The Bittersweet Truth: Corporate Social Responsibility in Online Communication Between a Coffee Company and its Customers

ABSTRACT With the increased use of the internet, social networks have acted as a relationship channel between consumers and companies. This paper aims to analyze the communication between an organization and its customers in a Brazilian online community, based on corporate social responsibility (CSR) criteria VBA model, which is composed of the elements of value, balance, and accountability. Netnography was applied to the Facebook fan page of a company brand that manufactures and sells coffee machines and capsules. The results demonstrated that the elements of the VBA model do not meet the expected criteria in the social network analyzed, showing a discrepancy between what the organization intends to deliver and what is delivered to customers. These findings have implications for the theory and practice of organizations, broadening the discussion about CSR practices and consumer behavior. It also highlighted the need to investigate deeply the constructs that built the VBA Model contributing to develop the field.摘要：随着互联网应用的日益普及，社交网络已成为消费者与企业之间的沟通渠道。本文旨在基于由价值、均衡与问责三大要素构成的企业社会责任（Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR）VBA模型，对巴西某在线社区中组织与客户间的沟通行为展开分析。研究采用网络民族志（Netnography）方法，针对某制造并销售咖啡机及咖啡胶囊的品牌的Facebook粉丝专页进行研究。结果显示，在所分析的社交网络场景中，VBA模型的三大要素未达到预设标准，反映出组织的预期交付内容与实际向客户提供的内容之间存在偏差。本研究发现对组织的理论研究与实践均具有启示意义，拓展了关于企业社会责任实践与消费者行为的讨论范畴，同时也凸显了深入探究构建VBA模型的理论架构以推动该领域发展的必要性。