CSR to boost brand image
Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on online
presence and reputation of a brand.
A company project for
e
Farmer
Name: Mohit Wadhwa Student Number: 11868465
Date: August 15th, 2018
Abstract
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a booming topic today. It has been elucidated and conceptualised by various writers, researchers over the period of time and its importance is constantly evolving. The growing awareness regarding environmental and social issues has increased the competition between business. It has provided an urge to the corporations to be more sustainable and socially responsible brands. It has become a strategic process and hence is important for the businesses to integrate it with the overall business strategy in order to have a competitive edge over others.
Researchers have identified that CSR affects consumers through company evaluations (Sen & Bhattacharya, 2001). This effect could be in the form of brand awareness, brand reputations, customer loyalty etc. This research investigates the effect of an effective CSR initiative on brand’s online presence and its image.
The organisation that is considered for this study is eFarmer. It is a budding startup with its headquarters situated in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The study is conducted with the application of strategic frameworks and theories along with the short case surveys taken by the company’s customer base.
The effect is studied between the CSR actions of a company , namely- sustainable and philanthropic on the online presence of the company and the attitude of the consumers towards the brand.
The result shows that if the CSR actions are communicated strategically to the required audiences, there is a positive impact on its online presence and its image. Through successful communication of the CSR initiative- “Save the bees”, eFarmer was able to generate positive associations towards the brand and also was able to increase the traffic on various online platforms. The study also provides a foundation for further research and a set of recommendations for the company to consider the importance of CSR and its effect on the overall brand value.
Table of Contents
Abstract 2
List of figures 5
I Introduction 7
A. What is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) ? 7
B. Consumers, Brands and Corporate Social Responsibility 8
C. About eFarmer 9
D. Research question and Business issue 10
E. Scope of the study 11
II Literature Review/Underlying Theory 12
A. Brand Equity and Brand Image 12
B. Corporate Social Responsibility and Brand Image 16
C. CSR Initiative, fit with the organisation and communication strategy
17
III Frameworks and Models 18
A. Model to select a CSR initiative and how to communicate it 18
B. Theoretical Model to measure the relationship between CSR and Brand Image
20
IV Research Design Methodology 23
V Analysis of the organisation 24
A. About the company 24
B. Products and Services 25
C. Targeted Markets 26
VI Application of Framework and Models 29
A. Selection and Communication of CSR initiative 29
B. CSR and Online Traffic 36
C. CSR and Brand Image 43
VII Conclusion 47
VIII Recommendations 49
IX List of references 52
X Appendix 55
A. Interview questions asked to the founder in order to internally analyse the organisation.
55
B. Survey-1 Questionnaire 56
C. Survey-2 Questionnaire 56
D. Different types of associations received in Survey-1 56
E. Different types of associations received in Survey-2 57
F. Comparison between positive associations from both surveys
List of Figures
S.no Figure Description Page No.
1 Brand Equity Model Aaker (1991), Source: Aaker (1991,1996) 14
2 Keller’s Brand Knowledge Model, Source: Keller, K. L (1993) 14
3 Model to select and communicate a social purpose for eFarmer 20
4 Model to measure the online traffic and image of the brand (eFarmer)
21
5 CSR Selected Dimensions 22
6 Components to measure the Brand Image 23
7 Simple guide to eFarmer products 26
8 Different ways to use FieldBee 27
9 CSR Brand Strategy Framework, Source: Vallaster ea(2012) 31
10 Different ways to explore social ideas applicable to a company 33
11 Step-by-step application of the model for effective CSR communication
36
12 Visitor report for the month of February, 2018 38
13 Detailed report for the month of February, 2018 38
14 Visitor report for the month of May, 2018 39
15 Detailed report for the month of May, 2018 40
16 Effect of CSR on online traffic of the brand 42
17 Graph displaying importance of CSR amongst consumers of eFarmer
43
18 Chart describing % of various associations received before CSR communication
19 Chart describing the effectiveness of CSR communication 45
20 Chart describing % of various associations received before CSR communication
46
I. Introduction
This section would describe and introduce the reader to the topic of the study. This chapter consists of description about the related terms to the study, a brief background about the chosen company (case study), research question, business issue and the scope of the underlined project.
A. What is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) ?
European Commission 2001 and Aguinis & Glavas, 2012 states Corporate Social Responsibility as a concept whereby companies integrate social and environmental concerns in their business operations and in their interaction with their stakeholders on a voluntary basis and in a context specific way.
Corporate involvement in the society could be responsive or strategic (Porter & Kramer 2006). An organisation could be socially responsible by mitigating existing unfavourable effects caused by various organisational activities or by creating a strategy that is aligned with the firm’s strategy which would lead to competitive advantage for the organisation and at the same time benefits the society. The businesses today are focusing more on corporate responsibility strategies to achieve various goals of the company and to tackle complex social problems such as environmental sustainability,good working practices, philanthropy etc.
Organisations like Xerox are supporting multiple causes such as Green World Alliance, Community Involvement Program to name few and they are investing money in various such social programs. They have integrated this culture in their organisation and with the way they do their business.
Big brands like Microsoft have always been praised for its social responsibility efforts. It has served and worked with various issues such as working with non-profit organisations, government, educational institutions, partnering with small businesses , doing voluntary work etc.
CSR is not only an important strategic topic in big corporations but also amongst small and medium sized enterprises. For example, European SMEs today are involved in various social
responsible causes. The degree of involvement tends to reflect the size of the enterprise, ranging from 48% amongst the very small enterprises to 65% and 70% amongst the small and medium sized enterprises respectively (EU Survey).
The question now arises is: “Why are companies these days so much invested in CSR?” , be it a small business or a well established brand. They all want to come across as a green, sustainable and socially responsible brand.
