Marketing strategy and planning Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Marketing strategy and planning - Assignment Example Until recently, the business of the business has been simply considered to be just ‘business’, but now, it is more than that and it should be able to contribute to social justice, community welfare, economic development and quality of social life as well. This piece of research paper explains the underlying concepts and modern aspects of corporate social responsibility in relation to the evaluation of social responsibility efforts made by three major companies, namely Apple Inc, Johnson & Johnson and Nestle. Corporate Social Responsibility The importance and the role of corporate social responsibility have been increasing continuously in the business contexts within the last few years and this is very evident from the fact that 90% of the fortune 500 companies have explicit social responsibility initiatives (Bueble, 2009, p. 1). CSR is discerned from three words, namely Corporate, Social and Responsibility, covering the relationship between corporations and the societies in relation to how they both interact. To be more specific, it includes the responsibilities that are inherent in the relationship between the corporate and the society (Werther and Chandler, 2006, p. 6). According to Kotler and Lee (2005, p. 3), corporate social responsibility is a commitment to improve community well-being through discretionary business practices and by contributing corporate or business resources. Business activities or community well-being efforts that are already mandated by the law or are generally accepted as moral and ethical are exempted by the term ‘discretionary’. The idea behind the concept of CSR is that all business organizations and their leaders must consider the impact of their decisions and activities on the community as a whole and they must be able to assume certain responsibilities that are expected of them. The social responsibility of a business encompasses the economic, legal, ethical and discretionary expectations that the soci ety has of the organization for a given period of time (Sims, 2003, p. 43). A business organization is not only expected to meet customer needs and wants, but also to satisfy customer needs and wants in a way that are corresponding to the legal, ethical, social, moral and discretionary expectations of the customers and all other stakeholders. As part of the social responsibility, a business should be able to improve social life of the general public, foster economic development of the nation, improve the quality of the life of its people and enhance social and community well-being of the society at large. In order a business to be socially responsible, it has to fulfill the rules and regulations that are entrusted to them by the legal system and responsibilities that are expected of them by the society, function according to the ethical and moral aspects that the business has to meet. Pearson and Robinson (2004, p. 50) emphasized that there are basically four elements of the social commitments involved in the CSR, they are economical, legal, ethical and discretionary responsibilities. Holme and Watts’ view on CSR Many different views and definitions on