Impact Of Corporate Social Responsibility On Brand Equity In The Retail Sector Of UK

Overview of Corporate Social Responsibility and brand equity

Background of the Research

In the modernized market environment Corporate Social Responsibility enhances the public demand for the disclosure of information so as to establish the transparency of the firms and thereby meet the expectation of the stakeholders (Huang et al., 2014). Coupled with the omnidirectional spread across overall business Corporate Social Responsibility had always been a major topic of research to the modern researchers since the last few decades. Brand equity on the other hand can be regarded as the commercial value that is derived from the perception of a consumer about a particular brand of a product or service rather than the product itself (Kang et al., 2017). According to Guzmán and Davis (2017), brand equity can be characterized as the value premium that a firm derives from a specific product with a recognizable name while compared to generic equivalent. This specific research work will make an attempt to derive the relationship between corporate social responsibility and brand equity. That is whether corporate social responsibility can enhance the brand equity of an organization or not. There are evidences that CSR plays a crucial role in enhancing the brand value of a firm (Pai et al., 2015). Hence it could be stated that increased brand value will also increase brand awareness and the people will be able to derive more value from the brand perception.

The broader aim of the research is to determine the impact of corporate social responsibility on brand equity of the retail sector of UK.

The objectives of the research can be summarized as follows,

To get an overview of the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and how the organizations use it

To determine the factors impacting over the CSR practices of the organizations.

To develop a broader understanding of brand equity.

To determine the impact of corporate social responsibility on brand equity

Research Questions

The research questions are designed in accordance with the objectives of the research and these are stated as follows,

What are the key factors affecting the effectiveness of CSR?

How the organizations in the UK retail sector use CSR?

What is brand equity?

What is the relationship between corporate social responsibility and brand equity?

Concept of Corporate Social Responsibility

As pointed out the stakeholder theorists it is a justifiable managerial activity to invest time and other relevant resources of the firm for resolving the concerns of the stakeholders. This actually acts as the building block of corporate social responsibility (Hur et al., 2014). Numerous researchers have defined CSR, however, the most appropriate definition that perfectly explains the concept of it is the one provided by World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). According to WBCSD, CSR can be characterized as the continuous and rigorous commitment of the businesses to contribute towards economic development and while at the same time improving the lifestyle of the workers and their families and working for the betterment of the society at large (Bravo et al., 2017). Generally CSR has always been considered as either a philanthropic activity or an innovative way to achieve tax deductibility. As defined by the Brundtland Commission corporate sustainability is that developments through which the needs of the present generation are being mitigated but without compromising the needs of the future generation and ensuring that they would be able to meet their own needs (Gürhan-Canli et al., 2016).

Objectives of the research

Usefulness of Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate social responsibility has become a standard business practice as of now for all the organizations (Eteokleous et al., 2016). The organizations which have committed to CSR practices have become able to enhance their overall reputation. These organizations have become able to make a powerful statement about the purpose for which they are standing often in an unstable business world as well.

The implementation of CSR policy which is sometimes also called as the sustainability strategy is a quintessential component of the competitiveness of the company and it is a component which should be led by the firm only (Singh and Verma, 2017). The implementation of CSR provides the business with a few advantages irrespective of the size and sector of it. The key benefits of implementing CSR can be stated as follows,

Improved brand recognition, which means increased brand awareness and higher chance of acquiring a loyal customer base (Deng and Xu, 2017).

Betterment of the reputation of the business.

The amount of sales and customer loyalty is expected to rise.

Cost savings

The financial performance of the organization will improve (Rivera et al., 2016).

Accessibility to the capital resources increase.

Traditional Conflict Model

The traditional conflict model of corporate social responsibility consider that the social values and benefits are in conflict with the profit of the shareholder. As per this model the organizations which are opting to implement CSR would certainly consider the added cost for conducting this activity (Cha et al., 2016). The proponents of this model argue that business is considered among the trade-offs between moral and economic values and the managers will certainly be compelled to choose between the fiduciary and social responsibilities.

