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IMPORTANCE OF COMPANY’S CSR ACTIVITIES IN INDIA: IT’S EFFECT ON CONSUMER BUYING BEHAVIOUR For Business Research Methods Submitted to, Submitted By, Dr. Gunjan MalhotraShrirang Jadhav (09FT-064) Mohd Afroze Ali (09FT-085) Mohd Asif (09FT-086) Nitesh Bhagchandani (09FT-185) Table Of Contents Abstract:3 Keywords :3 Introduction:3 Literature Review:6 Research Gaps:8 Objective:8 Research questions:8 Research Hypothesis:8 Methodology:8 Discussion and observation:9 Conclusion:22 Bibliography:23 Questionnaire:25 Abstract: Problem – In today’s society, there is a growing interest in, and demand for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).
Reasons for this can be multinational corporations’ increasing influence on world economy as well as scandals revealing horrible working conditions in different industries. In spite of the fact that the demand for CSR is growing, there has always been critics. The most influential critic is Noble Prize winner Milton Friedman, who claims CSR to be a waste of stockholders’ money. However, several articles claim, opposite Friedman, that CSR rather increases a company’s financial performance in the long run. These claims have made us curious about in what way CSR is related to a company’s performance.
Moreover, it has led to us wanting to find out how CSR can influence customer perceptions on a product or service offering. Conclusions ???All the initiatives gave a positive influence on the respondents’ perceptions, but the ones resulting in the most positive changes of the perceptions and willingness to buy were social responsible business practises, cause-related marketing and corporate philanthropy, which are initiatives where the company are doing the largest effort instead of just encouraging others to make an effort.
The respondents answered that they trust the companies’ information about CSR to some extent, but also think a third party should scrutinise the companies’ activities and inform. The most favourable channel for CSR information was from environmental organisations, government organisations and the third party web media. Therefore it seems like the respondents value that the companies provide information, but are not too forward and pushing the information on them by for example advertisements.
Keywords : CSR ??? Corporate Social Responsibility, Cause promotion, Cause-related marketing, Corporate social marketing, Corporate philanthropy, Community volunteering, Social responsible business practices. Introduction: CSR is today a frequently used concept, as companies to a larger extent are held accountable for what is happening in the society. The company should also inform the stakeholders about their CSR activities in an appropriate way, in order to capitalise from all possible benefits.
In order to make a trustworthy impression and gain the most benefits, the choice of CSR activity and way of communication is crucial for the company, and therefore the perceptions of the consumers are very important to know more about and understand. In the last decade tendencies towards a more social aware community have been strong. In itself these trends are nothing that is particularly new. People have always preached for problems like public health, wildlife protection, prevention of child labor etc.
What is different now is that companies to a larger extent are held accountable for what is happening in our society. Companies that engage in CSR activities are likely to have different motives for doing so. Many researches claim that corporate social responsibility originally consists of activities that a company performs out of commitment and duty. However, there are also commercial motives for CSR activities. For example CSR activities may result in advantages when it comes to receiving funding, recruiting new employees, cost reductions etc.
To capitalise from all possible advantages it is crucial for the company to communicate their CSR work in an appropriate way. Theoretical Framework: Types of CSR Activities: a) Cause promotion Cause promotion is often done in the way that the company provide funds, contribute financially or with any other resource, with the objective to increase awareness, support fundraising or participation, or to recruit volunteers for a specific cause. In this initiative persuasive communications are important, to create concern and to persuade people to contribute or participate to support the cause.
In successful campaigns use of motivating messages and the choice of effective media channels are crucial. They also make use of publicity, printed materials, special events, web sites, advertising, featuring the logo and key message of the company and those who represent the cause. Further methods are employee involvement, messages on product labelling and to provide store space for promotions. Many of the potential benefits are marketing related, like strengthened brand positioning and preference, increased traffic and consumer loyalty.