A study conducted by Kenexa High Performance Institute, London in 2015 states that organisations that are committed to CSR significantly perform better than the others with an average of 19 times higher returns on the assets. Along with the economic gain it also stated that such companies tend to have a better employee engagement and customer service standards than the others (David Woods, 2014).
Companies are very much focused today to integrate their CSR strategy with their overall business strategy. They are quickly adapting to the fact that corporate social responsibility is imperative to the businesses today. It not only helps increase the business in terms of revenue generation, investments, partnerships but also increases the public image, media coverage, employee engagement, attracts and retains talent etc. For companies, being associated with CSR gives an impactful and powerful statement to others, who they are and what are their believes, in this critical business world.
B. Consumers, Brands and Corporate Social Responsibility
Today Corporate Social Responsibility is one of the most discussed topics. It does not only affect the businesses but also the society as a whole. The emergence of CSR has led to the investigation of CSR in relation to many other aspects such as community, loyalty and consumer-company fit (Peloza & Shang, 2011).
Consumers are those assets to a brand that can help them generate a positive result from every relationship they build and every transaction they create with them. CSR initiatives can play an important role in order to create that positive outcome in the form of internal outcomes (e.g., awareness, attitudes, attachment) and of external outcomes (e.g., word of
mouth, purchase, loyalty) for not just the company, but also the consumer and the CSR issue/cause (Bhattacharya, C.B. and Sen, S. ,2004).
Companies today can amplify positive brand image, decrease the bad reputation and change the consumer’s attitude towards them by actively supporting or encouraging CSR practices or initiatives in their strategy. This would help brands improve economic gains and address sincere social concerns (Ellen et al., 2006).
This research document discusses two areas of marketing - Corporate Social Responsibility and consumer brand image. There has not been an in- depth research done on the correlation between the two- CSR and Brand Image. However, various researches portray that there is a positive relationship between socially responsible brands and consumers attitudes towards them. The document will explain the relationship between two by the means of an organisation named “eFarmer”.
C. About eFarmer
eFarmer B.V.was created in 2014 to serve the high demand of cost effective- high precision “navigation system”. It is a medium sized enterprise that constitutes of highly experienced engineers from various fields such as mechanical, agriculture and developers from IT background with more than 10 years of experience. They are a robust community of altruistic people inclusive of farmers who want to cultivate the future of agriculture together. Their initial project was crowdfunded and was successfully launched with the help they received from farmers. They build high precision farming products, to increase efficiency and to promote sustainability of food production. They develop products and services that are inexpensive and easy to use.
eFarmer has almost 70 employees working in two different locations- Amsterdam and Ukraine. The headquarters are situated in Amsterdam, Netherlands and most of the development team sits in Ukraine. The founders of the company Michael Utkin (CEO) and Alexey Bogatyryov (CTO) got the idea to start their firm through a spin-off from one of the largest IT systems integration companies in Eastern Europe where they were colleagues. They realised the importance of cloud systems in the field of agriculture and decided to run
the idea through farmers owning small to medium sized farms. While visiting those farmers, they realised how difficult it is for them to afford a simple automated system that would make their lives a bit easier.
They noticed that the basic need of a farmer is an efficient and an affordable navigation system. It was surprising for them to know that the there are lot of farmers out there who do not have access to streamlined GPS for precise positioning even today. Even though this technology has been available from years, but only 5% of the agricultural machines worldwide are equipped with it. The farmers want to adapt to the latest technology and make their work more effective. However, the main issue remains the same- “cost”. While brainstorming and figuring out a solution to their problem they stumbled upon the idea of developing FieldBee- cost effective, high precision navigation system.
Their goal is to make precision agriculture available for every farmer.
D. Research question and Business issue
eFarmer does not have significant online presence and social responsibility factor. The organisation is doing quite well in terms of the sales of its products. They are able to meet the goal in terms of the revenue generation. Even though company wants to come across as a socially responsible firm, to promote sustainability in terms of food production, wants to develop products which would help serve the society,wants to support a cause by donating to some charity but they have not taken much actions with regards to that.
Moreover, the company’s online presence, in terms of social media engagement, digitisation etc, is low, for example they do not have proper social media channels up and running, they do not have one centralised system to support customers, they are not able to attract much traffic to their website and other online channels. A web search for a business that does not show much details about what they do, why they do and how they do it along with the various activities that they are taking part in , makes it look like that business is way behind the times and does not have a strong relationship with its customers. They want to create a good web presence for eFarmer- a brand which is talked about, a brand which has a good reputation, a brand which is loved by its customers.
They want to create a strong brand presence and at the same time make a global impact by using their technology, expertise and network. They want to take a CSR initiative to spread awareness about the “endangerment of bees”. They want to guide and inspire their customers by spreading the “Buzz” about these humble creatures. They believe in making a consequential and a sustainable contribution by being conducive to positive environment change.
The study would show that how an organisation can gain positive reputation and online presence by having a strategy that would direct them in a direction of “giving back to the society”.
The research question is “How does an effective CSR initiative affects consumers’ perception towards a brand (eFarmer) and help increase its (eFarmer) online presence?”
E. Scope of the study
The deliverable of this study is a set of guidelines and recommendations for the creation of a strategy to present the brand as socially responsible and increase the brand image by increasing the brand awareness through the means of online channels. The study aims at providing eFarmer with ample guidance on how to increase its online traffic, which channels to select, which CSR initiative to chose and how to nurture and grow the brand overall.
Key deliverables of the company project:
● Set of recommendation for choosing a CSR initiative,
● Creating a communication strategy for the brand inclusive of socially responsible factor and
● Creating strategy for increasing online presence of the brand.
The company is well underway to take further steps into launching a product that would reflect the CSR initiative they adopt. The study would have an important effect on the future of the company, the importance of this strategy is high. The company has realised the significance of including environmental and societal sustainability goals in their strategy creation, mission, and various operations.