Added Value Model

This model considers that the commitment of an organization towards the society or environment as the method for increasing the profit. This model signifies that through investing in CSR activities socially conscious customers can be attracted towards the organization and this in turn benefits the organization (Wang et al., 2016).

The third model corporates do possess goals beyond the values of the shareholder, incorporating the community enhancement without respect towards the monetary gain.

Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Brand Equity

The literature and researches associated with corporate social responsibility and brand equity defines the corporate social responsibility as the status and activities of the company in reference to the perceived societal obligations. As pointed out by Marín et al., (2016) the cause related marketing process aims at increasing the total revenue of the firm as well as the annual sales through projecting the attribute of social responsibility towards the society. On an added notion, He and Lai (2014), mentioned the fact that maximum number of brand managers portray the concerns of the consumers for the responsibility of the business as a tool towards protecting the competitive advantage. On the other hand, brand equity consists of various different elements such as perceived quality, brand loyalty, brand association and brand awareness (Magnusson et al., 2015). The previous research work also substantiate the fact that a projecting an appropriate responsibility towards the society and environment will enhance the brand equity.

Research questions

Research Hypothesis

The research hypotheses that is the null and alternative hypothesis can be stated as follows,

Null Hypothesis: Effective CSR practices positively influences the brand equity of the retail sector

Alternative Hypothesis: Effective CSR practices cannot positively influence the brand equity of the retail sector

Research Philosophy

A research work can be conducted on the basis of a number of philosophical techniques in order to achieve the desired outcome (Lewis, 2015). The present research work is concerned about the impact of CSR on brand equity in the retail industry of UK. Two types of philosophical approaches can be taken into consideration, which are namely positivism and interpretivism.

The positivism approach makes use of the available data, facts and figures relevant to the research issue. On the contrary, the interpretivism approach considers the emotional responses of the employees or people associated with the retail sector of UK regarding the research topic. The feedback of these people can be taken into consideration and then analyzing the organizational behavior would suffice whether the CSR impacts over the brand equity or not. This research work will take into account a positivism philosophy of research. Both primary and secondary data will be collected and presented with the help of graphs and charts would help to evaluate the validity of the research hypothesis.

Research Logic

There are mainly three types of research approaches which are namely inductive, deductive and abductive. Inductive research approach is used when there is a new theory or concept is developed through the research work (Flick, 2015).  Information can be obtained effectively from different sources and at the same time new theories are also invented during the research. The researcher then becomes able to deduce the idea behind the theory from the other theories available. More appropriately, it can be stated that the inductive approach is more concerned about developing new ideas emerging from the data. This approach is mainly used with the qualitative research works.

Deductive approach on the other hand is used when the theories and models used in the research in order to deduce the desired outcome of the research have previously been presented. In this case the researcher can make use of different theories and models in order to deduce the outcome. The theories which have been used by the researcher should be mentioned clearly in the research work (Flick, 2015). This means that the deductive research will begin with a predesigned hypothesis and the researcher makes use of the relevant theories and models for substantializing the hypothesis.

Benefit of implementing CSR policy

The present research work will be based on deductive research approach and it will take into account the theories and models specified by the researches and thereby give rise to a new notion in the genre of impact of corporate social responsibility on brand equity in the context of the retail sector.

Research Methods

Two types of research methods are there which are qualitative research and quantitative research. The qualitative research is another form of exploratory research. This research method is manly used to develop an understanding about the opinions, motivations and the underlying reasons behind the research issues (Silverman, 2016). The key advantage of this research method is that it provides a broader insight of the research problem ad helps to develop a hypothesis which in turn could be used for further quantitative research. Qualitative research is also used to unveil the ideas and though process of the researchers and thereby dig deeper to the though process.

Under the quantitative method of research problems are mainly quantified with the help of generation of numerical data which on a later stage transformed into relevant statistics. It is used to quantify opinions, attitude, behavior and other defined variables. Through this the results obtained from a larger sample population can also be generalized with the help of this method (Smith, 2015). This specific research work will use quantitative research method only.

