“Corporate social responsibility, electronic word-of-mouth and customer loyalty in Vietnam’s banking sector”

This research explored and examined the link between electronic word-of-mouth, cor- porate social responsibility, and loyalty of 282 customers using banking services in Vietnam (PLS-SEM) through the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling. The data were gathered using convenience sampling, with a sample of 282 customers who used banking services in Vietnam and interacted with the bank through social media. The survey is intended to include 16 questions separated into two parts: the first part contains 5 demographic questions, and the second part contains 11 questions divided into three sets of factors: corporate social responsibility, electronic word-of-mouth, and loyalty. The survey was emailed to customers using banking services and interacting with banks via social media in Vietnam. According to the findings of the empirical study, there is a direct and indirect link between corporate social responsibility, electronic word- of-mouth, and customer loyalty in Vietnam’s banking sector. The results of empirical research in Vietnam’s banking industry indicate that corporate social responsibility has direct and positive impact on customer loyalty; corporate social responsibility has a direct and positive impact on customer’s word-of-mouth; electronic word-of-mouth has a direct and positive impact on customer loyalty; and finally, corporate social responsibility has an indirect impact on customer loyalty through customer’s electronic word-of-mouth.

The survey was emailed to customers using banking services and interacting with banks via social media in Vietnam. According to the findings of the empirical study, there is a direct and indirect link between corporate social responsibility, electronic wordof-mouth, and customer loyalty in Vietnam's banking sector. The results of empirical research in Vietnam's banking industry indicate that corporate social responsibility has direct and positive impact on customer loyalty; corporate social responsibility has a direct and positive impact on customer's word-of-mouth; electronic word-of-mouth has a direct and positive impact on customer loyalty; and finally, corporate social responsibility has an indirect impact on customer loyalty through customer's electronic word-of-mouth.

Nguyen Minh Sang (Vietnam)
Corporate social responsibility, electronic word-of-mouth and customer loyalty in Vietnam's banking sector

INTRODUCTION
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is defined as a company's commitment to long-term economic development by adhering to corporate principles, thus enhancing the quality of life for employees and their families, as well as the local community and society. With the development of science and technology, customers' comments and reviews about products and services on the Internet are becoming increasingly pervasive and influential to businesses. In particular, through electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), customers' reviews via social media now have become the norm, strongly influencing the customer community in making decisions to use products and services. Therefore, CSR has a strong impact on the bank's brand image as well as customer loyalty. eWOM shows how interactions take place through online channels and have a significant impact on customers' attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Customers are more likely to share their evaluations or remarks when they are concerned about others or want to boost their

LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESES DEVELOPMENT
At first, the concept of CSR was associated only with economic aspects and was understood as a company's commitment to value maximization for shareholders. Zenisek (1979) assumes that CSR is simply a company's compliance with business rules in order to achieve a legitimate profit. However, these approaches to CSR are rather narrow, as they are limited to specific aspects of the concept and do not consider multidimensional nature (Maignan & Ferrell, 2004 CSR is an organization's responsibility to society; this society includes the internal and external parties of the organization in which it exists and operates. CSR in an organization includes the following aspects: create profits for the company and shareholders, owners must create jobs, full wag-es and benefits for employees, pay taxes, comply with the law, volunteer, protect the environment, pay the right contract for the partner, choose only the partners who perform CSR. Since the beginning of human society, word-ofmouth (WOM) has been regarded as one of the most influential means of transferring information. WOM is one of the oldest forms of marketing and one of the most important sources of information for customers making purchasing decisions. WOM is described by Arndt (1967) as direct person-to-person contact regarding any product or firm that is not commercial. Westbrook (1987) defined WOM more generally, including all informal customer-directed communications regarding the ownership, use, or characteristics of particular goods or services or of the seller. WOM is described by Harrison-Walker (2001) as informal face-to-face interaction about a brand, product, service, or institution between a non-commercial communicator and receiver.
In the past, customers relied on WOM from family and friends to gather information, but today they seek online reviews (eWOM) about products or services information (Nieto et al., 2014) that influence their choice of brands, products or services (Goldsmith & Horowitz, 2006). eWOM appeared with the development of the Internet, spreading quickly and widely, affecting a customer's purchase decisions and loyalty to products and services (Pourabedin & Melissa, 2015). Customers can access particular information and product-related discussions from other customers using search engines and social networks on the Internet. Customers can submit product comments and reviews on many platforms such as forums, websites, social networks, etc. These actions have created a diverse WOM community. To enhance competition among businesses, administrators invest in marketing activities to build brand image. Taking advantage of the Internet's rapid development, eWOM is one of the most effective, fast, and cost-efficient forms of communication that can meet the marketing needs of every business.
Hennig-Thurau et al. (2004) defined eWOM as any positive or negative comment made by current or former potential customers for the product or firm that is publicly available for reference over the Internet to a large number of customers and organizations. Litvin et al. (2008) described eWOM as "any informal customer conversations via Internet technology addressing the usage or qualities of specific goods and services or the seller, including information exchange between the producer and the customer." According to Goldsmith and Horowitz (2006), customers may discuss product-related experiences via email, newsletters, chat sessions, forums, fan sites, brands, and customer groups on the Internet. The concept of loyalty is given from the point of view of behavioral loyalty and attitudinal loyalty. For behavioral loyalty, loyalty is expressed as the number of repurchases made by a customer over a period of time. Behavioral loyalty occurs when a favorable judgment of the firm is made and an emotional connection develops between the customer and the institution, resulting in actual loyalty or, at least, prospective loyalty.
O'Malley (1998) gives a clear concept of loyalty when customers continuously believe that the organization's product/service is the best choice. It is suitable for the values they desire. They choose that product/service whenever faced with a consumption decision. Customer loyalty is the tendency of attitudes and behaviors toward a brand that is preferred over all other brands, whether it is because of customer satisfaction or service, convenience or operation, or merely the friendliness or pleasure of the label, from the standpoint of business benefits. Compared to similar brands, customer loyalty encourages individuals to buy more in the long run, spend more of their money, and have a terrific shopping experience, which helps attract customers in a competitive market.
Oliver (1999) described loyalty as a profound rebuy or re-visit of a chosen product or service in the future, allowing recurring purchases of the same brand or re-ordering of the same order, despite contextual pressures and marketing attempts.
Companies participate in CSR for several reasons, including improving eWOM. Customers who are engaged in CSR are more likely to discuss the company's socially responsible initiatives with their friends, family, and coworkers (Bhattacharya & Sen, 2004). As a result, corporate involvement in CSR contributes to the development of a socially responsible image. When compared to traditional WOM, eWOM on social media offers several benefits for this purpose due to the rapid and spontaneous sharing of information. eWOM on social media may also be used to develop company values and CSR activities (Fieseler & Fleck, 2013). This is important in analyzing the effect of CSR contact on eWOM in online hangouts.
The quality and quantity of data provided to customers have increased significantly with the introduction of social networking sites, making it more reasonable for customers to make various buying decisions for different products and services based on the actual experiences of other customers on these social networking sites.
Firms' participation in CSR via social media creates more favorable conditions for customers to review companies and engage in dialogues with others, perhaps leading to positive eWOM. Individuals may collaborate and co-create on social networking sites, and businesses can interact with their customers, establish relationships, and trust them in a variety of ways. This sort of partnership is more powerful and long-lasting (Bhattacharya & Sen, 2004). Customers' loyalty to a company mediates the association between a firm's amount of CSR contact and favorable eW-OM on social media.
Another relationship that has also received much attention and research recently is the positive influence of CSR on customer loyalty ( H3: Bank eWOM through social media has a positive effect on customer loyalty.
H4: In the banking sector, eWOM mediates and has a positive effect on the interaction between CSR and customer loyalty.

