Footnote:
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments 2007 erstellt
Description:
Marketing is a much-misunderstood discipline within the business world as well as amongst consumers and society. This is hardly surprising considering that marketing can appear in so many different guises. King (1985) refers to four such misinterpretations:• Thrust marketing- with its emphasis on selling by undercutting rivals but with little regard to customer requirements.• Marketing department marketing- a so called ‘bolt-on' department aimed at understanding (current) customer needs of current products.• Accountant marketing- the organisation's senior management have no direct marketing experience and tend to focus on short term profits while neglecting long term survival.• Formula marketing- control is regarded as more important than innovation. Tried and tested formulas are used while averting risks where possible.It is conceivable to ‘introduce' social responsibility at any of these levels or categories in order to improve the overall brand image and take genuine steps towards achieving that goal.However, this paper will seek to go further than that and to suggest potential strategic repositioning of the discipline ‘brand' of marketing. This will be done by outlining branding opportunities in terms of CSR impact and the emerging values convergence between Generation Y consumers and vanguard CEO's orientation to social responsibility. Our paper argues that marketing has not only the potential to contribute to an organisation's CSR and is already being employed as a powerful tool by some companies for this purpose. Paradoxically, given the stereotypical views of marketing and its role in business, the discipline is ideally placed today to deliver the CSR and bottom-line gains today than ever before. However, the scope and extent of such contributions can vary dramatically from one firm to another. For instance, in the way that CSR strategies are formulated and implemented, and even more importantly in the types of specific responsibilities that have been allocated to marketing in order to achieve company CSR objectives. The paper will also explain the success, significance and implications of marketing's CSR contribution. For example, in the variety of approaches deployed in order to create, sustain, review and monitor an organisation's CSR branding strategies whilst ensuring consumer values alignment is sustained