HR4RS stamp
Raul Garcia Hemonnet
The objective of the researchers' presentation was to relate social responsibility policies to mental health. Anxiety problems have increased in the West, especially after the pandemic. The professor of Marketing and Market Research, Alicia Blanco; the professor of Finance, Camilo Prado and the professor of Marketing, Gabriel Cachón together with the professor of Business Organization at the UCLM, Felipe Hernández Perlines. The authors are members of the Organizational Legitimacy Observatory (Blanquerna – Universitat Ramón Llull), an Observatory that brings together the most relevant researchers on organizational legitimacy at a national and international level.
The work has been awarded at the XVI Aciek Conference, sponsored by the University of Seville, in which more than 800 international researchers have presented their research in the field of Business Economics. The award received recognizes the research work of the professors hand in hand with one of the most prestigious publishers at an international level: Elsevier.
The jury of the Congress that has awarded the work of the URJC researchers has especially valued linking a social problem such as mental health with purchasing behavior and relating it to concepts such as organizational legitimacy and social responsibility.
As Professor Alicia Blanco points out, “with the pandemic, mental health problems that until then were taboo in countries like Spain have emerged. There was and there is a problem with anxiety whose approach is also the responsibility of companies”. The authors have analyzed how this anxiety modifies the perception of consumers about the social responsibility policies carried out by companies, and how it also influences the legitimacy of companies and the intention of consumers to continue buying.
To do this, they have analyzed the behavior of more than 1.200 supermarket consumers in the 5 largest Spanish cities. Because, as Alicia Blanco points out, "what you experience when shopping in a supermarket" is not the same, which involves interactions and displacements, "as what online shopping means".
After this collection of information and through the application of statistical techniques, they concluded that customers with anxiety form a new segment that must be attended by companies. They also concluded that we must pay attention to mental health that constitutes the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG3) since, as Alicia Blanco indicates, "companies must also be responsible."
Therefore, they must develop business policies in accordance with market trends and changes that have led to the need to incorporate variables of a psychological nature in purchasing behavior models.
If companies take into account the impact of anxiety on behavior, they will manage it, for example, through training their employees, managing queues at cash registers or the volume of music. This will make consumers "feel safer and they won't be so afraid to leave their house to buy," says Professor Blanco.