Other benefits are that it gives customers and employees an easy way of contributing, along with new and strong partnerships. b) Cause-related marketing Cause Related Marketing (CRM) is defined as “a strategic positioning and marketing tool which links a company or brand to a relevant social cause or issue, for mutual benefit”. When using cause-related marketing the company decides to donate a specific percentage of the revenues or sales to a cause. The offer is often for a specific product and time period.
Cause-related marketing is seen by many as a win-win situation, in which the company benefits and the consumer can contribute to charity without any extra cost. There are different types of agreements varying from a contribution per product sold or as a percentage of the company’s profits. It might also be for one specific product or a whole product range, and be for a brief time period or open-ended. The majority of the potential benefits of cause-related marketing are related to marketing, for example the company might attract new customers, increase sales and build a positive brand image.
It is possibly also the most effective way to collect a significant amount of money for the chosen cause. Making contributions to a charity per sales may increase the consumers’ perceptions of the company’s societal commitment, which may make socially and ecologically concerned consumers switch to that company or brand. This initiative could therefore be a strategy to increase the probability that a consumer would purchase a particular company’s product or brand, instead of competitors’ products (Peter ; Olson, 2008). c) Corporate social marketing
Unlike commercial marketing with the primary goal to benefit the company, the aim of corporate social marketing (CSM) is advantages for the targeted group of individuals or the whole society. The purpose of this initiative is to influence a behavioural change and thus improve public health, safety, the environment or community wellbeing. The difference from cause promotion is that instead of just increasing awareness, corporate social marketing goes further and also aim at changing how people behave. Social Marketing can be used at individual, household, target market or societal levels.
The company can do the campaign on their own or work together with a partner in the public sector or a non-governmental organisation. Potential advantages are most of all connected to marketing, for example strengthened brand positioning, increased brand preference, traffic and sales. However, behaviour change is a time-consuming process and the company need to be prepared for that social marketing takes more than just writing a check. Another concern is that some people might criticise the initiative with the argument that a company has nothing to do with it.
The company should choose an issue connected to the company’s objectives, focus on a long term commitment and create a strong relationship with a partner that can give valuable knowledge and trustworthiness d) Corporate philanthropy Corporate philanthropy is the most traditional initiative and is done in the way that the company make a direct contribution to a charity or cause. These contributions are a main support for non-profit organisations, foundations and public agencies, such as schools. How the donation amount is determined vary, but one common way is to base the donation on the previous year’s income.
Potential benefits from philanthropy are improved company image, enhanced goodwill and reputation. The employees of the company are also more likely to be motivated and satisfied. Further advantages could be increased productivity, expanded markets and that the company contribute to a strong workforce in the future. e) Community volunteering Community volunteering is done by the company encouraging the employees, retail partners and/or franchise members to volunteer to local community or causes. In these efforts the contributing can be to volunteer with expertise, talents, ideas and/or physical work.
The company’s support might be to provide paid time off from work for the volunteering, to help employees find a suitable volunteering opportunity and to organise teams to support particular causes. Potential benefits are the opportunity to build a strong relationship with local communities, attracting and keeping a satisfied workforce, contributing to business goals, enhance the image of the company and opportunities to display products or services. Downsides are that community volunteering could involve high costs and it is important that the initiative has a meaningful social impact. Outcomes are often difficult to track and measure.
Marketing Strategy: According to Peter and Olson (2008) there are three elements, all influencing each other, that can be used for consumer analysis: consumer affect and cognition, consumer environment and consumer behaviour. Marketing strategies are used as a part of the consumer environment and in that way have an effect on consumer affect, cognition and behaviour. If a CSR activity is meant to influence consumers in any way it has to be promoted to them. According to Peter and Olson (2008), the purpose of promotion is to communicate information about products as well as convince consumers to buy them.
There are four major type of promotion: advertising, sales promotion, personal selling and publicity. To link the promotion strategies to the previously mentioned theories in this thesis one can say that promotions are experienced by the consumers in the social and physical environment and may cause affective and cognitive responses. Further, the consumers’ behaviour can be strongly influenced by promotion. Literature Review: According to Johan Classon ; Johan Dahlstrom(2006) CSR can influence company performance.