II. Literature Review/Underlying Theory
This section would describe the different literature work, theories , frameworks that are relevant to answer the research question.
A. Brand Equity and Brand Image:
According to Grönroos (2007), the three main objectives of marketing are acquiring
customers, retaining customers and expanding the customer base into a strong customer
relationship. It is important for firm to being able to incorporate “people” factor successfully
while formulating any marketing strategy in order to build a powerful brand which further
reflects a firm’s competitiveness, increases customer loyalty, increases brand equity.
According to Aaker (1996) brand equity is the assets associated with the brand that provides
a value input to the firm and its customers through its various products and services. He
further describes brand equity through five major components, also shown in Figure 1: ● Brand loyalty
● Brand Awareness ● Perceived Quality ● Brand Associations
● Other Proprietary Brand Assets
However, Keller (1993) defines brand equity as the differential effect the brand knowledge
has on customer response to brand marketing activity- more from a customer’s perspective.
According to Keller, the customer based brand equity could be measured through brand
knowledge. Keller(1993) has broken down the concept of Brand knowledge in two
components, also shown in Figure 2 - Brand Awareness which refers to brand recall and
recognition and Brand Image which refers to the strength, favorability and uniqueness of
different kinds associations for the brand.
Brand image can be defined as the perceptions that a consumer carry about a brand. It can be measured by the various brand associations that are held in consumer’s mind. According to Keller(1993), the associations could be further divided into categories such as:
● Attributes - Product related and Non- Product related;
● Benefits - Functional, Experiential and Symbolic; ● Attitudes
Keller defines attributes as the detailed features of a product that provides a character to it. Non - product related attributes are generally the external features related to the purchase or consumption of that product or service such as price, packaging, kind of customer that consumes the product, usage imagery etc.
eFarmer is a customer centric organisation. They want to build a positive attitude for the brand. They want to measure that through the consumer’s response on the CSR actions that they are going to take. Hence, in order to answer the research question, Keller’s model is best suited than Aaker’s model. As discussed above, Keller’s model measures the brand value through customers’ perspective towards the brand.. Also, the research question talks about the perception towards the brand, in order to answer that the we would be measuring the “Brand Image” factor of the Keller’s model.
According to Blattberg and Wisniewski (1989), price is a crucial attribute association to a product as consumers may identify the product category knowledge in terms of the price tiers of different brands.
Keller (1993) states that the user and the usage imagery attributes are generally formed directly through customer’s personal experiences or indirectly through word of mouth. The associations that are usually related to these attributes are generally categorised into factors such as demographics, psychographics, time of usage etc. Keller also referred these attributes as those that generally end up producing attributes that talks about brand personality.
The associations are also judged based on how favourable they are towards the brand. These associations are generally created if according to the consumer the brand has attributes that suffice his or her needs and creates a positive attitude towards the brand.
Figure 1: Brand Equity Model Aaker (1991), Source: Aaker (1991,1996)
The other factors that evaluates the brand image are the strength and the uniqueness of the associations that a brand generates in consumer’s mindset. The strength factor depends on how much a consumer think about a certain information provided by a brand and whether that information generates a positive or a negative outcome. Hence if a consumer is easily able to explain on the importance of the brand information, the strength of the associations created is much stronger in consumer’s mind (Keller 1993).
The uniqueness of the associations depend on the unique competitive advantage that a brand provides over its competitors that allows the consumers to choose their particular brand (Aaker 1982). Hence if a brand has strong associations that are favorable towards its products and services and are also unique to the brand, it generally creates a successful brand with a positive brand image (Keller 1993).
According to Keller (1993), a strong brand image results to a positive customer based brand equity and also to a positive customer experiences. Hence it is very important for organisations to be able to communicate their brand with a favorable brand image that develops positive associations towards a brand. It is very important that consumers are able to identify the brand in the way the marketer wants to present i.e the brand should be able to clearly communicate its values to the customers that it creates a positive and concise perception in their mind by creating trust, affection, closeness towards consumers which is indeed a challenging task (Keller, 2007).
It is not an easy task to develop a positive brand image. It majorly depends on what kind of message a brand is trying to convey. It is required by the marketers to make sure that the brand is able to develop a positive relationship with the customers through these brand messages. Whether a customer perceive that message in a way that creates positive brand association and further creates positive brand image is still difficult to maintain (Grönroos, 2007). However, the marketers should keep trying to create messages by putting themselves in consumer’s feet, that meet their expectations and their values. According to Popoli (2011), customers find social values very significant and these social values are generally portrays CSR that can create a positive brand image and a strong brand relationship.
B. Corporate Social Responsibility and Brand Image:
Currently customers have high expectations and demands from companies especially CSR related expectations. They want companies to be socially responsible by addressing various social and environmental issues. What companies are doing to be more responsible has its effect on the overall brand reputation amongst the consumers.
Brand awareness could be considered the aspect of both social and emotional values that a brand could portray or communicate to the consumers through its products or services. According to Martinez (2014) brands which are based on emotional values are likely to be more prone to competitive dissolution and CSR could be considered as an emotional aspect of the brand image which could increase a company’s competitive advantage. CSR could also act as a shield to the scam attacks on the brand and can help protect the brand from damaging. According to Casado Diaz et. al (2014) , a strong brand with CSR integrated strategy could be able to maintain good reputation in the market.
CSR integrated strategy or CSR initiatives could help companies creative positive attitude of consumers towards a brand and which further influences the company’s overall brand image (Bhattacharya and Sen,2017). According to WU & Wang (2014), CSR is one of the major characteristics that has a positive impact on brand image and has become one of the major necessity while formulating a strategy preferably over the strategy that would only has an effect on customer’s social values alone.
