The Mediating Effect of Trust Toward Brand Social Responsibility and Brand Loyalty Relationship

Social responsibility program has become a growing element in the corporate marketing world. It is one of the wider strategies to develop and protect firm's reputation at the same time improve financial performance. However, lack of studies in the five-star hotel segment has prompted a call for research in this area. It is surprising to note that a few companies taking advantage of social responsibility not because on the ethical values but more on brand presence. Therefore, the aim of this study is to develop and test brand social responsibility scales against trust and behavioral brand loyalty in the five-star hotel segment. Purposive sampling is deployed for quantifying sample for the five-star hotel guest. 446 responds were gathered during the three-month data collection. Results indicated that brand social responsibility has a positive and significant effect toward trust but insignificant toward behavioral brand loyalty. In addition, trust has a mediating effect toward brand social responsibility and behavioral brand loyalty. Future studies should inject additional outcome variables for comprehensive framework or use other industry to ensure consistency of the research model.