Moreover, a research problem and a purpose are presented in order to paint a clear picture of what is to be researched. It has also been explained why this topic is of importance to the researchers. On positive side Research tries to cover topics not covered by few of previous research papers and also Proposed new model for CSR-Performance chain after studying Value linking chain but some lacking points are that Research is concentrated on single industry ??? Clothing Industry and also Conclusion is on perceptions of consumers about company and not on effect on sales.
Percy Marquina(2007) assesses the influence of CSR product features on consumers’ behaviour in Peru. The study will involve investigating Peruvian consumers’ preferences, using stated preferences elicited in response to hypothetical choices under controlled experimental conditions. Noteworthy points being that the research methodology will include stated preference discrete choice modeling (SPDCM) and Research throws light on relation between CSR and consumer social responsibility (CnSR). But on other side research Does not study effectiveness of marketing strategies for CSR awareness.
And also Research does not establish direct link between CSR initiatives and sales of company. ShelleyWigley(2008) assessed the impact of knowledge of a company’s corporate social responsibility efforts on both attitude and purchase intent. Results indicate that participants exposed to information about a company’s CSR activities are more knowledgeable about those activities and that increased knowledge positively impacts attitudes and purchase intentions. Pros of research can be that it proposes innovative way of measuring CSR communication effectiveness as well as it relates CSR communication effectiveness to sales.
But some cons can be that it does not throw light on category of CSR activities responsible for influencing sales and does not study if consumer is willing to buy more for supporting company’s CSR activity. Kristin Haugland Smith & Oystein Nystad(2006) presents and discusses relevant theories of CSR in the light of ethical and instrumental motivation. It discusses CSR from two perspectives ??? an ethical perspective which focuses on creating a good society and an instrumental perspective which focuses on achieving economic objectives through social activities.
Pros of research are that it links ethical and economical perspectives of CSR and Research measures economic aspect of the interactions between business and society. Cons being it does not focus on effectiveness of CSR marketing initiatives of company and also does not focus on effect of CSR if company on buying habits of consumer. Research by Mohammad M. Rahman(2007) demonstrate that CSR can work as a powerful signaling tool for leading firms when they communicate brand values to consumers.
Research outlines a relationship between CSR and profitability, explain strategic CSR by highlighting motivations for this form of firm-level altruism, and hint at managerial guidelines regarding when and how much to spend on CSR. On positive side it helps to highlight avenues of future empirical research which can help resolve the conflict among the findings in the extant literature. But some negative points being very limited scope of research and it does not use primary data, secondary data is used from research.
Research by A Fleishman-Hillard(2007) is done to examine the public’s opinions of CSR by asking respondents to designate the importance or infl uence of assorted CSR-related issues under a variety of circumstances, as well as the absolute or relative importance of issues (environmental responsibility may be important, but is it more or less important than how a company treats. Noteworthy points are that it studies consumers perception about CSR activities of corporations as well as it looks at newest communication mediums for promoting CSR.
But on other side research does not link CSR with sales of company directly and does not measure willingness of consumer to pay extra for CSR reasons. BORBELY Emese (2008) claims that there is no clear-cut recipe for companies to succeed in socially responsible decisions. As each company is unique, each company has to find its own way. CSR will only make a visible difference if it is fully integrated into corporate principles and if the process is continuously monitored. Distinctive points being that paper throws light on CSR from company’s perspective.
Whereas on other side it does not relate consumer behavior with company’s CSR activities. Against the backdrop of national initiative and the effort by some corporations to incorporate CSR principles, not much is really known about the state of affairs in Singapore. Gilbert Tan and Raj Komaran(2006) tries to address this problem in this research. Points to note being it studies the impact of demographics on individual attitudes and perceptions of CSR. But points to ponder being that it studies CSR to get results about perceived benefits by companies for practicing CSR. Research by Richard Peters ; Michael R.
