Valuing the use of Corporate Social Responsibility in Australian food industry

Abstract

Since the last decade, there has been a growing interest in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) from stakeholders including customers and producers. The high exposure and reports of corporate abuse, thanks to the media’s far reach, has made consumers realize the impacts businesses have on society and on the world. Some multinational well known brands such as Shell, Nike or McDonald’s have already experienced the consequences of their unethical behaviour, leading to consumer discontent, boycotts, NGO reports, trials and increased media coverage of their actions. As our world becomes increasingly interconnected and globalized the social and environmental business challenges have grown as well as the public’s concern about society and business relationship; consequently consumers’ are acting out and challenging unethical businesses. This results in further external pressures from NGOs and governments regulations. The increased exposure of corporate abuse combined with stakeholders’ growing awareness of the importance of CSR has forced management teams to shift towards responsible corporate practices. As a result, having a pro social/environmental agenda is becoming more important for businesses. It seems that at this day and age, long-term profit maximisation is not the only success factor for businesses considering they are expected to fulfil their moral obligation to society.

CSR is a broad concept, there is no consensus on a common definition, and the debate about CSR’s effectiveness in terms of reputation, financial performance and marketing capability continues on, as these assumptions have not been fully tested yet. It is therefore interesting to research this particularly recent subject of interest in the Australian market. According to the Australian Business purpose Study, Australians are highly apprehensive about corporate behaviour, ranking it as one of the top areas of concern amongst Australians , surprisingly before homelessness and human right issues. Consequently, we expect to notice a high CSR activity in the Australian market.

This research establishes an attempt at looking into CSR from a marketing and financial perspective in order to understand if CSR can be a positive tool for an industry. In this paper, the general concept of CSR will be defined, and its application in the Australian market will be examined. Furthermore, the analyses of this research will focus on the roles CSR plays in the food industry, examining what CSR aspects each company focus on, (this includes charities, local community support, environmental efforts…), detailing examples of 3 Australian food companies that have shifted their approach towards CSR. The data gathered will be analysed to better understand the ways each company implements CSR in to their marketing display and their business profitability to illustrate the implications and values CSR has for some industries and to disentangle different aspects that are usually mixed together in advertising and in marketing studies (as organic production and fair trade, and so on).

I will analyse companies supplying different products and different implementation of CSR in order to have an overall view of the Australian food industry.