Reading: Social Responsibility in the Marketing Strategy
Reading: Social Responsibility in the Marketing Strategy
You’ll recall that we defined corporate social responsibility as the ethical behaviour of a company toward society. It means acting responsibly toward the stakeholders—not just the shareholders—who have a legitimate interest in the business. Let’s focus on how marketers use corporate social responsibility to achieve marketing objectives.
First, let’s return for a moment to the marketing planning process. Where does social responsibility fit in? It generally comes into the planning process in one of two ways:
- Social responsibility may be a corporate-level strategy with specific objectives.
- Social responsibility may be part of the marketing mix based on the situation analysis
Let’s look at both of these approaches.
Corporate Strategy at Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola’s mission is:
- To refresh the world . . .
- To inspire moments of optimism and happiness . . .
- To create value and make a difference.
In support of the vision, the company has created what it calls a “roadmap” that defines the focus areas for company strategies and tactics. These include:
- People: Be a great place to work where people are inspired to be the best they can be.
- Portfolio: Bring to the world a portfolio of quality beverage brands that anticipate and satisfy people’s desires and needs.
- Partners: Nurture a winning network of customers and suppliers, together we create mutual, enduring value.
- Planet: Be a responsible citizen that makes a difference by helping build and support sustainable communities.
- Profit: Maximize long-term return to shareowners while being mindful of our overall responsibilities.
- Productivity: Be a highly effective, lean, and fast-moving organization.[1]
Which of the roadmap areas focus on social responsibility? “Planet” is clearly a social responsibility focus, as it acknowledges a responsibility to improve the world beyond the sale of Coca-Cola’s products. “People” also suggests a note of social responsibility; Coca-Cola strives to be a place where employees are not only doing a good job for the company but are inspired to be their best as people.
Marketing Strategies to Address Childhood Obesity
Coca-Cola doesn’t specifically call out customer health in its roadmap, but that concern has become a significant component of its marketing strategy, and the company has developed a specific set of marketing programs to address childhood obesity. Childhood obesity is a challenging issue for the company. If you were to conduct a SWOT analysis of Coca-Cola, you could imagine that this issue would appear under “external threats” and have a negative impact on its market. In most K–12 schools in the Canada, since 2004 the sale of soft drinks has been steadily eliminated.[2] Rather than wait to find out how this trend might play out, marketing decided to take a proactive role. In 2013, Coca-Cola announced its four global well-being commitments to help fight obesity, each of which has a direct impact on