Companies, Meet Ethical Consumers: Strategic CSR Management to Impact Consumer Choice
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Companies, Meet Ethical Consumers: Strategic CSR Management to Impact Consumer Choice Henri Kuokkanen1 · William Sun2 Received: 30 October 2018 / Accepted: 11 March 2019 © Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract Fulfilling consumer expectations of corporate social responsibility (CSR) can bring strategic advantage to firms. However, research on the topic is fragmented across disparate disciplines, and a comprehensive framework to connect CSR supply and demand is missing. As a result, firms often supply CSR that does not attract demand, as signified by pessimism about ethical consumerism in recent years and the inconclusive link between corporate financial and social performance. In this study, we propose a framework of strategic CSR management to define how a company’s supply of CSR could meet consumer demand for ethical products by aligning managerial and consumer perspectives. We then investigate empirically whether such a strategic approach, which integrates potential demand in CSR management, would influence consumer choice of products with CSR components. Our hybrid choice modeling allows the inclusion of psychological biases caused by social desirability and cynicism to increase result validity. The findings support the explanatory power of the framework and reveal that consumers prefer some CSR elements while others adversely affect choices. This study advances the understanding of strategic CSR management and its impact on consumer choice and helps managers include the right mix of CSR characteristics in their products to satisfy ethical consumers. Keywords CSR demand and supply · Ethical consumption · Strategic CSR management
Introduction Business has widely adopted corporate social responsibility (CSR) over the past two decades, and attention has shifted from merely engaging in scattered CSR activities to identifying a strategic role for CSR in business (McWilliams et al. 2006; Porter and Kramer 2006). The theory-of-the-firm perspective on CSR (McWilliams and Siegel 2001) implies that CSR could be an integral part of differentiation strategies either directly through product features or indirectly through reputation and brand image. However, research into * Henri Kuokkanen [email protected] William Sun [email protected] 1
Institut Paul Bocuse, 3 Avenue Guy de Collongue, 69130 Écully, France
Centre for Governance, Leadership and Global Responsibility, Faculty of Business and Law, Leeds Beckett University, The Rose Bowl, Room 562, Portland Crescent, Leeds LS1 3HB, UK
2
strategic CSR is still in its early stage and lacks a comprehensive framework to integrate CSR actions into corporate strategies (McWilliams et al. 2006; Rogers 2013). For example, in a survey of more than 55 000 consumers across the 15 largest markets in 2013, the Reputation Institute found that CSR suppliers commonly suffer from problems, such as irrelevance of CSR initiatives to consumers and other stakeholders and a poor fit of CSR activities with core business (Rogers 2013). The supply
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