Matching Companies' CSR Efforts with Consumers' Perceptions

Abstract: Issue of the study: Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is becoming a normal part of every corporate’s business. Companies are putting a lot of effort on sustainability and social responsibility due to an increase in regulations and demands from different stakeholders. Though there exists a gap between how much effort the companies put on CSR and how consumers perceive these efforts. Some companies work actively with CSR but are not perceived as sustainable companies by the consumers. Other companies do not put a lot of effort on CSR but are perceived as sustainable. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the gap between Swedish companies’ CSR efforts and the consumers’ perceptions regarding these efforts. Thus, identifying which factors and how these factors affect the gap. Method: The thesis is a qualitative study based on literature review and empirical research. A literature study is first performed to form the basis for the empirical research. By examining earlier literature and theories about what is known about the problem, the framework of the empirical study was formed. Firstly, in order to demonstrate the gap of the Swedish companies, a quantitative research is performed to measure the companies’ CSR efforts and compare it to the consumers’ perceptions. Secondly, in order to identify and analyze the factors that affect the gap a qualitative empirical research is performed. The qualitative research involves interviews with five Swedish companies and three focus group discussions that are held. The aim of the interviews is to study how the companies work with CSR and what factors associated to these companies affect the consumers’ perceptions. The aim of the focus group discussions is to examine the relevant factors to the consumers that affect their own perceptions and to what extent these factors match the factors identified under the interviews and literature study. Conclusion:There exists a gap between Swedish companies’ CSR efforts and consumers’ perceptions. This gap is characterized by varying but low values of consumers’ perceptions compared to relatively high but uniform values of CSR efforts. This indicates that low level of external communications among the Swedish companies is one of the factors that affect this gap. Moreover, the gap depends on different factors that are directly connected to how companies work with CSR, their level of integration of CSR in their companies and how they work with sustainable communications. The gap is also influenced by other factors such as the companies’ relations to their stakeholder, the industry the company belongs to, the brand, the reputation and the trust level.