Mullen(2006) provide support for the ideal that long term corporate social responsibility is positive for a firm’s stockholders as well as other stakeholders. Pros are that it links sales performance of company with its CSR initiatives. Cons are it does not throw light on relation between short term sales growth and CSR initiatives. Research by Matthew Brine, Rebecca Brown(2007) results revealed no statistically significant relationship between corporate social responsibility and financial performance; however, a number of opportunities for refining the research were identified.
Distinctive points of research are that it throws complete new perspective on relation between CSR and sales of company. But findings are not supported with strong theory/analysis. Research Gaps: Delimitations: CSR include a wide variety of causes that companies can focus on, as for example the environment and social problems such as diseases working conditions etc. When performing our data collection including all different aspects of CSR in one survey would result in big problems. Since respondents are likely to grade the importance of the diverse issues in very different way this would most probably reflect in the results of the thesis.
To solve this problem we have considered two solutions. The first one, including the same questions about all of the different CSR aspects, was quickly disregarded since it would put too much strain on the respondents a mean that the scope of the theses would end up way to wide. Therefore the research in this project has been focusing on environmental issues only, in more specific the global warming. The environment is an issue with increasing importance as it is becoming clearer how serious the state of the global environment is today.
Objective: The purpose of this project work is to find out how consumers’ perceptions and behaviour towards a company are influenced by communication of specific CSR activities. Research questions: 1. How is marketing of CSR by a company perceived by consumers? 2. How are the different CSR-strategies perceived by consumers and how might this affect their behaviour? 3. How would the consumers prefer to get information about a company’s CSR activities? Research Hypothesis: 1. CSR activities effects consumers perception of brand image 2.
CSR activities creates favourable buying behaviour 3. Consumer perceives promotion of CSR activities in a positive sense 4. Consumer believes the message conveyed by firms regarding CSR activities 5. Consumer believes that CSR activities are selfless work being done by firms Methodology: The data collection was done through a questionnaire that was completed online by 87 respondents. The questionnaire is divided into two parts. The first part deals with the different CSR initiatives, with two questions for each six initiatives.
These questions have been formed as likert-style rating scale questions. In the second part six statements with a five-point likert-style rating scale were included. The last question is formulated in the form that the respondent should choose two alternatives of how they want to be informed. This question is therefore a category question. In this thesis non-probability sampling is used. The motive for this being limitations in especially time resources. The survey was filled online using site www. surveygizmo. com .
The respondents were asked to answer how their view of the company and willingness to buy from a company was changed by each the five specified CSR initiatives, as well as how they would prefer to get information about a company’s CSR activities. Their responses were analysed with help from consumer behaviour and promotion theories. In order to be able to make use of the data from the questionnaire it was transformed into statistics. From the website where the questionnaire was performed it was possible to export the data into a spreadsheet file, which is the type of file format that Excel and SPSS use.
The analysis is done using averages and correlation of variables. For presenting the results bar charts have been used to each question and statement. Bar charts are a good way to show the frequency of occurrences, so that highest and lowest are clear, and also to easily get an overview of the trend and proportions of the occurrences of values. The result of the analysis will then be summarized in the conclusion, in order to answer the three research questions that were set in the beginning of the thesis. The variables selected are ) Consumers perception of brand image as effect of CSR activities 2) Consumers willingness to purchase as effect of CSR activities Secondary data is collected if various sources on internet. Ten papers on the related topic were reviewed as detailed in Literature Review section. Also study of models of consumer’s perception and buying behaviour is done using some available books of marketing as detailed in Bibliography. Discussion and observation: The total number of respondents was 87 persons. The gender distribution was slightly uneven, with 27 women (which is equal to 31 per cent) and 60 men (69 per cent).
Alternative 1 ??? Cause promotion In alternative 1 the explanation was: “The company informs the consumers about global warming and encourage them to donate money directly to research about the issue” . This is an example of cause promotion. Alternative 1: This information would influence my perception of the company positively. The result on the first question, if this information would give the respondent a more positive view of the company, is that 60 per cent answered that they strongly agree or agree, and 18. 4 per cent answered that they do not agree at all or only agree little.
