Market Research's Role in Corporate Social Responsibility

‘Through business engagement in the community, businesses can strengthen their competitive position by creating stronger links with consumers and employees. By making the most of these less tangible resources, businesses create an edge over competitors in the market place.’ D Alexander MP, Minister for CSR, June 2001.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is now on the agenda for most companies. We now have a minister with responsibility in this area; the US Dow Jones CSR index in the US and the FTSE4Good index in the UK mean that CSR is becoming a practical proposition for many. Corporate reputation surveys and indices produced by PR and research companies are springing up, such as the Harris Interactive/Shandwick ‘Reputation Quotient’ index in the US and Hill & Knowlton’s Corporate Reputation Watch, an annual survey of chief executives across North America and Europe.

The Guardian published a supplement, ‘The Giving List’, showing which of the UK’s top companies give most, and least, to charity¹. The BBC Radio 4 consumer programme You & Yours debated the topic twice in three weeks. All signs of increasing awareness of the importance of community investment.

Marsh, the risk consulting and insurance services company, has recognised the role that CSR considerations may play in the management of business risks and has developed a methodology (reputation@risk)² to help companies assess the related up- and downsides. This is an area with overlap between unusual bedfellows – the government, the City, insurance companies, PR agencies, social marketing agencies, MR agencies and others. An odd, but fascinating, brew.

This area is coming of age, and tools are needed to evaluate what is being done. Are our marketing bodies doing enough to promote approaches that will help organisations choose appropriate beneficiaries for their support, promote CSR initiatives and track their success? The Marketing Society plays a significant role, with Business in the Community (BiTC), and the Chartered Institute of Management-published Paradox in Marketing; an Inquiry into Sustainability, Ethics and Marketing, but it is questionable whether marketing bodies are fully supporting the role of marketing services in CSR.

We believe that the area of companies’ corporate social responsibility and community involvement is becoming critical for today’s consumer and, therefore, for companies. We need, then, to develop tools of the trade (maybe tools originally developed in relation to other marketing disciplines), to help companies evaluate CSR initiatives and measure their effect.

INEXPENSIVE SUPPORT

Companies do not want to spend a great deal on marketing support for CSR activities – this is a challenge. What can we do to provide them with professional and honed marketing tools while keeping our costs down so that the main spend can be devoted to community engagement and ‘good works’?

This may be an area where smaller companies such as Good Business, Just Business, The Good Brand Works (social business consultancy), Cause and Effect, Octagon, and our own company, Response Consulting, can help. Sophistication at a low cost is the name of this game.

WHERE TO START?

Companies need help in this area. As an article entitled ‘City slackers’ in Corporate Citizen³ said, many companies do not know where to start:

‘A big stumbling block for a lot of companies is where do you start. How do you choose the charity when there are a plethora of organisations out there? This is a topic that’s very current and lots of companies are thinking about it.’ (D Hamilton-Lewin, director, Heart of the City, an initiative by the Bank of England and others to mobilise resources for local communities and charities.)

In the City, less than half of all companies run any form of community programme. Although £283 million is given annually in donations, most of this is in cash and this does not necessarily best support the brand or the company. Other approaches, such as staff engaging in community volunteering, secondment and work placements, gifts in kind, and setting up cause-related marketing (CRM), can be more productive for both the cause and for the company than the donation of money.

It is difficult, however, for smaller companies to get started and find help. They may feel they lack imagination or resources. There are also opponents of CSR. Charlotte Denny of the Guardian said:

‘The real horror is that firms will burden themselves with unnecessary costs which reduce their competitiveness.’

These are areas where research and evaluation have a role to play. Proving that your CSR programme is actively supporting your brand, maintaining and raising your profile, motivating your staff and other stakeholders, and having an impact on profitability, all ensure that you can demonstrate that the expenditure is worthwhile.

HOW RESEARCH CAN HELP

For an overview of measurement systems, see page 48 of Weiser and Zadek’s Conversations with Disbelievers⁴. In a chapter on measurements, they list the research systems available in the US for measuring corporate reputation and social equity. The parameters of each are given, as are the pros and cons. These research tools mostly concern themselves with overall corporate reputation, reflecting strength of management, industry leadership and financial astuteness. Typical studies include Fortune Most Admired, Corporate Equity Performance System, GCI Corporate Brand Study, CoreBrand Analysis, Reputation Quotient and Corporate Reputation Report.

Reputation Quotient is being launched in Europe, and provides an index for companies to compare themselves in the corporate reputation stakes. But what of other tools available? Several are still at the development stage, but worth knowing about. Key players in this area are the London Benchmarking Group, MORI and Response Consulting. A new evaluation tool worth watching is the Social Equity Index (SEI), a model developed by The Good Brand Works with Martin Callingham (academic and commercial researcher) and Response as consultants⁵. This offers a unique understanding to companies wanting to know how their social investment is working, what matters to consumers on their social radar, and how brands, companies and sectors are performing relative to each other.

