Author(s)

Mary B. Frambo, Hans Kok, Bruno Fon

International Business School, The Hague, The Netherlands.

The background for the present investigation is testing the notion that the positive effect of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) on company performance can, at least partly, be explained by the reported synergy between CSR and branding. For CSR to have a positive effect on branding companies’ CSR efforts need to be efficiently communicated to potential customers and potential customers need to be aware of CSR activities of companies or associate specific brands with CSR. We investigated recent video advertisements of globally leading brands for mention of CSR-related themes. Secondly, in a survey, we investigated how far consumers are aware of differences in CSR efforts of these globally leading brands. Our results show that consumers have little idea of the CSR efforts of world-leading brands. Furthermore, the attention to CSR-related themes in recent video advertisements is generally not high and very low for some of the companies.

CSR, ESG, Branding, Marketing

B. Frambo, M. , Kok, H. and Fon, B. (2022) What Do Consumers Know about Corporate Responsible Management? A Case Study of Eight World-Leading Brands and Their Branding Strategy. Journal of Human Resource and Sustainability Studies, 10, 98-110. doi: 10.4236/jhrss.2022.101007.