Customers are tend to make favorites if a company is strongly involved in CSR initiatives (Casado Diaz et. al. 2014). If a consumer is able to perceive an organisation as socially responsible, it would automatically has a positive impact while assessing the products’ qualities. According to Casado Diaz et. al. (2014), consumers presumes that if an organisation is socially responsible the quality of work and products/services is high in that company.
There has been studies that state that CSR has a good influence on a brand’s image and which further leads to increase in brand loyalty from customer’s end and also states that a strong
brand image increases the brand awareness and also the purchasing intentions (Martínez,2014).
However, it is crucial to understand what CSR cause fits an organisation and how exactly these responsible actions being conveyed to the audiences in order to develop a better brand image. Consumers today are knowledgeable, they care about being sustainable and hence CSR plays a very important role in creating an image for a brand that is positively influenced by the consumers.
C. CSR Initiative, fit with the organisation and communication strategy:
Today, every organisation have understood the need to become socially responsible. Hence, it is very crucial for an organisation to choose an initiative or a cause that represents the correct “fit” between the company, the cause and the consumers. Fit could be defined as a “viewed link between a cause and the firm’s product, its reputation, targeted market and/ or market position”.
According to Becker-Olsen, Cudmore & Hill (2006), perceived the level of fit influences how much thought people give to a relationship, the specific types of thoughts (positive/ negative), evaluation of the two objects. The higher the “fit” is , it is easier for consumers to relate the cause to the brand and also creates positive responses from the consumers end.
The fit could be explained through theories such as attribution theory ,that is, it is important for consumers to understand the “WHY” firms are supporting a certain cause rather than “WHAT” cause they are supporting. Hence it is required by firms to be able to communicate the message clearly to the consumers.
Even if there is a high fit with regard to the cause and the brand, if the “why” of the doing is not conveyed clearly through a company’s marketing efforts, it might lead to consumers being subjected to misled CSR initiatives or messages.
According to Mark R. Kramer (2018) the companies usually fall in the one fit trap and end up making same mistakes while communicating their good deeds to the audiences. The
companies need to realise their targeted audiences and should create the tailored made communication strategy focused individually on then.
The author describes four different categories of the audiences and the strategy to communicate the CSR initiatives to them:
● Corporate watchdogs ● Employees
● Investors ● Customers
Consumers usually form assumptions and gain expectations from the ethical behaviors of the
firms(Creyer, 1997). Consumers are more likely to buy products or indulge in brands that
have a good reputation. They understand whether a company is socially responsible or not
through advertising, word of mouth or through various campaigns that a company promotes.
This eventually help companies gain a positive brand image.
III. Frameworks and Models
This section would explain different frameworks that could be used in order to measure the relationship between brand image and Corporate Social Responsibility. It is essential to understand the different elements that fits best in the case of eFarmer. The study is divided into two major components:
● To select and communicate the CSR initiative that is a best fit for the organisation (eFarmer).
● To find the effect of that CSR initiative on the overall brand image and its online presence (eFarmer).
A. Model to select a CSR initiative and how to communicate it:
Today, most of the companies are putting their best foot forward to satisfy the social responsibility expectations that the stakeholders have from them. Companies must be able to
address CSR and their brands strategically, whether as entrepreneurs, performers, vocal
provided by the author , above categories could help position a brand with key initiator being
CSR based on the level of involvement, integration(Vallaster ea, 2012).
The company must work on an important social issue and should be able to take a stand in the
time of need, otherwise things will just get lost in noise. To make sure that the organisation
has chosen a correct CSR initiative that shows a high fit with the brand with the means of
attribution theory.
According to Rodríguez Vilá & Bharadwaj (2017), a company should select a social purpose
rhat add values to a brand by strengthening existing brand assoications and by adding new
business adjanceies. The company should be able to avoid any sort of negative associations
that might come along with that social purpose. By doing so organisation would be able to be
authentic with the purpose and also would be able to avoid risk.
Rodríguez Vilá& Bharadwaj,2017 also states that companies could get an idea about what
purpose to chose through brand heritage, customer tensions (related to brands) or product
externalities (related to category).
It is very important to be able to communicate the CSR cause or initiative in order to build and sustain the legitimacy of an organisation for the various stakeholders. Mark R. Kramer (2018) describes various audiences and ways to communicate the CSR strategy to them. However, for this study we would focus only on “Customers” as the audience. By advertising a simple point of sale message such as “100% recycled material” may make a difference but
it won’t necessarily impact broader perceptions of the company’s brand (Mark R. Kramer,
2018).
According to Mark R. Kramer(2018), in order to be able to truly impress the customers, a
company should be able to prove their strategy not only by means of advertisements or
campaigns but also by its visible actions. The consumer should be able to know about the
brand’s work majorly the news media and not only from paid advertisements or sustainability
reports. By combining the three theories, the below model (Figure- 3) will be used in order to
Figure 3: Model to select and communicate a social purpose for eFarmer
B. Theoretical Model to measure the relationship between CSR and Brand Image: For this study the theoretical models consists of two main notion - Brand Image and Corporate Social Responsibility. The model used for the research is majorly based on already developed theories from previous research. CSR component of this model is derived from Carroll’s Pyramid of CSR components and Triple Bottom Line Model as shown in Figure-4.
From both the models , the components which are valid or required for our research are used. The three components that have been removed from the model are Ethical,Legal and Economic as customer’s CSR assumption could be measured through philanthropic responsibilities alone , the two responsibilities, Legal and Economic, are the necessities that corporations need to act upon (Perez and Rodriguez del Bosque 2013).
The philanthropic component is referred to as voluntary activities that are done by organisations and that vary from one industry to another (Carroll, 1979). According to Ottman (2011), people care about the planet and consumers are scared about what planet would be left with to offer for the coming generations i.e consumers see sustainability as one of the major factors, hence from Triple Bottom Line Model sustainability factor is considered for this research.