THE SEI MODEL

PROVING THE BENEFITS OF CSR

Aside from the SEI (which is new to the market), what else can help companies in this area? BiTC has published a lot of research that is available free in short format or in full, for a small sum. There is much helpful research (conducted pro bono by Research International for BiTC’s CRM office), on cause-related marketing and what such promotions are contributing to companies and the community. At the recent BiTC Cause-Related Marketing Conference⁶, two excellent research papers were given: first, the Corporate Survey 111 (Research International) looking at how CEOs see CSR, and how CRM is developing; and a paper by MORI on Corporate Social Responsibility, the view from Europe.

Research shows that many more company CEOs understand the important role played today by CSR, with 70% of CEOs ‘seeing CSR as an essential issue’. The Research International research also demonstrates that companies are beginning to recognise the benefits of engaging in CSR activities (Exhibit 1).

Benefits are not just to the brand, but to staff morale and staff motivation (Exhibit 2).

The MORI survey reinforces the fact that although companies recognise the benefits CSR can bring, many consumers do not think they are doing enough (Table 1).

TABLE 1: IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: EUROPEAN AVERAGE

'Industry and commerce do not pay enough attention to their social responsibilities'
Agree	58%
Don't know	26%
Disagree	16%
Sample base: All European public (12,162), Sept 2001 Source: MORI – CSR, the view from Europe

The UK is fairly advanced in acknowledging the role of CSR in business activity but this is not necessarily the case everywhere in Europe (Table 2).

TABLE 2: IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: COUNTRY BREAKDOWN

'Industry and commerce do not pay enough attention to their social responsibilities'
Country	Agree %	Disagree %
Finland	75	13
UK	71	10
Portugal	66	4
Italy	64	10
Switzerland	63	19
Spain	62	17
France	60	9
Belgium	57	25
Germany	47	17
Sweden	46	19
Denmark	44	20
Netherlands	40	32
Sample base: All European public (12,162), Sept 2001 Source: MORI – CSR, the view from Europe

It is intriguing to hypothesise why the Dutch are so indifferent – do they not see CSR as part of a company’s role, or are Dutch companies already performing so well as to make greater contribution less valuable? One suspects the former, though would wish it to be the latter.

RESEARCH AS SCENE-SETTER

Such research sets the scene. It allows us to understand how businesses and consumers look at companies and how they are ‘behaving’, and to measure changes in opinion over time. It allows us to understand better what the benefits of CSR activity and corporate good behaviour can be, and to gauge commercial pay-back as well as the advantage to the community. It gives us a benchmark to monitor activities and benefits in the future. It is helping validate CSR and its role for today’s companies.

BiTC has been a sponsor of much research in this area, and has a ‘business impact on society’ assessment formula that looks at how a company performs across 50 key indicators. This can act as a ‘prompt’ to companies, to ask some critical questions: How is social or community relation activity spread across the company? Where is the company contributing strongly/weakly? What impact is the programme having? The indicators are divided into five areas: marketplace, environment, workplace, community and human rights, encompassing the basics of CSR and how an organisation relates to its environment.

Another measure is a new model, CASE: Corporate Assessment of Social Engagement, recently developed by Response Consulting⁷. This looks at measures such as staff awareness of CSR initiatives in a company, their involvement in them, and the impact on the staff. CASE offers a simple way of examining key stakeholders, so that a review of a company’s activities and their effect can be conducted using internal and external measures. We recognise the need for inexpensive research, and to use as much existing evidence as possible, to avoid costly large-sample research. Building on research a company already has – brand image monitors, customer satisfaction trackers, employee surveys – is the best way to accrue a wide-screen picture that reduces the need to undertake a lot of new research.

So research can measure your programme over time and in comparison to others. However, many companies are still slow to evaluate: as Roger Cowe wrote in the FT⁸, ‘company information on social issues is often long on promises and short on detail – many of the companies driving this new vehicle [social reporting] seem to have taken to the road with no instruments’. ‘Reporting data,’ he says, is often ‘on an incredibly narrow range of parameters’. Both Railtrack and British Airways have been criticised for such selective reporting.

These are weighted to employee measures; other measures advocated by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development focus more on sustainability. The GRI are publishing recommendations next summer: this, alongside BiTC’s new Impact on Society recommendations, may bring clarity to currently murky waters.

There are further areas where research can play a role, and this reverts to how companies ‘get started’. Evaluation comes at the end of the cycle, but a major problem confronting companies, especially smaller ones with fewer resources, is how to start in the first place – to find a suitable partner, a suitable cause with affinity between both parties.

