The Market Value of Corporate Social Responsibility - Case Study Example

The paper 'The Market Value of Corporate Social Responsibility' is a great example of a Management Case Study. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has turned out to be a significant concept among stakeholders in the world of business. In essence, companies all over the world are getting involved in activities that go beyond providing goods and services to the market. Such companies aspire to be seen as firms that are concerned about the welfare of their stakeholders and not organizations that are merely concerned about making profits. This state of affairs is evident in the literature on marketing (Sen& Bhattacharya 2001; Maignan, Ferrell & Ferrell 2005; Kotler & Lee 2005). Today, many companies are involved in different activities that may or may not be directly related to the main services or goods that the companies offer to the market. As well, the focus of the various CSR initiatives is not just the target customers of the companies that are involved, but the wider community, whose members may be directly or not directly impacted by the companies’ activities.

A number of studies have been done on CSR with respect to marketing and other aspects. Examples include social responsibility among marketing personnel (Singhapakdi 1999), CSR activities, and corporate Identity as well as purchase intention (David, Kline & Dai 2005). It has also been argued that firms are expected to be involved in some kind of CSR (Rundle-Thiele, Ball & Gillespie 2008) and that CSR plays a critical role in consumers’ sense of wellbeing (Bhattacharya & Sen 2004). It has also been argued that CSR activities provide numerous benefits to businesses in terms of the businesses’ positive relations with consumers, increasing purchase intentions, favorable word-of-mouth information, increased ability to deal with negative or unfavorable information, and willingness by some consumers to pay higher prices for products (Brown & Dacin 1997; Laroche, Bergeron &Barbaro-Forleo2001; Mohr & Webb 2005; Hoeffler & Keller 2002; Peloza 2006). What comes out from the various aforementioned sources of literature is that CSR has some market value. However, it has also been suggested that how consumers respond to CSR depends on how the CSR activities are manifested (Green & Peloza 2011, p. 48). This implies that CSR initiatives may have market value or fail to do so depending on types of activities and how they are implemented.