This study aims to examine how corporate social responsibility (CSR) spillovers unfold in the retail industry by theorizing the process through which CSR signals extend beyond a focal firm and associate with heterogeneous responses among consumers, competitors and suppliers. The authors focus on how diffused CSR information becomes a comparative benchmark that reshapes category expectations and associates with different strategic response pathways among non-CSR competitors.
This study adopts an in-depth case analysis of Donglai, a prominent retailer in China. Data were collected through netnography, onsite interviews and onsite observations with diverse stakeholders in Xuchang who transmit and interpret CSR-related signals. Thematic analysis was used to uncover patterns of stakeholder reactions and interfirm dynamics.
This study identifies a two-stage spillover process. In the first stage, CSR signals diffuse through multiple stakeholder carriers and channels, creating shared awareness and heightened expectations. In the second stage, stakeholders convert this diffused information into comparative benchmarks that shift legitimacy thresholds and generate asymmetric evaluations. We show that competitors’ responses vary systematically as a function of interpreted benchmark pressure (e.g. visibility and perceived comparability) and response capacity (e.g. resource slack and implementation capabilities), producing pathways that range from proactive substantive imitation to reactive symbolic compliance. These dynamics contribute to evolving category norms and reshape how consumers evaluate peer firms.
This study offers a process account that theorizes how diffused CSR information may become consequential when stakeholders interpret it as a comparative benchmark formation and how actor heterogeneity can be explained through a pressure-by-capacity framework. This study also highlights non-CSR competitors as strategic actors whose differentiated responses shape the trajectory of CSR expectations at the industry level.
