ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the questions: what drives consumers to talk about corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities? How could CSR activities lead to positive or negative word of mouth (WOM)? How could WOM affect the consequences of corporate social responsibility such as financial returns? Finally, how do WOM components such audience, receiver, content and channel have an impact on propagation of CSR? It provides a background on the importance of interpersonal communication on propagation of both negative and positive CSR. The chapter also provides a brief categorization of CSR activities based on distinct outcomes. It presents a systematic review and synthesis of the CSR literature using a conceptual framework adapted from WOM literature. The systematic review has three main parts. First, the potential drivers of sharing CSR activities are discussed. Second, consequences of CSR activities in terms of WOM are discussed. Third, four components of WOM that could drive dissemination of CSR activities are discussed.
