Brand Engagement in Hotel Industry: The Role of Corporate Social Responsibility, Brand Trust, and Brand Identification

Today, brand engagement is considered one of the most influential marketing strategies. Brand engagement creates a sustainable competitive advantage for companies and increases their performance. Therefore, companies seek appropriate strategies to improve customer engagement with their brands. This research aimed to investigate the effect of corporate social responsibility on brand engagement regarding the mediating role of brand trust and brand identification in the hotel industry.

Brand engagement is considered a crucial strategy in marketing literature. Various research has been done on brand engagement, but little has been done about the effects of corporate social responsibility, brand trust, and brand identification on brand engagement. Also, little research has investigated the role of brand trust and identification in the relationship between corporate social responsibility and brand engagement. Previous research has examined the direct relationship between corporate social responsibility and brand engagement and has rarely examined mediating variables in the relationship between these two variables. Therefore, this research seeks to investigate the effect of social responsibility on brand engagement with the mediating role of brand trust and identification in hotels in Ramsar, one of the most vital Iranian tourism destinations. This research tries to answer this research gap and provide a comprehensive model in this field.

This study is applied cross-sectional research concerning the purpose and a descriptive survey regarding the data collection method. The population of this research includes the customers of Ramsar hotels, 300 of whom were selected as the statistical sample. The questionnaire's content, convergence, and divergence validity were confirmed. Also, its reliability was confirmed using Cronbach's alpha coefficient and composite reliability. In the descriptive part, SPSS 27 statistical software was exploited, and in the inferential part, structural equation modeling was conducted in SmartPLS 4 software to test the research hypotheses.

According to the research findings, corporate social responsibility has a positive effect on brand engagement, brand trust, and brand identification. Corporate social responsibility creates an emotional connection between the company and consumers. As a result, consumers feel like they are part of the company. Companies should have social responsibility strategies to build trust among consumers. If the organization participates in social responsibility activities, its identity and high values will be shown to customers. Brand trust positively affects brand engagement and mediates the relationship between corporate social responsibility and brand engagement. The company's reliability makes the customers provide better information and have more relationships with the company. Additionally, brand identification positively affects brand engagement and mediates the relationship between corporate social responsibility and brand engagement. Companies should differentiate their products and services from their competitors so that customers will identify with the organization's brand.

Companies should strengthen social responsibility, brand trust, and brand identification to increase customer engagement with their brand. As a result, it is suggested that hotels observe their organizational social responsibility, give importance to environmental issues in their activities, support cultural and sports events, provide more job opportunities to people, put customers as their priority, fulfill their promises, produce high-quality products, take care of their customers and establish an emotional relationship with customers so that they identify themselves with the hotel. Also, hotels should perform their activities so that customers feel the hotel has the same identity as their identity.