Marketing and Social Responsibility for Businesses

Ashraf Metwally^*
*Correspondence: Ashraf Metwally, Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, King Abdullah International Medical Research Center, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Email:

Introduction

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been addressed and managed in a variety of ways by all kinds of businesses and organizations in recent years. Businesspeople and academics alike have expressed a variety of interests in incorporating this idea into their work as a result. As a result, the purpose of this article is to establish a link between CSR and marketing by categorizing the various theoretical perspectives that claim these two concepts are intertwined. The ways in which marketing managers can use CSR-related activities to create value for their various stakeholders must be evaluated. This review of the relevant academic literature and the empirical evidence that supports it are just as crucial for expanding our understanding of CSR implementation in marketing. CSR has emerged as a significant academic concept and a priority for all kinds of businesses, particularly conglomerates and large organizations. It is now possible to say with certainty that there is no universally accepted definition of the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) despite the fact that scholars continue to debate its content and meaning and the largest companies appear to have found a common ground on which they have developed key strategies and developments on the subject. Although there does not appear to be agreement regarding its definition, the business community has enthusiastically adopted its conceptualization and application.

Discussion

This marketing concept's definition has changed a lot. The American Marketing Association (AMA), which brings together the world's academics and practitioners of the field, has led this effort. The reason for this definition exertion has been to represent changes in the climate and in administration practices to add to the further improvement of the discipline. In a similar vein, theoretical contributions have shaped the development of marketing thought by identifying certain schools that have produced fundamental concepts that have been studied, researched and applied for years. This article examines how the marketing literature has discussed CSR by reviewing not only definitions but also major topics and perspectives within the context of its integration into the academic field, which has evidently extended to business practices. In doing so, it integrates CSR and marketing. Given the numerous conceptualizations and contributions to this subject, the purpose of this analysis is not to be comprehensive or constrictive; rather, it aims to highlight and illustrate some of these perspectives in order to provide a solid understanding of its scope and application. It is important to note that the field of marketing has discussed CSR in a fragmented manner, that some major schools of thought have encouraged the development of theories on the subject and that many contributions to the literature have been restricted to specific aspects of the concept. In contrast, the management literature contains numerous CSRrelated theoretical studies and categorization efforts, limiting marketing to a small number of useful theoretical perspective classifications. Additionally, when marketing scholars first began to discuss aspects of CSR within the discipline, they initially focused on broadening marketing concepts and then analyzing business social functions to focus on strategic ways to apply the concept, which have typically only focused on major company stakeholders: customers, consumers and distribution channels [1,2].

It is essential to separately define constructs in order to clearly comprehend related concepts and then proceed to interrelate them because the purpose of this article is to examine how and to what extent the marketing literature has addressed CSR. Marketing is a crucial business discipline that is perhaps one of the most heavily concerned with the connection between businesses and the environments in which they are embedded, so efforts have been made to link these fields of study together. In addition, businesses in general have declared themselves socially responsible and have implemented strategic initiatives in this direction in light of the current climate of mistrust toward businesses caused by scandals primarily involving prominent accounting firms. In addition, it is valuable to develop an overview of theoretical perspectives on the integration of such concepts, so it is important to define and illustrate the inclusion of CSR in marketing [3].

Distribution was the initial focus of the field, followed by managers' responsibilities for the creation and supply of a marketing mix and the full involvement of organizations in the societies in which they conduct business through their relationships with various stakeholders. The "marketing approaches" that businesses should use have been the focus of this evolution in the field's conceptualization; consequently, it is necessary to consider the true scope of such approaches, which now include a much wider range of stakeholders in addition to consumers. Similarly, in the field of marketing as well, certain schools of thought, such as the management macromarketing schools, have focused on crucial issues pertaining to the relationship between businesses and society that need to be highlighted and have oriented themselves toward the discovery and study of all activities that are related to the discipline in order to produce a substantial body of knowledge. Because it addresses and takes into account the most important concerns of various public audiences regarding the relationships between businesses and society, it is essential to analyze this concept. It has been discovered that a growing number of organizations worldwide are adopting CSR and feel the need to better comprehend its meaning, scope and relationship to marketing in regard to the integration of the two concepts. Companies are putting a number of initiatives in this area, all of which aim to understand the concept and its true scope, as CSR initiatives are gradually becoming high-priority corporate issues. This topic's effects on consumer behavior when customers demand more from businesses than just low-priced, high-quality goods are one reason for the growing interest in it [4,5].

Conclusion

Some authors have suggested that marketing should play a leading role in the analysis of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and others have even attempted to define such forms of responsibility within the marketing industry because the integration of both ideas is so crucial. The following proposal is intended to be a contribution to the marketing field not only from the academic works of discipline researchers, who will be suggesting additional lines of research based on their proposed theoretical perspectives, but also from the viewpoint of marketing practitioners, who will be categorizing ways to strategically apply CSR in their daily activities. As a result, the structure of this article is as follows the following section provides an overview of key marketing and corporate social responsibility (CSR) concepts as well as a review of CSR concepts that have been discussed in marketing literature to classify major topics. This section is not meant to be comprehensive or exclusive. The article concludes with a list of the review's findings.

References

1. Van Beurden, Pieter and Tobias Gössling. "The worth of values–a literature review on the relation between corporate social and financial performance." J Bus Ethics 82 (2008): 407-424.

Google Scholar, Crossref, Indexed at

2. Cheung,Yan Leung, Weiqiang Tan, Hee-Joon Ahn and Zheng Zhang. "Does corporate social responsibility matter in Asian emerging markets?." J Bus Ethics 92 (2010): 401-413.

Google Scholar, Crossref, Indexed at

3. Cho, Seong Y., Cheol Lee and Ray J. Pfeiffer Jr. "Corporate social responsibility performance and information asymmetry." J Account Public Policy 32 (2013): 71-83.

Google Scholar, Crossref, Indexed at

4. Dhaliwal, Dan S., Suresh Radhakrishnan, Albert Tsang and Yong George Yang. "Nonfinancial disclosure and analyst forecast accuracy: International evidence on corporate social responsibility disclosure." Account Rev 87 (2012): 723-759.

Google Scholar, Crossref, Indexed at

5. Elliott, W. Brooke, Kevin E. Jackson, Mark E. Peecher and Brian J. White. "The unintended effect of corporate social responsibility performance on investors estimates of fundamental value." Account Rev 89 (2014): 275-302.

Google Scholar, Crossref, Indexed at