The rest 22% of the sample population remained indifferent to the cause-related promotion of the company. The trend is therefore that cause promotion gives to some extent a more positive view of the company. Alternative 1: This information would increase my willingness to buy from the company. For the second question, if the cause promotion would make the respondents more willing to buy from the company, the result is a bit less positive than to the first question. For this question 45 per cent answered that they strongly agree or agree much, 23. per cent answered that they disagree or strongly disagree. Another difference is that more respondents answered that they would not be affected at all by this information, 31. 0 per cent. | Column 1| Column 2| Column 1| 1| | Column 2| 0. 620369| 1| The correlation between the perception of the consumers and their willingness to buy indicates a positive relationship. It implies that the cause-related promotion can be used as a tool to increase sales. However, the mean of the responses for the two questions works out to 3. 55 and 3. 22 which are just a shade over the point of indifference i. e. 3.
One possible reason for this is that in cause promotion the company say that they care about a specific cause; however they do not show that they are actually doing something for the cause, except telling the consumers to act. This alternative demonstrates a sense of care for a cause, which make the respondents more positive towards the company. What could make the consumers a bit sceptical though, and not make them even more willing to buy from the company, is that the company is not doing more themselves, and instead encouraging consumers to take action. Alternative 2 ??? Cause-related marketing
In alternative 2 the text was “The Company donates 3% from the profit per product from a certain product range directly to research about global warming”, which is an example of cause-related marketing. Alternative 2: This information would influence my perception of the company positively. Cause-related marketing evidently give a more positive view of the company, according to our respondents. As much as 87. 3 per cent answered that they strongly agree or agree and the most frequent answer was agree with 60. 9 per cent. Only 4. 6 per cent answered that they disagree while no one strongly disagreed.
Alternative 2: This information would increase my willingness to buy from the company. The answers to the question if cause-related marketing would make them more willing to buy from the company, the answers are still quite positive. 67. 8 per cent answered that they agree strongly or agree. Only 9. 1 per cent answered that they do disagree or strongly disagree. 23 per cent mean that they are not at all affected by this information. | Column 1| Column 2| Column 1| 1| | Column 2| 0. 407487| 1| The mean of the responses to the two questions works out to be 4. 1 and 3. which is a significant improvement from the levels seen in alternative 1. Hence, Cause-related marketing clearly gives our respondents a more positive view of the company. The majority of the respondents would also be more willing to buy from the company after the cause-related marketing. In cause-related marketing the company actually gives away a part of the profits from the sales of products to a good cause, and this seems to be appealing to the respondents. A great majority answered that they got a more positive view of the company and the majority would also be more willing to buy from the company.
Even though the correlation is relatively low between the changed perception and willingness to buy, the fact that the opinions of a lot of people have changed would augur well for the company in the future. Alternative 3 ??? Corporate social marketing In the third alternative, which is an example of corporate social marketing, “The company informs about global warming and encourage the consumers to act environmentally friendly by giving them tips on how to easily decrease their environmental impact at home”.
Alternative 3: This information would influence my perception of the company positively. Cause-related marketing evidently give a more positive view of the company, according to our respondents. As much as 86. 2 per cent answered that they strongly agree or agree. Only 3. 4 per cent answered that they disagree while no one strongly disagreed. Alternative 3: This information would increase my willingness to buy from the company. On the second question 60. 9 per cent answered that they strongly agree or agree and 23. 5 per cent answered do not agree at all or agree little.
Only 8% disagreed. However, 31% of the sample population remained neutral implying that their buying decision wouldn’t be affected. | Column 1| Column 2| Column 1| 1| | Column 2| 0. 375676| 1| Social marketing made the majority perceive the company more positively, but the increase in willingness to buy was not really as high. This is also indicated in the correlation results shown above. Hence, the mean for the two questions also showed some deviation with change in perception gathering a mean 4. 15 while the willingness to buy recorded a mean of 3. 69 only.
