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.