraid (such as fearing thieves or criminals and believing that a gun should be kept at every home as a safety)(e) possess moderate level of tolerance and (f) moderate shyness.
Overall, the managers of the selected Bangladeshi firms are found to have moderate level of assertive-ness.
Tables 12-15 show Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) performed through Principal Component Analysis (PCA) technique in SPSS. The KMO and Bartletts Test for factor analysis of Assertiveness show that the sampling adequacy is mediocre [P value is also significant (at 1%)]. Four items have Com-munalities of >0.5 and these are entered into further analysis. The PCA results show that more than 70% of the variances are explained with those four items which ultimately loaded on TWO factors (Variamx rotation is used), they are: congeniality with non-assertiveness and tolerance with shyness. Therefore, it is worth to include these factors in the final stepwise regression model to explain relationships among the intended independent and dependent variables.
Tables 16 -19 show EFA of CSR construct. KMO and Bartletts test has a score of 0.836 which indicates that the factor structure is really robust (p value is signi-ficant at 1%). However, communalities of two items are between 0.4 (app.) and 0.5. These items are kept in the analysis as they are close to 0.5. All other items have communalities > 0.5. Out of the SEVEN items FOUR loaded on CSR to Stakeholders and the rest loaded on CSR to society. Rotation sums of squared loadings show that the TWO extracted factors, CSR to stakeholders and CSR to society, can explain around 63% of the variances. It suggests that it is worth to include these factors in the final model for analyzing relationships among CSR performances, Assertiveness and Brand Association.
Tables 20-22 of the appendix show the results of the stepwise regression analysis. It is seen that both R-squared and adjusted R-squared have increased with the addition of each independent variable in the model. Overall adjusted R-squared of the model is 46% and R-squared is 46%. It can therefore be concluded that the model has moderate explanatory power. 48% adjusted R-squared implies that 48% of the variations in the dependent variable can be explained by the model. Since adjusted R-squared have kept on rising with addition of each variable, all four variables are kept in the model for better explanatory power. F values are also significant at 1%. Therefore, H0 or, NULL is rejected. Coefficients and t statistics of the model show that CSR to Stakeholders and interaction variable between assertiveness and CSR to Stake-holders significantly influence the dependent variable (p value is <0.01). VIF of the coefficients table confirms that there is no multicollinearity problem present in the model. In fact, all the independent variables including the interaction variables were centered before they are entered into the regression model. It helped to keep the VIF within acceptable limits keeping the interpretation of the coefficients intact.
Coefficients of the model show that CSR to stake-holder has the biggest positive impact on Brand Association. The interaction of CSR to stakeholder and assertiveness has a negative coefficient implying the fact that highly assertive societies have low CSR performances and these two phenomena collectively reduces the brand association. These findings, combined with the F-statistics mentioned earlier, ensures acceptance of both alternative hypotheses. It is also to be noted here that the interaction effect moderates the relationships among the other variables of this study and in line with the findings of Thanet-sunthorn (2014). However, CSR to society and interaction variable between assertiveness and CSR to society have found to have no significant impact on Brand Association.
Brand association, a dimension of Brand image, can be affected by many variables. This study only looked at the impact of degree of assertiveness and CSR perfor-mances of Bangladeshi firms on brand association. The result of the study shows that Bangladeshi managers are, in general, submissive (non-assertive). However, overall assertiveness level, a national value dimension, was found to be moderate. Similar to the findings of prior literature, this research also found that overall CSR practices of the firms are moderate. The results further show that CSR to society has significant positive influence on Brand association. Such results imply that strengthening the relationship with the firms stakeholders through meaningful CSR activities aiming for maximizing stakeholder benefits, effective communication of such activities with the stake-holders, taking CSR actions leaving out current economic benefits and focusing on future ROA and profitability are more likely to associate the stake-holders, a fraction of whom are also the customers, with the brand itself. Moreover, the positive effect is likely to be maximized due to the interaction between high CSR activities and low assertiveness of Bangla-deshi individuals. As far as national wellbeing is concerned, entering into meaningful CSR activities which builds a strong bridge between the stakeholders and the firms will also help the country to build resilience against natural and other disaster and improve the pace of recovery of the victims of natural and other disasters. It is also a goal under the current SDG targets, SDG 13.
The authors are grateful to the respondents for their time and effort to fill out the questionnaires. This research was only possible due to their kind support. The authors also show their gratitude to the reviewers for their valuable suggestions.
The authors report no conflict of interest.
Academic Editor
Dr. Doaa Wafik Nada, Associate Professor, School of Business and Economics, Badr University in Cairo (BUC), Cairo, Egypt.
MIPA AFA, Professional Accountant and DBA candidate,
Institute of Business Administration, University of Dhaka).
Bari MK, Zaman MH, Mahmud AKMG, and Ghosh SK. (2021). Assertiveness, corporate social responsibility and brand association in anti-globalization era, Int. J. Manag. Account. 3(1), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.34104/ijma.021.01019