This study investigates how consumer attitudes toward a company are affected by the company?s Corporate Social Responsibility work and their marketing efforts thereof. The Swedish fast food chain ?Max? provides the empirical setting. The theoretical framework for the study is based on Vanhamme and Grobben?s (2009) model regarding CSR?s effect on a company?s reputation, which is connected to perceptions? effect on attitude based on Fishbein and Ajzen?s (1975) theory.

Voluntary organisations provided the first consumer guidance in Sweden. The government'sinterest in the question started during the second world war and has ever since increased.Since the 1970's the local authorities, with support from the community, have played animportant roll in consumer policy work. Due to the economic recession of recent years theappropriation to consumer guidance work has been cut down. The work has been rationalisedand libraries have more frequently been used to spread consumer information.In Stockholm the municipal has been responsible for local consumer information since the1940's. Co-operation with the library of Stockholm has occurred in different forms.

This essay recognizes and criticizes a commonly held assumption that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) functions as a ?savings account of trust? between corporations and consumers. Based on five focus group interviews, the authors discuss how corporations that engage in society can sometimes raise and sometimes destroy the trust of potential consumers. One of our main findings is that CSR seems to raise the expectations among consumers. We then compare this phenomenon with the classical theory of the disconfirmation paradigm.

The environmental situation is becoming increasingly critical. The energy sector and other industries have a big impact on our climate and the public is raising their voice for companies to admit their responsibility towards the environment and society. Companies engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and happily disclose their responsible performance in annual reports. But what messages are they conveying in their CSR-reporting, and what attitudes towards CSR can be found underneath the explicit content? The aim of this study is to discover which discourses exist in CSR-reports from Swedish energy companies, and how these discourses operate.

Sustainability work is something that is emphasized more and more. Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR, is discussed and the question of how much responsibility companies should really take is frequently in the news. Companies tend to ask themselves how much responsibility they should take. CSR is a common concept of companies environmental and social work and a concept we tend to see here and there in our modern society. CSR includes companies? social responsibilities, both in terms of carbon footprint, working conditions, social responsibility and more.

Företags samhällsansvar (Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR) är ett väl debatterat begrepp som uppmärksammats allt mer i bland annat media, men även av företag. Däremot är begreppet konsumenters samhällsansvar inte lika uppmärksammat trots att det finns en interaktion mellan konsumenters- och företags samhällsansvar. Forskare framhåller att det finns bristfälligt med teorier om konsumenters samhällsansvar samt att definitionen är viktig för att fortsätta driva CSR-debatten, vilket gör ämnet relevant att studera. Studien syfte är att med utgångspunkt i samhällsansvarsmodeller på företagsnivå, utveckla en definition och en tentativ samhällsansvarsmodell på konsumentnivå. Slutsatsen baseras på en kvalitativ undersökning utifrån 15 intervjuer samt teorier som behandlar definitioner och modeller om samhällsansvar.

Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att analysera hur framgångsrika CSR-användande företag verksamma i Sverige har utformat CSR-arbetet. Utifrån denna information ska ett ramverk skapas innehållande styrverktyg och styrtekniker för att underlätta företags arbete med att styra CSR-insatser.Metod: Studien bygger på fem intervjustudier som är genomförda på fem framgångsrika företag verksamma i Sverige. Den teoretiska referensramen är framtagen genom akademiska tidsskrifter och böcker. Den empiriska datan är insamlad genom semi-strukturerade intervjuer genomförda på plats och genom telefon.Slutsats och rekommendationer: Resultatet av denna studie visar att den främsta anledningen för de undersökta företagen att arbeta med Corporate Social Responsibility bygger på ekonomiska fördelar. Intressentstyrning är den främsta faktorn för att lyckas med arbetet med Corporate Social Responsibility.

During the latest 50 years, the Swedish porcelain tableware industry has gone from being rather successful to experience significant problems. Our empirical study attributes these problems to underlying changes in consumer buying behaviour, whereas current generation theory supports our findings. The younger generation has significantly different preferences compared to older generations, with less focus on quality and more focus on variability, and there is reason to believe that these findings also are applicable to other consumer purchases. The successful porcelain companies of tomorrow will be the ones that continuously can adapt to these and further changes in consumer buying behaviour..

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a concept that is growing increasingly important, with more and more companies acknowledging that they have an obligation to the environment in which they operate. We were interested in inquiring into why companies chose to do so, even though there are no laws that condition them to engage in CSR. One answer to this might be that companies use CSR as a way to distinguish themselves from the competition as well as to gain trust and goodwill from the stakeholders. When it comes to Corporate Social Responsibility, the question is no longer whether or not companies should engage in it, but how they can gain competitive advantage by doing so. This study aims at providing a framework for possible ways of integrating CSR and branding, as well as different strategies for CSR-communication. We also tried to define how, and why, consumers respond to CSR-initiatives.

Large corporations have come to play a central role in today?s society. By analyzing how corporations describe their work with Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR, my aim is to review how they view and relate to this role. CSR means that a corporation voluntarily takes a civic responsibility beyond that which is required by law. This can be in order to promote human rights, basic workers rights and a better environment, as well as fighting corruption.In order to get at the role played by CSR, I have studied texts dealing with the subject, which have been published on the internet by the five largest Swedish corporations.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of consumer generated advertising as a marketing tool to encourage online word of mouth. Subsequently, the researchers aim to examine if there are certain design factors in consumer generated advertising that influence the effectiveness of consumer generated advertising in encouraging online word of mouth. The study conducts a multiple case study of several consumer generated advertising campaigns. It consists of in-depth studies of these cases in combination with quantitative analyses of the encouraged word of mouth. The different cases are examined on several design factors that could possible increase the volume of encouraged word of mouth..

Cause-Related Marketing (CRM) is a marketing activity that has grown popular in the USA and studies have been carried out that explore how American consumers perceive and react to CRM. In Sweden, however, CRM has not yet found ground to any greater extent, and therefore there is limited research on how Swedish consumers react to CRM and how they perceive it. In this study, eight Swedish consumers are interviewed regarding their perception of CRM. The main findings of the investigation are that Swedish consumers fit well into a model that is based on American consumers? responses to CRM.

Breaking through the clutter and getting consumers? attention is a constant battle for marketers. Could consumer magazines be the solution to the problem? It is not a new marketing method but consumer magazines do not look like traditional marketing and they offer consumers value. Since these are qualities that could increase consumers? will to take part of commercial messages, it might be a method that deserves more attention.

The process of economic globalization has in recent decades increased the power of multinational corporations. In recognition of their powerful position, corporations have begun to adopt Corporate Social Responsibility as a way of managing their social impact. Their interaction with the surrounding society reaches a peak when involved in large-scale projects, such as the Three Gorges Dam in China and the Narmada Valley Development Project in India. This essay analyses the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility in a comparative study between the two cases. By using current research, it focuses on the role of civil society for making Corporate Social Responsibility effective in developing countries.

This study is based on an inductive approach where the collected empirical data has been categorized in themes on which we have based the discussion in this paper. Using a qualitative method, nine appropriately selected respondents were questioned with an unstructured interview guide. The transition to a society characterized by interaction has caused a greater part for bilateral communication between consumer and consumer but also between consumer and company. The increased usage and integration on Internet has resulted in so called social media channels. User generated material is published on these media channels which leads to discussions about companies, products and services.