Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a self-regulating business model that helps a company be socially accountable—to itself, its stakeholders, and the public. By practicing corporate social responsibility, companies can be conscious of the kind of impact they are having on all aspects of society, including economic, social, and environmental. Given the vast array of programs a company could allocate efforts and resources to, our client (a telecommunications company) wanted to identify emerging issues in the community and the environment that are MOST important to consumers – to help guide efforts in choosing which corporate social responsibility programs they should invest in going forward.

We developed a list of 29 emerging issues with the help of our client and secondary research, which were then evaluated by the General Population. Our approach was to utilize a MaxDiff design and TURF analysis (Total Unduplicated Reach and Frequency) to determine which emerging issues are most important to consumers. The output from the MaxDiff gave a preference score and a relative importance for each issue which was used to identify the most important ones. The TURF was used to assess the combination of issues (items) that appealed to the greatest number of respondents (i.e., ensure maximum reach). This was used to identify the combination of emerging issues that has the greatest reach if our client only wanted to focus on a few to invest in.

By identifying which emerging issues are most important to consumers, our client was able to determine which programs and investments they should focus on to help enhance society and the environment, to in turn have the greatest likelihood of positively impacting consumer perceptions of the brand when implemented.