Corporate social marketing, like cause promotion, is a type of marketing that tries to make the customers aware and change their behaviour by informing them, and the company makes no other effort that is evidence of their support for the cause. Therefore it could make the customers a bit sceptical about how good the incentive really is, because of the relatively “low” effort from the company. This scepticism can be the reason why the respondents do not to a larger extent have a higher willingness to buy from the company after a social marketing campaign.
Alternative 4 ??? Corporate philanthropy The fourth alternative presented to our respondents is an example of Corporate philanthropy. The alternative in the questionnaire read: The company donates the money directly to research regarding global warming. Alternative 4: This information would influence my perception of the company positively. On the first question regarding this alternative, namely if the respondents would generally be more positive regarding the company after having received such information our research shows rather clearly that the answer to that question is yes.
A cumulative percentage of 82% of our respondents answered that they either agree either a lot or completely to the statement. Only 1 respondent disagreed. Alternative 4: This information would increase my willingness to buy from the company. For the second question, however, most respondents, 52. 1 per cent, agree much or completely with the statement indicating that this would in fact increase the willingness of them buying from the company. A rather large group of respondents, 27. 6 per cent, answered that this kind of message would not at all affect their purchase decision in any way. While only 10. % disagreed. | Column 1| Column 2| Column 1| 1| | Column 2| 0. 426566| 1| When looking at the overall picture of Corporate philanthropy it can be seen that this type of information obviously has a positive effect on how customers feel about the company in general. Our results show that even though the actions taken in this type of method has no direct connection to product sales, it might influence consumers’ purchase intentions in one way or another. To sum it up, our results tells us that Corporate philanthropy is indeed a good method to use when the primary target is to improve the company image and reputation.
All though the results are slightly less positive when it comes to purchase intentions is seems like Corporate Philanthropy might have a good influence on that notion also. Alternative 5 ??? Community volunteering The fifth alternative, Community volunteering, was presented with the example: The company arrange a day when the employees, instead of their regular job tasks, on working hours gets the opportunity to make an effort for the environment by planting trees. Alternative 5: This information would influence my perception of the company positively.
The Community volunteering results show that most of the respondents, 86. 2 per cent, agree to the statement saying that this would influence their perception of the company positively. Only 3. 4% disagreed. Alternative 5: This information would increase my willingness to buy from the company. When asking about purchase intentions, about 60% respondents agreed that community volunteering would affect their purchase decisions. However, 28. 7% of the respondents showed indifference while 11. 4% disagreed. | Column 1| Column 2| Column 1| 1| | Column 2| 0. 441374| 1|
Analysing both results together tells us that in general our respondents are positive towards this type of information. This is corroborated by the level of correlation between the perception and the willingness to buy. The means were recorded as 4. 20 and 3. 70. To sum up all the above alternatives we find that cause promotions are the least effective way of changing consumer perceptions and affecting their buying decision-making. The other four scored favourably with the respondents. The common factor with the rest of the alternatives was that the company directly utilized its resources in CSR activities.
The consumers may perceive that the company wants to make a change itself, while in cause-promotion the Company wants others to act more environmental friendly. Analysis Question 8-10 of Questionnaire: Statement 1: I think it is important that companies inform their customers about what they are doing for the environment. Statement 2: I think it is important that independent organizations scrutinize companies’ work for the environment and inform the consumers about it. Statement 3: I trust the information companies publish in their marketing about their environmental work.
Statement 4: I trust the information a third party (for example media, governmental organizations and environmental organizations) publish about a company’s environmental work. Statement 5: I think that companies should market their environmental work actively to me as a consumer through for example promotions in media. Statement 6: I think companies should only supply information about their environmental work that consumers can get when needed or interested. Question 7: How would you like to get information about companies’ environmental work?
The response to these questions clearly shows that the basic opinion is that the information about the company’s environmental work is important information that the respondents wants to take part of. This is probably because the consumers want to make good purchasing decisions and that is difficult without all relevant information. The knowledge about which causes the company support and what they are doing to improve the issues are information that could very well be of importance when making a purchasing decision.