METHODS AND DATA
The research data were collected in Vietnam in July-August 2021 via online questionnaires addressed to banking customers and contacts with banks on social media. The data were validated before analysis to guarantee the legitimacy of the replies, and the variables were encoded. The research was completed by 293 customers; however, 11 invalid replies were received owing to missing or erroneous information, resulting in a total of 282 usable answers in the final dataset. The final dataset has 282 legitimate replies after improper answers are removed.
To test the model and study hypotheses, quantitative research is conducted. PLS-SEM was applied in this research, since it is extensively used in current research and has certain advantages over other approaches (Hair et Table 2 provides extensive descriptive data on the mean, standard deviation, kurtosis, and skewness of three variables: (i) CSR; (ii) eWOM; and (iii) Customer loyalty.  Table 3   The bootstrapping approach with re-sampling of 500 datasets (n = 500) was used to assess the model's dependability. The results of the bootstrap test reveal that the coefficients are all non-zero, and the original weights are significant with the bootstrapping weighted average, since all weights are inside the 99 percent confidence range. As a result, the model's estimations can be considered credible. The research's hypothesis testing results in Table 4 reveal that data support hypotheses H1, H2, H3, and H4.

DISCUSSION
According to the research findings in Table 4, there is a relationship between eWOM, CSR, and customer loyalty in the Vietnamese banking sector.
First and foremost, CSR is a crucial aspect that has a direct, positive, and consistent influence on customer loyalty in the Vietnamese banking sector. When banks actively participate in activities that  Secondly, the research results also showed that CSR is also a factor that has a direct and same impact on eWOM. This result confirmed the same relationship between CSR and eWOM with the empirical data set of customers in the banking sector in Vietnam. When banks actively engage in CSR activities and promote on social media, they will be responded and appreciated by positive eWOM from customers about the bank's brand. This result is quite similar to previous research of Bhattacharya and Sen (2004) Thirdly, the results of hypothesis testing in Table  4

CONCLUSIONS
CSR is understood as the commitment of businesses to sustainable economic development through compliance with business ethics, thereby improving the quality of life for employees and their families as well as the local community and society. With the development of science and technology, customers' comments and reviews about products and services on the Internet are becoming increasingly pervasive and influential to businesses. Especially, through eWOM, customers' reviews shared on social media now have become the norm, strongly influencing the customer community in making decisions to use certain products and services. Therefore, CSR has a strong impact on a bank's brand image as well as customer loyalty.
The research has achieved the stated research objective when providing more experimental scientific evidence on the interplay between the factors (i) eWOM; (ii) CSR; and (iii) LOYALTY of customers in the banking sector in Vietnam. The research results are of reference value to help bank administrators assess the effectiveness of CSR promoting activities on banking media as well as eWOM to customer loyalty. Based on the research results, bank administrators can implement solutions and strategies to help increase customer loyalty to the bank through the implementation of CSR and advertising strategies on the social media platform. The research is useful in providing detailed information to bank administrators in Vietnam to help improve customer loyalty through CSR communication via social media. The research also provided empirical evidence on the impacts of eWOM, CSR, customer loyalty on social media in the banking sector in a developing economy country like Vietnam.
Although certain achievements, as well as the stated objectives are archived, the research still has certain limitations such as: (i) The survey sample size was only 282 customers and mainly concentrated in Ho Chi Minh City, so it is not representative of all customers in the banking sector in Vietnam; (ii) The convenience sampling has many limitations that affect the accuracy of the research results; and (iii) The research model has only three main groups of variables, the influence of which on other groups of factors was not taken into account.