Social Marketing as a Tool for Implementing Corporate Social Responsibility

Social Marketing as a Tool for Implementing Corporate Social Responsibility

🔥NEW Initially, marketing was almost entirely aimed at selling goods or services in order to increase profits and meet the needs of customers. Over time, the business orientations of many companies changed into achieving commercial success in ways that are based on ethical standards and on respect for society and the environment.
Thus, the concept of SOCIAL AND ETHICAL MARKETING arose, which is based on a responsible approach to the sale of products and services and care not only about their personal benefits but also about the welfare of consumers and society as a whole. Social and ethical marketing also includes the responsibility of the business for product safety, the veracity, and reliability of advertising, as well as the objective fairness of pricing. And also a socially responsible approach to business management and environmental protection can be attributed to this direction.

Currently, social marketing is used by many companies wishing to improve their social environment by implementing the concept of CSR. Such companies tell their clients about the opportunity to participate in solving socially significant problems of the company together through the purchase of a product or service.
Social marketing allows to solve problems of social significance while expanding the pool of loyal customers, increasing sales of goods and services by attracting more customers, with the desire to be an accomplice and to participate in the implementation of socially important projects. It also enhances brand awareness. Today more than 76% of consumers are ready to purchase goods and services of another company if it is associated with socially useful business, 86% of consumers have a more positive image of the company if they see real efforts to solve social problems. And 64% of consumers are willing to pay an average of 5% more if the product is associated with a socially useful business.

Benefits of using social marketing as a tool for implementing the concept of CSR:

1. For businesses:
   
   • Increasing confidence in the company or brand on the consumer side;
   • Sales growth;
   • Influx of new customers;
   • Opportunities for working with the media (non-standard PR strategies);
   • Improving the corporate spirit (culture) of the company
   • Attracting talent
2. For Customers
   
   • Involvement in a good purpose
   • Involvement in a good deed

It can be concluded that social marketing has become a fairly common tool for implementing CSR and has a positive effect on all the parties involved in its implementation.

References:
Sherbachenko P.S., Social significant marketing as a tool of realization of the concept of corporate social responsibility, Management sciences in the modern world (2015), №1.-pp. 290-295.
Yana Kostryukova, Tatiana Migushova, Yulia Senina. Social and Ethical Marketing as an Instrument for the Realization of Corporate Social Responsibility (2015), Russian Journal of Retail Management, Volume 2, Issue 4, pp 275–284.