We all must have come across this buzz-word ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ somewhere or must have studied/implemented in our life/organization. AIrcel’s ‘Save our Tigers’, ITC’s ‘e-choupal’, Idea Cellular’s innovative ways to educate, save trees, etc. are few examples of CSR in India.
Let me refresh what CSR means. According to CSRnetwork:
“Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is about how businesses align their values and behaviour with the expectations and needs of stakeholders - not just customers and investors, but also employees, suppliers, communities, regulators, special interest groups and society as a whole.”
As far as I have understood, CSR should help the organization to strengthen their brand. There are many corporate who take up CSR activities, but how many of these activities help in brand-building? What is that an organization should do/not do while implementing the CSR activities? When, how, should a company take up CSR initiative? These are the questions a strategic manager should answer. An effective market research would certainly help the manager to take such decisions.
There are many MR companies which conducts consumer and business to business research to quantify the benefits of CSR activities. Let me through some light on how these MR companies can help organization develop, design and implement CSR activities?
The market research companies help the corporate to analyze the options for CSR activities in areas like environment, social, political, etc. They also help to align these activities with the vision/mission of the company. It is important to check the implication on the brand-equity. For that the MR companies collects data (primary/secondary) while recommending the type of CSR activity.
To understand the types of approach adopted by companies for their CSR activities one should go through the article ‘Three strategies for integrating CSR with brand marketing’. According to that article by KRISTIANE HANSTED BLOMQVIST AND STEVEN POSNER, the approach towards the CSR should be linked to assessment of purchase drivers and the business strategy. They have proposed three kinds of relationship between Business, CSR and Brand. Following figure demonstrates the three approaches:
They have named the three strategies as ‘The Integrated approach’, ‘The selective approach’ and ‘The invisible approach’.
Click here to read the article.
Using this approach we can classify mostly all the CSR activities being implemented in India. It also helps us to measure the extent of branding and the business a company did using such activities. This methodology has a scope to be developed further, which could measure the brand recall, brand equity, marketing impact, etc.
Let me do further research and come back again…till then Happy Reading
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