Recent
research from Stanford explores why consumers disregard social
responsibility at checkout – despite the fact that they claim to make
purchases in line with their values and pressure companies to behave
responsibly.

Abstract

Consumers often say
they want to be socially responsible when it comes to buying food,
clothing, office supplies, and the like. But consumers’ noble
sentiments are not often reflected in their actions at the checkout. In
fact, a number of corporations have seen their efforts to sell socially
responsible products fall flat because consumers failed to buy them in
any significant numbers. There are, however, a variety of strategies
that corporations can take to increase their odds of success.

Excerpt

[Edited to reduce length, see full article text with footnotes and complete citations here.]

Becoming a Proactive Organization

Consumers are
clearly an important and complex but overlooked factor in the CSR
equation. That’s why we believe that organizations need to become more
proactive with respect to consumer social responsibility if they want
their corporate social responsibility initiatives to have a greater
impact. The following five steps can get managers started on the way to
being more proactive.

1. Select the social issue(s) carefully. Our
   research reveals that consumers are concerned about very specific
   issues and are unlikely to react to social product features that are
   too broad or that lack functional relevance. It is critical for
   managers to focus their efforts on one issue, or at the most a few
   issues that can be linked psychologically to their product or service.
2. Don’t believe the surveys. Companies
   invariably rely on surveys to determine what consumers want. However,
   most consumers when queried will indicate that they care about most
   issues, as there are socially acceptable answers and the cost of lying
   is zero. What companies should do is find out how much their customers
   are willing to pay for a particular product or service.
3. Don’t underestimate the importance of functional product features. Consumers
   purchase products to fulfill specific needs and wants. They will not
   sacrifice functional features for socially acceptable ones. To be
   compelling to consumers, there must be a clear connection between
   social features and functional features.
4. Communicate to customers using their language. Consumers
   possess little knowledge of the social aspects of products, and when
   confronted with this fact seek out culturally embedded rationales to
   justify their behavior. This observation has two implications. First,
   consumers must be informed in a way that fits with the issues they care
   most about. For example, consumers concerned about child labor are more
   likely to respond to a campaign focused specifically on child labor
   than to a general labor rights issue campaign emphasizing living
   conditions, wages, unionization, and child labor. Second, different
   cultures rationalize behavior differently. An anticounterfeiting
   campaign in China would need to speak specifically to the issues of
   importance to Chinese and would be unlikely to match up with an
   anticounterfeiting campaign in Spain.
5. Focus on the consumers’ natural desire to change rather
   than forcing them to drink from the CSR cup. Effective communication
   should not only make consumers aware of your product’s social features,
   but also educate them about how such choices are better for them,
   independent of the benefit to the society and mankind. It is not your
   firm’s job to make people concerned about social issues, but rather to
   compel them to act and give them the opportunity to reveal their true
   social preferences.

The Other CSR
By Timothy M. Devinney, Patrice Auger, Giana Eckhardt, & Thomas Birtchnell
Stanford Social Innovation Review
Fall 2006