CSR
As mentioned earlier in the Ethical Consumerism Report in 2012, businesses have already started using their environmental practices as marketing tools (BusinessGreen 2017). Businesses are expected to be sustainable and ethical (McPherson 2016). The next generation of consumers will be even more aware of social responsibility and the environmental issues we are facing. Subsequently, marketers need to take this trend into consideration when making their strategies, as well as use the environmental credentials they have (BusinessGreen 2017). The number of consumers that said that they would pay more for a sustainable brand is steadily growing (Nielsen 2015), this makes it clear to marketers that they should take advantage of this awareness of CSR while planning their marketing strategy.
The survey we conducted shows the lack of knowledge about CSR initiatives that the sample population have concerning the companies they had bought their laptops from. Our research has shown that the organizations we looked at (for example Apple & Dell) do many CSR activities, but it is not being communicated well to the consumers. This shows a gap in marketing strategies within technology companies that needs to be fulfilled in the near future, in order to keep up with the current trends as the survey showed that only 23% of the people taking part felt informed of the social corporate responsibility acts in technology companies and only 49% even knew that these companies have CSR policies. It is clear to say there is currently a lack of marketing in the field in question.
For example, in a research into the CSR activities of, Procter & Gamble, General Mills and Timberland, it was found that the stakeholders had a very limited, if any, idea of the CSR initiatives. This is found to be the case with many technology companies according to our research. Therefore the company’s motivations for engaging with them were often questioned. Through the non-direct approach, these companies have been able to get improvement in corporate responsibility returns, such as employee and customer loyalty (Bhattacharya 2009).
Reputation institute ranked the most socially responsible companies of 2015 by looking at their environmental, social, workplace and regulatory records in 15 global markets. The two best scoring technology companies in the ranking were Alphabet Inc. and Microsoft (Sun 2015). Alphabet Inc., formerly known as Google Inc., ranked as number one, the second time in a row, due to their disaster response initiatives, increasing workforce diversity and environmental protection as well as their plan to expand internet access globally. Alphabet Ink. fulfils its philanthropic responsibilities by hosting GoogleServe, an event in which employees are invited to take part in volunteer work for community organizations. Alphabet Ink., also has a well known mantra: “do the right thing”, is part of their Code Of Conduct for Employees (Sun 2015). In addition, the company has invested in many renewable projects around the world (Deutsch 2016). Observing Google Ins.’s, which is now owned by Alphabet Inc., Facebook page, it became clear that they have not been concentrating on marketing their CSR activities (Facebook 2017) there. However, their Instagram page is covered with nature-themed posts, which signifies sustainability and their interest in the sustainability of the environment. Their workforce diversity is also clearly being shown on the site (Instagram 2017). In addition, they have a Corporate Social Responsibility – page, where they state their mission, which clearly is targeted towards being environmentally friendly (Maddi 2014).
In conclusion, even though technology companies are starting to understand the value of CSR, it is important that these CSR communications are translated into real changes in corporate behaviour and as well as marketed to consumers (Cohen 2012).
The technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) sector is one of the best performing sectors in terms of the number of companies that report on corporate responsibility (KPMG 2015), but it does not seem to be communicated to the consumers. Businesses are focused too much on directly relating business values to CSR activities instead of figuring out where and how stakeholders would best like to be communicated about CSR initiatives. To be able to understand how stakeholders would like to be communicated to, marketing teams are able to use research techniques (like focus groups) to understand the psychological needs that CSR can fulfil to stakeholders (for example self-esteem from purchasing a socially responsible company) and then figuring out which of the ideas are valuable and commercially viable. Feedback received from the research can give information about how consumers connect more favourably with a given brand. This will be a good tool for competitive differentiation, which will improve the company’s image and business values as well strengthening the brand identity (Bhattacharya 2009).