FINDING SUITABLE PARTNERSHIPS

Here qualitative research helps. Quantitative research can provide norms, benchmarks and statistical reassurance, so companies know they are going in the right direction with their CSR programmes, but qualitative research early in a programme can save tears later. If companies do not find the right cause, charity or community partner, they can find themselves locked into unhelpful relationships. Worse, they can create a negative impact on the brand through cynical exploitation of a cause (linking with a health charity to imbue your cereal with health benefits) or inappropriate links (like the outcry over a margarine brand and the Princess Diana Memorial Fund). Thorough research early on, testing consumers’ and staff views about possible partners, is worth considering.

The need for qualitative research does not end here: it can play a role in checking public opinion when a CSR or CRM programme is ongoing. We recently did this for Avon, which has been supporting breast cancer charities for ten years through its Crusade Against Breast Cancer, one of the UK’s longest-running programmes. Avon undertakes regular reviews using both qualitative and quantitative research. The questions this time concentrated on four areas:

In short, was the company right to carry on with this programme and, if so, what should be done to maximise its effectiveness?

The research demonstrated that both cause and beneficiary charity were right. It showed how much Avon’s CRM activities increased customers’ warmth towards the company and how this particular CRM initiative mattered to customers. This endorsement, and reaction to some proposed new developments, enabled Avon to enhance its plans. The groups cost only a few thousand pounds, but could have saved many more if the plans had not been well received or if the cause had ceased to be the most appropriate. The results of the qualitative research were then tested in quantitative research and enabled the company to develop future plans for the crusade, safe in the knowledge that this was the ideal CRM activity for it and that it is achieving business and ethical goals.

A recent article in Corporate Citizen by Ed Williams, head of CSR for Marks & Spencer, explains how the company is aligning its community involvement programme with the business. It believes in research and in piloting programmes before they roll out nationally. For example, the M&S initiative, ‘Ready for Work’, under the BiTC umbrella, offers a two-week work experience placement and an M&S ‘buddy’. Successfully piloted in London during 2001, it is being rolled out in the next year. The support that M&S provides under three broad themes – health, education and learning – was identified via discussions and research with stakeholders, including a number of charity partners. Thorough examination of the best fit between M&S and possible beneficiaries meant that the company has a scheme it can be proud of and one that appropriately supports its community involvement programme and reinforces its business goals.

CONCLUSIONS

We face great challenges as an industry in designing and developing research methodologies, both qualitative and quantitative, to meet today’s corporate citizenship needs. Companies need to understand what is happening in consumers’ and opinion formers’ minds, and to have early warning of social issues that concern them, of what is on people’s social agenda. They also need to know how they are seen to perform in terms of corporate reputation, and with regard to social attitude and behaviour in particular. They need to know how they measure up against others in their sector, where they are pioneering or lagging behind, and they need to know who to partner, what community involvement to offer and how to design the most effective programme. They need to evaluate what benefits the CSR programme is bringing and where the gaps are, and they need to know how the programme is being delivered across the company and whether some parts of the company are over-delivering and others under-delivering. Finally, they need to be able to plan, deliver and to evaluate. Good research can help in all these areas. Can we do it inexpensively and affordably? We think so – but that is the challenge.

April 2002, Issue 427

Market Research’s Role incorporate Social Responsibility

INEXPENSIVE SUPPORT

WHERE TO START?

HOW RESEARCH CAN HELP

THE SEI MODEL

PROVING THE BENEFITS OF CSR

TABLE 1: IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: EUROPEAN AVERAGE

Sample base: All European public (12,162), Sept 2001
Source: MORI – CSR, the view from Europe

TABLE 2: IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: COUNTRY BREAKDOWN

Sample base: All European public (12,162), Sept 2001
Source: MORI – CSR, the view from Europe

RESEARCH AS SCENE-SETTER

FINDING SUITABLE PARTNERSHIPS

CONCLUSIONS

REFERENCES

April 2002, Issue 427

Market Research’s Role incorporate Social Responsibility

INEXPENSIVE SUPPORT

WHERE TO START?

HOW RESEARCH CAN HELP

THE SEI MODEL

PROVING THE BENEFITS OF CSR

TABLE 1: IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: EUROPEAN AVERAGE

Sample base: All European public (12,162), Sept 2001 Source: MORI – CSR, the view from Europe

TABLE 2: IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: COUNTRY BREAKDOWN

Sample base: All European public (12,162), Sept 2001 Source: MORI – CSR, the view from Europe

RESEARCH AS SCENE-SETTER

FINDING SUITABLE PARTNERSHIPS

CONCLUSIONS

REFERENCES

Sample base: All European public (12,162), Sept 2001
Source: MORI – CSR, the view from Europe

Sample base: All European public (12,162), Sept 2001
Source: MORI – CSR, the view from Europe