Figure 4: CSR Selected Dimensions
Even though, according to Carroll (1991), sustainability component is regarded to be the part of ethical dimension but we would consider it as a separate component due to is importance today amongst the consumers. In CSR today, the two major components that are considered important are the social and environmental activities or initiative that a firm is undertaking. Along with the underlying literature, the effect of these two dimensions- Philanthropic and Sustainability on brand image would be studied.
The concept of measurement of brand image is multidimensional and there are hardly any strong agreement on how to measure this factor in the various researches that have been performed till date in the field of marketing and branding. A research by Wu and Wand in 2014 states a strong relationship between CSR and its effect on brand image. In their research brand image was evaluated through dimensions such as functional, experiential and symbolic dimensions which represents Keller’s dimensions, attitude and benefits, of brand image (CBBE model). Keller (1993) defines brand image as " recognition about a brand as shown by the brand associations generated by consumer’s mind”. Hence to measure the brand image in a holistic way eFarmer could consider all the three factors that Keller describes in its model- attributes, benefits and attitudes as shown in Figure-5.
Figure 5- Components to measure the Brand Image
However to measure the brand image through CSR initiative for eFarmer at the present stage, we would consider associations related only to attitude dimension of the Keller’s model as we would be measuring the perception generated by consumers alone after the brand communicates its CSR initiative.
Moreover, various associations are measured through favorability, strength and uniqueness
towards the brand. For this study, the scope is limited to measure how favorable these
associations are in terms of eFarmer.
There are several studies that show the positive effect of CSR on brand image and to some
extent to brand awareness also. This altered model will be used as a base framework to
understand the perception of consumers’ towards eFarmer in terms of positive or negative
brand associations as well as online traffic of the brand.
By applying the below model to the case study we would see whether CSR actions -
sustainable or philanthropic, would increase the online traffic of eFarmer and would also
Figure 6: Model to measure the online traffic and image of the brand (eFarmer)
IV. Research Design Methodology
The research is designed with both components included in it- qualitative and quantitative. It is designed based on Robert Yin’s Case Study Research design (2003) . The qualitative component is created with the help of literature research, peer discussion and interviews and the quantitative component is using data from the organisation’s reports and short surveys.
The qualitative analysis of the literature review is performed to answer the research question partly- “How to effectively select and communicate a CSR initiative?” and to answer the question -” How does CSR affects the image and online presence of a brand?” , quantitative analysis is performed.
The study is based on a single case study on the company named eFarmer and its customers. The frameworks used to answer the research question are based on the existing theories and are applied to this particular case in order to gain insights and be able to make predictions for further recommendations for the organisation.
For internal analysis, the information was provided by the founding partners of the organisation in the form of multiple interviews, internal reports and in company presentations to gain as much insights about the organisation as possible related to the subject. The
company was also reviewed from an outside view by interviewing and asking few clients and partners to analyse the online traffic and awareness of the brand.
In order to gain insights about the market segments, customer segments, brand positioning, online presence, resources and capabilities, core competencies, competitive advantage etc. desk research was also performed.
One-on-one interviews were held in a semi structured way with the CEO and marketing manager to understand what company stands for and what is the vision for the brand as a whole. These interviews helped understand and gain insights about strategic positioning of the brand and to understand the alignment of the company’s core values with the mission and vision of the organisation.
Part of the research consisted of conducting interviews with its customers and employees with the means of surveys, feedback and even telephonic conversations to understand the customer’s perception about the brand. The part of it consisted of conducting one-on-one interviews with the famous social workers to understand the depth of the social purpose that eFarmer chose to work with and for. The interviews with these people helped understand the intensity of the social cause eFarmer wanted to select and what measures are already being taken to help serve the cause.
In order to find the effect between CSR and brand image, two short surveys were conducted before and after the CSR initiative was communicated to the customers. The surveys were conducted with the same sample size and the exact same audience, both the times, in order to increase the reliability of the results and to gain better insights from the answers received in both surveys.
V. Analysis of the organisation
The below section does the in=depth analysis of the organisation based on the interviews conducted with the CEO and marketing manager. The section would help understand the mission, vision, goals, values, products and market of the brand in order to gain insights about the overall brand strategy and the customers that brand deals with. This would help
position brand with CSR integration in a better way and also would provide a means to understand the various social purposes that this brand can indulge in.
A. About the company
eFarmer creates innovative solutions to help farmers increase yield, save time and resources, and automate the workflow. It is a budding start up which was born in 2014. The team consists of IT developers and engineers with more than 10 years of experience in IT as well as in agricultural industry.
They as an organisation wishes to make farmers’ lives easy by building precision farming products in order to increase efficiency and to promote sustainability of food production. They want to develop products and services that are affordable and uncomplicated.
They want to help farmers by giving them the right tools at the right time. They desire to reach these farmers by providing them with tailored made solutions for their farms that would help them to be more productive and eventually be able to reduce their effort. Their main goal is to make precision agriculture available for every farmer.
Usually the big multinational companies offer expensive, complex products that only the biggest farms could afford. They want to ensure that small and medium farms have the ability to take full advantage of the new technological solutions too. In order to achieve this goal, they focus on creating products that are:
● Affordable ● Easy-to-use ● Upgradable
Their values reflect the culture and the soul for their organisation. They live through them
and are the strong basis of how they are as a company. They believe in: ● Customer Commitment
● Quality
● Entrepreneurial Spirit ● Accountability
They want to be a socially responsible organisation by creating an impact that could help
tackle a social cause. They want to make a sustainable contribution to the problems causing
the environment change with the means of their technology and expertise.
B. Products and Services
Currently, the product portfolio consist of the eFarmer application, the FieldBee GPS-RTK system and the newest addition, the automatic steering system. All these stand-alone solutions can integrate into a single system.
