Consumer influence. A major benefit of engaging in corporate social responsibility efforts is that consumers
regularly check in with their favorite brands to see what they are doing, and they are influenced to make
purchases so they can be part of this community. With the process of posting messages on social networks,
entire movements can take off via the support of loyal consumers.
Promoting Corporate Responsibility with Marketing
After reviewing the benefits of corporate social responsibility and some of the examples provided by popular
companies, it is easy to see how important proper marketing can be to to this effort. As you can see from the
following example of Tom’s One for One™ program, marketing is used as a reminder for consumers that the
company is committed to providing one pair of shoes to a child in an undeveloped nation for every pair
purchased by a consumer.
Marketing is powerful in terms of the consumer market. It has been estimated by the brand marketing news
source Adweek that millennials represent around $2.45 trillion in spending per year. Cone Communications, a
public relations and marketing agency, found that 60 percent more millennials will engage with brands that
discuss and market to social issues. Younger consumers are attracted to brands that authentically market their
products alongside social responsibility campaigns.
However, one should not use corporate social responsibility as a marketing pitch for a company. Consumers
will quickly pick up on this tactic, and it can damage the brand. Nicole Fallon, who contributes to Business News
Daily, reveals, “The motivation behind many companies’ CSR efforts actually provides the very reason that they
shouldn’t take on socially responsible initiatives.” Motivations such as competitive positioning and profitability
are not authentic when it comes to corporate social responsibility.
It is also important to distinguish between corporate social responsibility and social marketing. Often used
interchangeably, there are some key differences. Social marketing attempts to change the attitudes and
behaviors of consumers by using a variety of marketing methods. However, corporate social responsibility is a
sustainable effort that can be measured. Bernard Okhakume, a brand management consultant, advised Daily
Times, “For a corporate social responsibility project to be successful, several factors come into play: the project
needs to be sustainable, its topic and practice abide by ethical standards, sensitive to society’s needs,
embraced and supported by the company’s employees, create the aimed effect on the target audience, and
every year, and the project needs to be evaluated to see how beneficial it is.”
The Financial Impact of the Triple Bottom Line
When examining the value of corporate responsibility, one must understand the concept of the triple bottom
line (TBL), which essentially measures the sustainability of an organization’s social responsibility efforts. The
term includes three dimensions of a giving business—profits, people, and the planet. Without one of these
factors, there cannot be a balance. According to economist Andrew Savitz, the triple bottom line “captures the
essence of sustainability by measuring the impact of an organization’s activities on the world ... including both
its profitability and shareholder values and its social, human and environmental capital.”
The challenge with the TBL model is that while profits can be measured in dollars, and people can be
measured in numbers, it can be difficult to measure the impact of social responsibility. Some argue that this
task is dependent upon what is being measured. For example, if one is saving the rainforest, a reasonable unit
of measurement could be acreage. Progress toward protecting this resource could be recorded as how many
fewer acres have been forested and how many native (people) communities have been saved as a result of the
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Chapter 3 Business Ethics and Social Responsibility
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