Marketing Strategy and Competitive Positioning pdf ebook

Source : from ‘Do you want ethics with that?’, The Economist , print 
edition/Business, 02/07/19 (Bartleby).
Discussion questions 
1 
What are the main issues raised here?
2 
How is McDonald’s addressing them?

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INTRODUCTION
to suppliers, distributors and end-customers. Indeed, one writer talks of the pressure on 
business to act with a social conscience and uses the term the ‘Conscience Economy’ to 
designate this imperative (Overman, 2014).
Certainly, it appears that in a post-recession environment when trust in business and 
professional institutions is seen by some to be at an all-time low, the scrutiny and judgement 
of corporate behaviour has reached unprecedented levels. Nowhere in the business is this 
likely to be more significant than in the marketing and sales actions at the front-end of the 
operation, where the company meets its markets.
In the past, it has been suggested that the marketing discipline has adopted a very par-
tial perspective on CSR and that companies need a far broader view of the concept in the 
value chain (Vaaland et al., 2008). A starting point in developing that broader view is the 
Green Paper presented by the European Commission in 2001, which identifies 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’. Moreover, the Green Paper identifies four factors underpinning the grow-
ing attention from executives to issues of corporate social responsibility:
1 
The new concerns and expectations of consumers, public authorities and investors in the 
context of globalisation and industrial change.
2 
Social criteria increasingly influencing the investment decisions of individuals and 
institutions.
3 
Increased concern about the damage caused by economic and business activity to the 
physical environment.
4 
Transparency of business activities brought about by media and new information and 
communication technologies.
It is increasingly clear that business norms across the world have moved CSR into the 
mainstream of business practice. Non-governmental organisations, such as the World 
Resources Institute (WRI), AccountAbility, Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), International 
Standards Organisation (ISO 14000) and the United Nations, all have major initiatives 
aimed at improving the social involvement and performance of the world’s business com-
munity (Godfrey and Hatch, 2007). Indeed, there is an increasingly widespread view that 
sustainability is now the key driver of innovation for companies (Nidumolu et al., 2009). 
By 2014, more than 85 per cent of the companies in the FTSE 100 were reporting on social 
responsibility, and there was a clear expectation that companies should have a published 
strategy in place (Moore, 2014).
Indeed, Rosabeth Moss Kanter suggests that great companies think differently – they 
work to make money, but at the same time they think about building enduring institu-
tions and investing in the future, while being aware of the need to build people and 
society. She claims that this social and institutional logic lies behind the practices of 
many widely admired, high-performing and enduring companies (Moss Kanter, 2011). 
The fundamental goal becomes one of focusing social initiatives onto alignment between 
a company’s social and environmental activities and its business purpose and values 
(Rangan et al., 2015).
CSR, ethics and corporate reputation
In a world that is media-intensive and Internet-literate, where the scrutiny of business occurs 
with an unprecedented frequency and intensity, one important link for executives to consider 
is the one between a company’s CSR and ethical positioning and its corporate reputation 
(Chun, 2005). Companies with strong positive reputations attract better staff, are perceived 
as providing better value, which allows a price premium, have more loyal customers and 
have advantages in financial markets. In economies where 70 to 80 per cent of market value 
comes from intangible assets such as brand equity and goodwill, companies are increasingly 
vulnerable to anything that damages their reputation (Eccles et al., 2007).

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