Corporate Social Responsibility as a Marketing Strategy for Kenyan Firms

Corporate social responsibility is one of the emerging issues in the modern corporate world. It refers to the initiative taken by a firm to take care of the environment in which it operates. CSR emanates from the realization that corporations do not operate as islands. The major motivating factor is the desire for firms to take social responsibility of their actions and mitigate against any harm they might cause to the environment in the course of their operations. However, the trend is slowly changing towards making CSR a marketing tool, instead of just a voluntary environmental consciousness.

One of the most important aspects of CSR is the production of quality products. Firms emphasize on the superiority of their products during advertisement campaigns and this becomes a marketing battleground among competitors. It should be noted that each firm has an obligation to produce and sell quality products. When firms depend on the quality of their products to attract more customers, this strategy becomes more of a marketing tool than corporate social responsibility. By insisting on quality, therefore, they do not do a favor to the society as they claim in their advertisement campaigns.

CSR builds a positive image of firms in the society. This helps retain customers and also attract new clients. In the modern world, the consumer is enlightened and highly selective. This is enhanced further by the availability of a wide range of products. A consumer would rather go for a product from a firm that is environmentally friendly since some of the money he spends on the product will be used to improve his environment. Firms have realized this and therefore publicize their CSR initiative heavily. In Kenya nowadays, it is common to see adverts on both print and broadcast media that emphasize more on what the firm does to the society than how superior their product is.

Kenyan firms have started tagging the level of their CSR initiatives with their level of sales. This is done through contributing a certain percentage of the price of a product to CSR initiatives. For example, a firm may decide to contribute Kshs. 1 to a humanitarian project for every bar of soap purchased. This strategy is then publicized to ensure consumers are aware of it. The incremental profit on the increased level of sales from such strategies is normally higher than the total cost of involvement in the CSR project. To that extent, this strategy becomes a marketing strategy and not purely for CSR.

In conclusion, it is worth noting that whatever the motive behind Corporate Social Responsibility, the society is a major beneficiary. When firms compete through implementation of CSR initiatives, the society reaps the benefits from all of them. However beneficial CSR might be to both the society and the firm, it remains a voluntary initiative, since Kenya has no laws to enforce it. Much more remains to be seen in terms of the direction Corporate Social Responsibility takes in the coming years.