Mohr, Webb, and Harris (2001) provide a different outlook on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): researching the consumer side of CSR. “Do Consumers Expect Companies to be Socially Responsible? The Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Buying Behavior,” focuses on what consumers conclude about CSR for companies. Corporations have been pushing to implement socially responsible activities to improve their image for consumers. The authors conducted a research project to determine what consumers think about CSR. Conducting 48 in-depth interviews and analyzing a host of variables, it was concluded that the interviewees had positive thoughts towards socially responsible companies and that most of the respondents don’t really think about CSR when wanting to purchase with a company.

I decided to take a different approach with this blog post; instead of focusing on CSR and finance, I decided to focus on what consumers think about CSR. I believe that if we look into the relationship between CSR and finance, we should first know a good deal about what consumers think about CSR, because that is what it is for, the consumers. From my perspective, I enjoyed the fact that the authors went in-depth on what the consumers thought about socially responsible companies, and focused on something that wasn’t really focused on, as stated in their abstract: “…researchers have provided little information on how corporate social responsibility impacts profitability. This paper reports the findings from in-depth interviews of consumers to determine their views concerning the social responsibilities of companies.” (Mohr, Webb, and Harris, 2001) In understanding the consumers’ point of view on CSR, we can better understand CSR ourselves.

Source: Mohr, L. A., Webb, D. J., & Harris, K. E. (2001). Do Consumers Expect Companies to be Socially Responsible? The Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Buying Behavior. Journal of Consumer Affairs,35(1), 45-72. doi:10.1111/j.1745-6606.2001.tb00102.x