Figure 7: Simple guide to eFarmer products, Source: https://www.efarmer.mobi
The easiest way for the owners of small farms to start moving towards precision agriculture is to start with a simple solution, for example using their smartphone and revise applications made for farmers. It is also important to start with a technology that is upgradable in the future. The eFarmer app allow users to manage all field operations in one place.
Users can :
● Add their own fields to the system by defining its boundaries on the map ● Perform precise driving with tractor in various patterns
eFarmer has developed an easy-to-use, affordable RTK-GPS system, called FieldBee which is suitable for farms from the size of 10 hectares for all field operations.
The system offers:
● high accuracy; ● easy installation; ● easily transfer and ● is upgradable
The Automatic Steering system with RTK Accuracy provides user with built-in terrain compensation, high number of tractor models, different installation modes are available, high quality and easily interchangeable feature.
Figure 8: Different ways to use FieldBee , Source: https://www.efarmer.mobi
C. Targeted Market
eFarmer wants to focus on the small and medium farms by providing those farmers with an affordable and high quality products.Their targeted market segment is the one at the bottom of the pyramid. They want to do that by going direct to market, by passing the mediators in the supply chain. They believe that by using direct online channels and direct sales they are able to eliminate the distributor cost by 40% and hence are able to provide their customers with low cost and better products. Their this strategy has helped them increase their sales channel and reach various countries throughout the world.
The eFarmer tractor navigation app has been downloaded by more than 100,000 farmers all around the world. The FieldBee system is sold in 31 different countries to name few- Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Ukraine etc. In the future, they plan to continue their mission to bring the newest technologies to the market and ensure that every farmer can benefit from these solutions.
D. Conclusion of Internal Organisational Analysis
By analysing the organisation internally - its mission, goals, values, product portfolio, market
segment it can be concluded that the organisation has a lot of unique competitive advantages
in terms of the products and services that they provide as compared to the other firms in the
agriculture industry with similar products.
While conducting the interview with the marketing manager, the important insight that came
across was the company’s low online presence. Even though today they have a good
relationship with the customers but as the business grows it would affect the standards of
their customer service if they continue to act this way. In order to being able to market
themselves better and have a proper communication with the customers, even to meet their
customers’ expectations, eFarmer needs to develop its online base. The operations of their
businesses are not much affected by not being that strong digitally, however they are lacking
an overall brand image that would affect the business as a whole going forward - the way
businesses are expected to be according to its customers.
They abide by their values in the way they serve their customers and want to create a positive
change for the farmers. They do want to come across as a socially responsible organisation
but they still lack that factor. They care about the environment and the society which is clear
from the way the whole idea of the business came at the first place. They wanted to help
farmers with the products that would ease their lives. They want to be able to give something
back to the society. Hence, they want to focus on a CSR strategy and incorporate that with
their business strategy. Their mission and vision statement talks about sustainability but it is
not yet could be seen in any of the activities they perform. This internal analysis could further
VI. Application of frameworks and models
This section will apply the selected models and theories to the case study of eFarmer in order to answer the research question.
A. Selection and Communication of CSR initiative:
In order to answer this part of the study, qualitative analysis is conducted by applying the
theories/models to the case of eFarmer.
CSR brand Positioning:
Companies engage in CSR and CSR branding either to generate or to protect value. The
generation of value could mean either gaining economic value or social value through CSR
that would directly or indirectly affects the brand value. (Vallaster ea, 2012).
eFarmer wants to create social and economic value through their products and services. The
company is a start up and still new to the market. They want to present their socially
responsible footprint amongst the consumers they serve.
They want to indulge in CSR initiatives or social causes for ethical, value based reasons and
not only for the visibility factor. The inner beliefs of the organisation and the founder are
aligned to build a sustainable community. According to the research by Vallaster ea (2012),
the there are two main types of trigger that drive CSR awareness as brand tactic:
● Market based - The companies want to satisfy their stakeholders expectations and
market needs to create a brand that is come across as a socially responsible brand.
● Values based - The companies want to be create economic as well as social value
for the brand usually aspired by the individuals’ values which are incorporated in the
organisation’s values.
Based on the internal analysis of the organisation and on the factors mentioned by the author
in his research (Vallaster ea, 2012). It could be stated that eFarmer’s drive to be a socially
The brand does not have a negative publicity or are not included in any kind of scandal. Their
main focus at the moment is just to create value. They want to create value through CSR that
would affect the brand value in one way or the another.
Being in agriculture sector and understanding the needs of the farmers, they want to support a
social cause that is closely related to environment.They want to create a link between the
CSR and its brands keeping their focal point on an environmental dimension. They want to
associate their brand with some betterment to the community factor. They want to give back
to the society.
They want to indulge these values in their overall business strategy and also want to make
sure that they exist not only at organisational level but also at individual levels.
According to Vallaster ea (2012), there are two ways in which an organisation can indulge
into CSR into their strategy- CSR as an add on and CSR as ingrained. They are basically
referred to as level of integration.
● CSR as an add-on - In such cases corporate social responsibility is always an add-on
and it remains as an outlier. It is only communicated whenever it is needed , usually in
case of value protection and it is not reflected in the overall business strategy rather
remains as a completely separate unit.
● CSR as ingrained - In such cases CSR is fabricated and incorporated to the corporate
culture and the overall strategy. It also associates the brand strategy with the CSR
strategy in order to generate value be it economic or social.
eFarmer wants to create a CSR strategy that reflect their company’s culture. They want to
create a positive brand value by imbibing the cause in their work practises. One such example
of their values is while recruiting people it is very important for them to be able to find the
right fit for the team, for the organisation, someone who carries the similar core values as that
They want to be able to associate their brand with the cause and want to make sure that CSR
is ingrained into the organisation culture which would further help defining the brand strategy
along with CSR strategy. Based on the research by the author (Vallaster ea 2012), it can be
stated that eFarmer wants to create a CSR strategy that has a high level of integration i.e they
want to formulate a CSR strategy that is ingrained and linked to the brand.
eFarmer wants to create a brand identity around CSR. The founder and the employees
embraces to be sustainable in their day to day life. They want to engage themselves in
activities that would pursue non-profit objectives. They want to be authentic and come across
as a sincere brand who cares about the environment and the society. One such example of
them caring about the society is that their whole product portfolio is developed around the
idea of providing precision farming products to every farmer possible. Their products are not
expensive as that of big corporations yet they are of high quality.
