Relationships and impacts of perceived CSR, service quality, customer satisfaction and consumer rights awareness Kamarudeen Babatunde Bello, Ahmad Jusoh and Khalil Md Nor Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is threefold: first, to examine the effects of perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) on service quality, satisfaction and repurchase intention; second, to investigate the mediating (unique and serial) effects of service quality and satisfaction; and third, to determine the moderating effects of consumer rights awareness (CRA) on the relationship between perceived CSR and consumer responses. Design/methodology/approach – Survey data was collected from a sample of 604 customers of the 4 major mobile telecommunications companies in Nigeria. The partial least squares structural equation modeling approach was used to test the hypothesized model. Findings – Research findings indicate that perceived CSR has direct and positive effects on service quality, satisfaction and repurchase intention. Also, service quality and satisfaction mediates (uniquely and in sequence) the effect of perceived CSR on repurchase intention. In addition, CRA moderates perceived CSR’s effect on service quality perceptions and repurchase intention. Practical implications – The findings confirm the complementary relationships between CSR, service quality and satisfaction in influencing consumers’ repurchase intention. Managers should imbibe CSR as an intangible attribute that complements high-quality services, leading to enhanced customer satisfaction and repurchase intentions. The findings also suggest that CRA enhances perceived CSR’s effect on service quality perceptions and repurchase intentions. Thus, managers should take proactive steps to inform consumers of their rights, and also show efforts at protecting the same. Originality/value – This study has overcome the limitation observed in previous studies by testing the sequential mediating effects of service quality and customer satisfaction in the perceived CSR–consumer response relationships. Also, this study represents a pioneering effort at empirically confirming the role of CRA in enhancing perceived CSR’s influence on consumer responses. In addition, the findings also provide insights on the impact of CSR on consumer behavior from a developing country’s perspective. Keywords Corporate social responsibility, Service quality, Satisfaction, Repurchase intention, Consumer rights awareness Paper type Research paper 1. Introduction Expectations of positive attitudinal and behavioral responses toward companies considered as socially responsible have inspired academic research interests among management and marketing scholars. Conclusions emanating from most studies have, however, been equivocal, inconclusive and sometimes controversial regarding the nature and extent to which perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) directly influences consumer responses (Al Jarah and Emeagwali, 2017; Gu ¨ rlek et al., 2017; He and Li, 2011). Several studies have affirmed the positive impacts of perceived CSR on consumer responses, Kamarudeen Babatunde Bello is based at the Department of Management Technology, Modibbo Adama University of Technology, Yola, Nigeria. Ahmad Jusoh and Khalil Md Nor are both based at the Azman Hashim International Business School, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru, Malaysia. Received 14 January 2020 Revised 27 May 2020 Accepted 26 June 2020 DOI 10.1108/SRJ-01-2020-0010 © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 1747-1117 j SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY JOURNAL j