Hello bloggers!
This week I’m going to talk about another business trend, called “corporate social responsibility”. We can’t deny that social responsibility and corporate social responsibility have become very important for companies these days.
During classes and seminars everybody have seen something about companies who are committed to sustainability, but I wanted to know more about it. So I’ve read a book about CSR: “Good works: Marketing and corporate initiatives that build a better world… and the bottom line” written by a very famous Marketing expert: Philip Kotler (known from the 4 P’s) in cooperation with 2 others (D.Hessekiel & N.R.Lee).
Kottler has written this book to inform managers, students, marketers, etc. about the importance of CRS (Corporate Social Responsibility). Not only the benefits are mentioned, but also the keys to success, the concerns, how you have to deal with critics, how to choose a cause, … . By my opinion every manager who is thinking about his social responsibility has to read this, because this book contains real cases of companies who already implemented CRS and a concrete action plan to implement CRS in your company.
First of all, we can determine that there has been a huge shift of the importance of CRS. Before the 90’s, companies saw CRS as an obligation, Kottler called it “doing good to look good”. With this, he means that companies only supported organizations because they were supposed to and to become in the spotlights. The decisions to support an organization were often influenced by the preferences of the managers, they didn’t really think about the relation between the donations and how it will influence their objectives.
Today, we’ve reached a new approach. Nowadays, we see that managers are really implementing CRS programs related to their business goals, objectives, the market, products,… . Because they’ve realized that they have a responsibility to help change the world. And that’s a good thing because Kottler has done a study about consumer behavior and CRS, and he says that consumers may switch brands to the one that supports social issues. The main reason for this is that consumers wants to move towards the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of Needs and seeking “self-realization”. CRS might be also a requirement to do business with suppliers or B2B consumers.
Kottler talks about “doing well, by doing good”. Because it’s possible to take your social responsibility and make profit at the same time, we can even say that CRS improves the company’s financial results. With this phrase he means that there are several benefits related to CRS. Many investigations has proven that companies who have implemented CRS , have gained financial value, increased their market share, increased their sales, strengthened their brand positioning,… .
In his book, Kottler distinguishes 2 types of social initiatives that can be implemented by companies. Both types, marketing-driven and corporate-driven initiatives, have also 3 subdivisions who each have their own CRS-goals. For every initiative there are given some objectives, benefits and cases of existing companies who have successfully implemented those initiatives (for instance P&G, Coca-cola, Starbucks,…).
This week I’m going to talk about another business trend, called “corporate social responsibility”. We can’t deny that social responsibility and corporate social responsibility have become very important for companies these days.
During classes and seminars everybody have seen something about companies who are committed to sustainability, but I wanted to know more about it. So I’ve read a book about CSR: “Good works: Marketing and corporate initiatives that build a better world… and the bottom line” written by a very famous Marketing expert: Philip Kotler (known from the 4 P’s) in cooperation with 2 others (D.Hessekiel & N.R.Lee).
Kottler has written this book to inform managers, students, marketers, etc. about the importance of CRS (Corporate Social Responsibility). Not only the benefits are mentioned, but also the keys to success, the concerns, how you have to deal with critics, how to choose a cause, … . By my opinion every manager who is thinking about his social responsibility has to read this, because this book contains real cases of companies who already implemented CRS and a concrete action plan to implement CRS in your company.
First of all, we can determine that there has been a huge shift of the importance of CRS. Before the 90’s, companies saw CRS as an obligation, Kottler called it “doing good to look good”. With this, he means that companies only supported organizations because they were supposed to and to become in the spotlights. The decisions to support an organization were often influenced by the preferences of the managers, they didn’t really think about the relation between the donations and how it will influence their objectives.
Today, we’ve reached a new approach. Nowadays, we see that managers are really implementing CRS programs related to their business goals, objectives, the market, products,… . Because they’ve realized that they have a responsibility to help change the world. And that’s a good thing because Kottler has done a study about consumer behavior and CRS, and he says that consumers may switch brands to the one that supports social issues. The main reason for this is that consumers wants to move towards the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of Needs and seeking “self-realization”. CRS might be also a requirement to do business with suppliers or B2B consumers.
Kottler talks about “doing well, by doing good”. Because it’s possible to take your social responsibility and make profit at the same time, we can even say that CRS improves the company’s financial results. With this phrase he means that there are several benefits related to CRS. Many investigations has proven that companies who have implemented CRS , have gained financial value, increased their market share, increased their sales, strengthened their brand positioning,… .
In his book, Kottler distinguishes 2 types of social initiatives that can be implemented by companies. Both types, marketing-driven and corporate-driven initiatives, have also 3 subdivisions who each have their own CRS-goals. For every initiative there are given some objectives, benefits and cases of existing companies who have successfully implemented those initiatives (for instance P&G, Coca-cola, Starbucks,…).
Implementing CRS has also brought an increased ability to attract, motivate (by involving them in those initiatives) and retain employees.
Finally, we can say that a company can’t escape from the fact that CRS has become very important these days and that it has a lot of benefits for the company’s business. It isn’t only important to make ‘”campaign plans” to realize and implement those initiatives but a company has also to measure its outcome (return on investment) from the fact that they are supporting a project. Quoted by Kottler: “What good did we do”? . Trusting on expectations is not enough, we’ve learned that outcomes have to be measured by with the marketing plan.
Unfortunately this was my last post on our blog about trends. Finally I would like to thank you for reading my blogs, and I hope that you’ve learned something!
Grtz Thomas
Finally, we can say that a company can’t escape from the fact that CRS has become very important these days and that it has a lot of benefits for the company’s business. It isn’t only important to make ‘”campaign plans” to realize and implement those initiatives but a company has also to measure its outcome (return on investment) from the fact that they are supporting a project. Quoted by Kottler: “What good did we do”? . Trusting on expectations is not enough, we’ve learned that outcomes have to be measured by with the marketing plan.
Unfortunately this was my last post on our blog about trends. Finally I would like to thank you for reading my blogs, and I hope that you’ve learned something!
Grtz Thomas
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