As discussed previously in this section, eFarmer wants to generate economic and social
value by supporting a social cause that is inclined and ingrained with its overall company
culture and brand strategy.
According to the strategic CSR brand framework , the various factors of the framework
applied to eFarmer could be described as below:
● Initiator- Values-based
● Objective- Value generation
● Level of Integration- CSR as ingrained
eFarmer wants to be good and be responsible. The want to gain economic value with the
means of doing something good for the society and they want to reinforce their authenticity
of their moral ideas to their audiences as a brand. Hence we could position eFarmer as a CSR
entrepreneurs based on the framework provided by the author. They want to adopt CSR as part of who they are and what they do (Vallaster ea 2012).
CSR initiative:
It is expected by consumers from brands to not only have functional benefits but also a social
purpose. Hence, companies are taking social stands in very visible ways (Rodríguez Vilá &
Bharadwaj, 2017). These stands is all well and good, if everything works in the favor of the
organisation. But there are high possibility of things going wrong which can have big
consequences. Hence it is very important to choose an initiative or a cause carefully.
According to the research by Rodríguez Vilá & Bharadwaj (2017) , a brand can get ideas
about the CSR initatives through three domains:
● Brand Heritage - Through brand heritage, and the most common benefits that a
brand offers to its customers, the managers could actually identify the social issues
that a brand could address.
● Customer Tensions - The social issues that might be important to the customer base
an organisation is serving could help a company with a broad list of ideas.
● Product Externalities - By understanding the products’s externalities or the indirect
costs borne or benefits gained by a third party as a result of your products’
manufacture or use can help organisation an idea about social issues a firm can tackle
eFarmer’s very initial project was crowdfunded by the farmers- their customer base. They
believe that they are for the farmers and by the farmers. They want to address their problems
and help make their lives easier. Hence, based on the strategy the “Customer Tensions”
domain was explored.
Figure 10: Different ways to explore social ideas applicable to a company
When we talked to the farmers to understand their day-to-day life, a lot of problems came on
the table, out of which one was the ban of pesticides by the European Government in order to
prevent bees from dying.
Since World War II Bee’s population has declined to almost twice of their size.I n the last
decade 30% of the bees have died, 20 years ago it was 15% and if it continues, we will lost ⅓ of our products that depend on bees’ pollination.
It is scientifically proven that there are pesticides namely neonicotinoid that are not suitable
for bees. The European Union issued a ban on three different kinds of neonicotinoids -
clothianidin, imidacloprid, and thiamethoxam, which prohibited its use in flowering crops
these three neonicotinoids to all the field crops as the decline in the population of domesticated honey bees and other wild pollinators has been increasing (Stokstad, 2018).
Where this ban is a small step towards saving these pollinators, at the same time it is a huge problem for the farmers. When discussed with the farmers, mainly eFarmer’s customers,
about this ban, they said that these pesticides are important for them to help protect the crops
from damaging. Moreover, the various pesticide manufacturers and few other farming groups
stated that this ban by European union would definitely result in the fall of crop yields (International Edition, The Guardian,April, 2018).
eFarmer realised the depth of the issue that the farmers and beekeepers are facing. They
wanted to help their customers and at the same time wanted to address a social issue through
their products and services. In order to do so, they decided to support the cause “ Save the
bees” by developing an additional feature in their eFarmer app - “BeeAlert” , that would
allow farmers to notify their nearby beekeepers about their spraying operations, so that the
beekeepers could move their beehives somewhere else.
In addition to this new product they also decided to support the cause initiated by the non
profit organisation- “Greenpeace” by donating them a certain amount of sales they would
generate every year.
To test the idea of the feature a lot of feedback was taken from the customers, mainly farmers
and few interviews were also conducted with the famous social workers who support the
cause. The farmers could relate to this problem and stated that this feature would help them in
their work. By understanding a few problems that a customer faces, eFarmer was able to
narrow down to a cause that they could support- “Save the bees”.
CSR Communication:
eFarmer’s main focus for now was to help their customers and at the same time create a
social value for it. It was very important for the organisation to being able to communicate
They decided to spread the message through the means of social media and personal website
blogs. They wanted to make sure that the right message is being spread to the right audience.
The customers would want to understand the “WHY” of the cause and how would it affect
their relationship with the brand.
Promoting a company’s CSR work through social media channels converts people who think
about a company “neutrally” to “positively” (IBM corporate publication,2017). As the whole
idea was developed to help their customer base along with spreading the “Buzz” about the
endangerment of bees, the response to it was positive. The customers could relate to the issue
as it was something they themselves were experiencing.
The organisation decided to start by educating their customers about the depth of the problem
through the means of social media channels and personal website blogs. They started
distributing their customers with a regular newsletter with its main focus on the activities that
a company is doing in order to support this cause. They posted pictures and wrote blogs about
the same on various channels. They created an educational video for the customers to spread
the message about the cause they decided to support. The team decided to visit few farms as
well as beekeepers personally and talk to them about the issue and the app feature. They
educated the farmers about the importance of bees and how they are at the verge of extinction
today.
All these efforts proved to be fruitful when an agriculture magazine talked about the activities
and the things that eFarmer was doing to be a pillar for this cause (Mark R. Kramer,2018).
