Corporate Social Responsibility Efforts Must Be Managed Carefully
A recent study by two marketing professors suggests that non-profits that lend their name to corporate social responsibility efforts must do so carefully or risk putting their own brand in peril.
“Our results suggest that some CSR initiatives may produce consumer inferences that are wrong but desirable for the company,” says Stacy Landreth Grau, associate professor of marketing in the Neeley School of Business at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. “And these inferences can have potentially negative consequences for the nonprofit.”
“Explicit Donations and Inferred Endorsements: Do Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives Suggest a Nonprofit Organization Endorsement?,” by Amanda B. Bower, a marketing professor at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, and Stacy Landreth Grau of TCU, appears in the Fall 2009 issue of the Journal of Advertising.
It’s now obvious why businesses seek such arrangements but also equally obvious why such arrangements should be carefully structured and managed to prevent consumer confusion.
Good reasons to tread carefully. Thanks for sharing.
Comment by John Howard — November 19, 2009 @ 8:50 am
It seems to me this is a matter of analyzing the risk/return tradeoff on behalf of the non-profit, above and beyond any monetary consideration. The risk for coporations is low; a relationship with a non-profit that goes sour can be easily severed. But a non-profit that attaches itself to what turns out to be a bad corporate player — that could mean the end of the organization.
Could you imagine the fallout of, say, a non-profit providing home heating assistance to the poor who had partnered with Enron?
Comment by Norvell — November 19, 2009 @ 11:25 am