Data Collection

In order to complete the research work mainly two types of data will be collected which are primary data and secondary data. The primary data will be collected in the form of response from the participants (Lewis, 2015). The research will take into consideration 145 number of respondents who will be associated with the retail sector, 5 managers of the top five retail companies of UK will also be interviewed to evaluate whether the research hypothesis is true or false. The secondary data will be collected through reviewing books, journals, case studies, company publications and websites. The data available from these sources which will be relevant to the impact of CSR on brad equity. As a part of the secondary research various theories and models available in this regard will also be studied.

The feedbacks from the end of the employees will be collected through questionnaire survey. The employees will be provided with a relevant questionnaire where they will be required to provide their opinion regarding the impact of CSR on brand equity. There will be multiple choice questions and the customers will have to choose the most appropriate alternative according to them. They will also be asked to rate different aspects of CSR or brand equity on a scale of one to five. The key issue of collecting primary data through questionnaire survey is that the respondents may not be willing to respond spontaneously. However, to cope with this issue the respondents are asked for their consent to take part in the survey and after obtaining positive response from them the questionnaires are provided to them over mail.

Theoretical models of Corporate Social Responsibility

Simple non-probability random sampling will be used in this research work as the number of respondents are known from the very beginning of the research.

Data Analysis

The primary data will be presented and analyzed with the help of the software like MS Excel, SPSS and EViews. Primary representation will be done on MS Excel, the data will be sorted and prepared for further analysis. Descriptive analytical tools will be used to obtain significant results from the data collected. As the number of respondents is significantly high it will be difficult collect descriptive answers from them. Multiple choice questions will provide a brief overview about the impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Brand equity. The descriptive statistics analysis helps to identify the key features of the data collected through non-probability sampling.

Challenges and Limitations

It is expected that the researcher will face a few difficulties and challenges while conducting the research work. The first and foremost anticipated challenge that the researcher will face will be regarding the data collection method. The respondents sometimes may feel reluctant to respond to the questions and may not provide appropriate feedbacks. It may also be the case that they are not getting enough time (Lewis, 2015). Getting permission for carrying out the survey is another time-consuming process. Another important aspect of collecting the secondary data is not all the secondary data is available over the internet. Most of the websites used to provide limited access and paid subscriptions are required to access all the available data. The limited financial funding poses significant threat before the researcher as primary and secondary data collection both may be an expensive activity.

Ethical Issues

During the collection of primary and secondary data a few ethical guidelines should certainly be maintained. The researcher should ensure that none of the participants of the primary study were forced to provide their responses (Silverman, 2016). Moreover, they would not be threatened to provide favorable feedbacks as well. The researcher will also ensure the fact that the personal information of the respondents are not exposed or used for any personal or professional purposes. The personal information have not been published directly anywhere in the entire paper because the researcher is bound to comply with the data protection act. If there arises a situation where the information regarding the customers are needed to be published the researcher will certainly ask for permission from the respondents.

Relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility and brand equity

In the context of the secondary research the researcher will appropriately cite the works of the previous researchers which have been utilized for the present research work. On the other hand, the researcher will not use case studies and company reports which are older than 5 years. Data will only be collected and used from the trusted sources. Moreover, the researcher also ensures that no academic malpractice will be there.

Task	Start Date	Completion Date
Meet supervisor to discuss proposal	Jan 2018	April 2018
Draft 1	Feb 2018
Amendment Made	Feb 2018
Proposal 1	March 2018
Human Ethics Approval	March 2018
Conduct literature review	April 2018	Continuous till report is finalized
Develop Research Instrument	April 2018	April 2018
Data collection	Jun and July 2018	Aug 2018
Data Analysis	Aug 2018	Sept 2018
Writing up	Sept and Oct  2018	Nov 2018
Submission	Nov 2018

 

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