If the customer is choosing between two similar products or stores the customer might choose the one from the more social responsible company. The questions also gave a hint about how the consumers perceive the credibility of companies compared to that of third party organisations. The fact that the respondents think it is important for third party sources to inform about the environmental work of companies gives us the impression that our respondents to an extent think that the companies themselves are not completely trustable or that they might withhold this kind of information.
In the last question the respondents were asked how they would like to get information about companies’ environmental work. The most favourable alternatives included “from government organisation”, “from environmental organisations” and the “the company’s webpage”. These are all alternatives where the company has to be active to some extent. The most active alternatives “advertisements… ” and “from employees… ” were the least favourable and hence this tells that the respondents do not want the company to be too forward and consumers believe in information provided by neutral third parties.
Conclusion: The first research question stated was: How is marketing of CSR by a company perceived by consumers? The answer to this question is a resounding yes. The consumers are interested in knowing about a company’s CSR activities before they make the all-important purchase decision. The second research question was stated as follows: How are the different CSR-strategies perceived by consumers and how might this affect their behaviour? The Cause promotion strategy was found to be the least effective among all the strategies employed.
However, corporate philanthropy and cause promotion were the strategies that relatively didn’t increase the consumer’s willingness to buy. For all the alternatives the perception was much more changed to the positive than the willingness to buy. This implies that information about CSR initiatives have a greater impact on the respondents’ perception of the company than the purchase intentions. Thus, it seems that this type of marketing strategy trigger affective and cognitive processes more than the overt consumer behaviour is affected.
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Forbes Inc. Retrieved April 17,2008, from http://moneycentral. msn. com/content/invest/forbes/P64835. asp? Printer 40. Wells, W. D. , & Prensky, D. (1996). Consumer Behaviour. New York: John Wiley & Sons 41. Aaker, D. A. , Kumar, V. , & Day, G. S. (2003). Marketing Research. Hoboken, New Jersey:John Wiley & Sons. Questionnaire: Effect of CSR on sales of a company Thank you for taking this questionnaire. It will take only 2-3 minutes to complete. We appreciate your time. Your opinions are highly valuable to us. All your answers will be kept confidential. 1. Age 2. Gender
MaleFemale Here we present a fictitious company that wants to increase its involvement in environmental issues. For each of the following questions we would like to know how would you be affected by the actions of the company. 3. The company informs the consumers about global warming and??encourage them to donate money directly to research about the issue | Strongly agree| Agree| Neither agree Nor disagree| Disagree| Strongly Disagree| This information would influence my perception of the company positively. | | | | | | This information would increase my willingness to buy from the company. | | | | | 4. The company donates 3% from the profit per product from a certain??product range directly to research about global warming. | Strongly agree| Agree| Neither agree Nor disagree| Disagree| Strongly Disagree| This information would influence my perception of the company positively. | | | | | | This information would increase my willingness to buy from the company. | | | | | | 5. The company informs??about global warming and encourage the consumers to act environmentally friendly by giving them tips??on how to easily decrease their environmental impact at home. Strongly agree| Agree| Neither agree Nor disagree| Disagree| Strongly Disagree| This information would influence my perception of the company positively. | | | | | | This information would increase my willingness to buy from the company. | | | | | | 6. The company donates the money directly to research??regarding global warming. | Strongly agree| Agree| Neither agree Nor disagree| Disagree| Strongly Disagree| This information would influence my perception of the company positively. | | | | | | This information would increase my willingness to buy from the company. | | | | | 7. The company??arrange a day when the employees, instead of their regular job tasks, on working hours gets the opportunity??to make an effort for the environment by planting trees. | Strongly agree| Agree| Neither agree Nor disagree| Disagree| Strongly Disagree| This information would influence my perception of the company positively. | | | | | | This information would increase my willingness to buy from the company. | | | | | | 8. How do you think that companies should inform their customers about their environment related CSR performance?