The customer or general public could understand that the company is not just about words but
they are actually putting their best foot forward to make a difference. The same was also
proved through the means of survey, the result of which will be discussed, in detail, later in
this section. Around 91% of the respondents were aware of the cause that eFarmer is
supporting and the message that they wanted to convey to the audience. By analysing
consumer trends through customer’s suggestions, problems etc., by understanding their
customer base, by involving their customers through regular feedback, surveys, polls etc, by
selecting a cause that reflects the company’s believes, eFarmer was able to successfully
launch and also about the initiative that they are supporting. The below figure summarises
the whole theories/model, to be able to select a suitable social cause and to be able to
successfully communicate it , applied to the case study of eFarmer:
Figure 11: Step-by-step application of the model for effective CSR communication
B. CSR and Online Traffic:
This section would analyse and apply the framework to figure out the effect of CSR actions
of eFarmer on the online presence of the brand and also on the overall perception that a
customer carries about the brand once the social cause of the brand was communicated to
them.
eFarmer decided to support the cause “Save the bees” and took few sustainable and
philanthropic actions towards the same. They have decided to join the cause initiated by
Greenpeace organisation and have decided to donate a certain amount of money that they
would generate through sales every year to the cause. The company successfully
communicated this message through newsletter and social media posts to their customers.
Moreover, they have also decided to develop sustainable products and services by using their
expertise and technology. When the idea of the “BeeAlert” application feature was put
forward to the farmers and beekeepers, the response from both was way more positive than
eFarmer had a very low online presence before it had indulged itself in the CSR initiatives or
social causes. eFarmers uses Google Analytics as the tool to measure the online traffic of
various digital channels it has.
Through the reports over the months, it could be seen that there is a huge difference between
the number of new users visited, the number of users visited again on these channels before
and after the company communicated about the social cause they are going to support. The
news about the social actions was communicated to the customers in the month of April,
2018.
To analyse it further, let us see few of the reports/graphs from the month of February, 2018
and May, 2018. The reports and the graphs display the number of users visited through
various channels such as organic search, direct, referral, emails etc along with various in
depth description about new and old users, bounce rate, average time spent on a web page,
time per session, conversion rate as per the goal set by the company in those months etc.
The below report shows the total number of users in the month of February, 2018 when the
brand was not associated with a social cause. The amount of users that visited through
various channels such as email, social and other are very less. The total number of visitors for
this month were 665 users out of which only 14.1% of users came through organic search that
is the number of online visitors who browse the page without paid advertisements and
distribution.
The online presence of a brand somewhere influences the perception about the brand as well
as the purchasing behaviour of that brand amongst the consumers. The way a brand portrays
Figure 12: Visitor report for the month of February, 2018
The above figure shows the detailed description about the new users and returned visitors.
Around 72% of the users were the new visitor to the brand and rest were the old ones. The
average amount of time that a user spent on these pages was about 2 minutes 30 seconds with
a rate of 1.90 pages/session.
The interesting insight from the above information is about the bounce rate. Bounce rate
refers to the number of visitors who enter and leave the website without browsing further.
This rate in the month of February is about 73% which is significantly high and not at all an
optimal rate. This is probably due to the fact that users are not finding engaging content on
the website and other channels or that there are some maintenance issues that are causing a
slow load time. The optimum bounce rate as defined by eFarmer management would be in
the range of 25% to 50%. It clearly shows that eFarmer is doing something wrong in building
its online presence. For a brand who does direct sales and does not have any mediator to
distribute the goods, the online traffic of it is very low.
The above figure describes the total number of users for the month of May,2018. As
discussed before the communication about the CSR actions of the company were
communicated to consumers through various online channels in the month of April,2018. The
total amount of visitors after the communication were 8097 users with 61.2% from the
organic search. The amount of users from each channels increased significantly as compared
to the month of February,2018 i.e from 665 users to 8097 users.
The amount of users visited through referral in this month were 1030. The number shows the
people who visited the channels through other’s recommendations usually when a particular
information is forwarded to another user. This particular insights show that the users are
talking about the brand and are spreading the word about the brand, which is a good sign for
eFarmer. The brand is being talked about and users are finding the content interesting enough
to actually search for it either through direct channels or organic search or through various
other channels.
The online presence of the brand is significantly improving as compared to the month before
the company decided to communicate their sustainable factor to its audiences.
The above figure describes the new and the returned visitors for the month of May,2018. The
total number of new visitors that a brand attracted after communicating about the “Save the
bees” social cause that the company was going to support were 7,358. Total number of
pageviews for that month were 22,667 which is almost ten times higher as compared to the
month of February,2018. The bounce rate of approximately 71% is still significantly high
and does not meet the requirement of the eFarmer’s management. However, the overall users
ratio compared to previous month was improved.
If we compare the reports from the month of February,2018 and May,2018 ie. the months
before and after the CSR cause was communicated to the customers, there is an increase of
1117.59% (from 665 users to 8097 users a month) in the numbers of users that searched for
the brand online or visited the website, which is noteworthy. The brand which has such a low
online presence could increase its traffic by reaching 7000 and more users search, is a huge
accomplishment.
The number of visitors from all the channels have increased from February to May. The
interesting/important channel to look into is organic search - the visitors who organically
reached the brand i.e the users who searched for the brand themselves and not through any
paid advertisement links by the company. The organic search visitors consumed just 14.2% of the total users in the month of February,2018.
However, there is huge change in the numbers in the month of May,2018. The organic
search consumed approximately 62% of the total users we can say that the brand is able to
create an online image about itself and customers are actually interested to know what exactly
the brand is doing. The another interesting insight is the decrease in the bounce rate from
73% in the month of February to 71% in the month of May. Even though the brand could not
accomplish the goal of 25 to 50% bounce rate, however for a company who has just started to
work on its social channels and online presence , 2% decrease is quite significant.
From the above comparison and analysis, it clearly shows that people got more aware about
the brand once they communicated their social actions to the community. They were able to
