Corporate Social Responsibility and Marketing

by Nauman Malik

Socially Responsible Marketing is the concept that evolves the way of marketing by keeping in mind the ethical, environmental, legal, public, social and cultural values and issues of society and targeted market. We can say that social responsibility should be built-in in any marketing campaign and be part of comprehensive marketing and advertisement plan. All marketing means or media should be coherent with targeted market culture and values. And it should be designed and marketed by knowing that how it will affect the life of people and what message it delivers. It’s became very important for corporate companies especially multinationals to keep focus on these things according to countries political, social and moral values for successful market penetration.

Socially responsible marketing helps companies to increase corporate goodwill, building brand awareness, socializing of their corporate messages and ultimately boost in sales. Companies which market products and services without taking care of social welfare and responsibility towards public issues are generally unable to reach at mass level and provide no advantage over competitors. Worldwide initiatives were taken by corporate companies to invest some part of their profit in social welfare.

In current environment the pressure is on businesses to be more socially responsible: to act with integrity and wider social purpose. Social responsibility acts as a chance to build a stronger, more sustainable and responsive brands. Now companies focus on healthy activities with the local issues at the top of the social agenda - and at the forefront of their customers' concerns. This strategy helps to build stronger in root acceptability of their services and products. By highlighting social concerns and vocal strong on these issues, companies can gain higher sales in competitive markets. It’s the plus that can add good percentage in sales and Global companies always focus on these things to boost their sales.

Corporate social responsibility includes:

• Collaborations and partnerships with social organizations and NGO’s
• Public policy issues management
• Cultural change and developing high moral values
• Strategic plans in lining with public policies
• Stakeholders relations
• Marketing and corporate communications
• Community involvement and reaching to mass scale levels

Corporate social responsibility has become an effective strategy to involve firms, large, medium and small, to achieve sustainable development in societies. A large number of firms are currently engaged in delivering social and economic benefits to local communities across the globe. Socially responsible marketing also includes marketing for social cause. Using this Companies help non-government organizations based on the some percentage values of their sales or profits. In many countries by investing on social issues companies can also get tax redemptions and benefit plans from governments. Marketing socially involves direct or indirect help of local societies, charities and working for social organizations that help in poverty elevation, increasing education levels, working for disabled, health improvement programs in rural areas etc. Governments can boost social sector and provide high living standards to deprive rural and urban areas and people using flexible policies for those companies which are highly investing on social issues. Corporate companies generally have responsibility for work and feels empowerment by showing progress in certain areas by direct help.

As an initiative British American Tobacco (BAT), which holds a 15% share of the global tobacco, adopted social marketing plan based on the framework of World Health Organization (WHO) initiatives. Now many tobacco manufacturing companies are following those guidelines to implement social marketing. Already in many counties cigarettes advertisement is banned and it is a strict obligation on all concerns to put health warnings on packaging and advertisement [2].

Same social responsibility applies to misleading marketing campaigns of alcoholic beverages and adult products. It is generally observed that in almost all advertisements, companies show unrealistic results of their products and create fantasy for ordinary people, which contradicts their daily life style. These create the desire in people to get the product without knowing the harmful effects and long term health issues.

Also many local initiatives were taken by corporate and local companies in Pakistan to help children in education sector, women’s in legal issues, cancer patients, and disabled persons and senior citizens benefits. Though there is huge gap in providing these basic facilities to common people and to deprive areas. Government initiatives in social sectors are not as much fruitful as the work done by private sector due to the red tape bureaucracy, corruption and lack of skilled persons to implement the government policies in social sectors.

Initiatives taken by NGO LEAD, Pakistan with Shell and Unilever in Environment Management Systems, Governance, Corporate Social Responsibility & Partnerships and Education [3].

Pakistan State Oil (PSO) business policy to have “Highly ethical, safe, environment friendly and socially responsible business practices” [4]. PSO is involved in initiatives taken by number of NGO’s in different social sectors.

McDonalds, Pakistan, local community programs, like Ronald’s McDonald Children’s Charities for Darul-Skoon and Beach cleaning programs for healthier environment [5].

Unilever, Pakistan, Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives in Safe Water, Health and Education; in education sector company is working with The Citizens Foundation, The Book Group and Alif Laila Society to provide primary schooling to unprivileged children and teachers training programs [6].

Number of social responsibility initiatives taken by Cupola Group; who has the franchise rights of KFC in Pakistan, under its Cupola Care programs for different segments of society [8].

References:
[1] Philip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller, Marketing Management 12e, Pearson Prentice Hall
[2] Bob Burton and Andy Rowell, British American Tobacco's Socially Responsible Smoke Screen, Center for Media and Democracy, http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/2002Q4/bat.html
[3] LEAD, Pakistan, http://www.pcp.org.pk/certified_NPO/CAPITAL/LEAD.pdf
[4] PSO, Corporate Social Responsibility, page 8, http://www.mpnr.gov.pk/yrbook/5.4%20pso.pdf
[5] McDonalds Pakistan, http://www.mcdonalds.com.pk/main1.html
[6] Unilever Pakistan, http://www.unileverpakistan.com.pk/uplrecruit/OurCultureCSR.aspx
[7] http://www.pcp.org.pk/resources.html#NPO%20Profiles
[8] KFC, http://www.kfcpakistan.com/

Comparison between web technologies to build web applications

Compiled by Nauman Malik, Suave Solutions, Lahore, Pakistan
Release Date 08/28/2006

Part-1 ASP.net vs. PHP
In this comparison we will consider PHP and ASP.net strengths and weaknesses to build scaleable, maintainable, efficient, secure and easily portable web applications. This is an independent view based on personal research and facts gathered from different sources. This comparison has no concern with any software vendor or company.

Features	ASP.net	PHP
Backward-compatible with previous versions	No backward compatibility with ASP, completely based on new architecture	Compatible with older versions but not fully due to inclusion of new features with respect to OOP in PHP 5
Flexibility to choose programming language	.Net provides application framework compatible with scripting languages like VBScript, JScript, Perlscript, and Python, as well as compiled languages such as VB.net, C#, C, Cobol, Smalltalk, and Lisp	PHP itself is a scripting language with strong string manipulation libraries and other technologies.
Object-oriented programming	Yes (true inheritance, polymorphism, and encapsulation are supported along with .Net class libraries )	Not a pure OOP language PHP 5 is still with few shortcomings
Database connectivity	Yes (ODBC with database abstraction and other proprietary drivers can be used as well)	Yes (ODBC, Perl’s DBI library and other proprietary drivers available)
Layered Architecture	Yes Clear separation between presentation and logic, which can be extended to business objects (middle/business layer) to database connectivity frameworks.	Moderate to Weak Application can be divided into layers but it all depends on coding style and it is flexible for developers to write code as they want even without using the OOP techniques.
Development Environment	Highly Integrated Integrated development environment with sophisticated debugging. Good controls available for Rapid Application development. Ajax support available	Moderately Integrated Zend Studio by Zend Technologies and other environments. Number of free code libraries available and produced by individual developers and commercial software vendors.
Efficiency and Speed	Strong to Moderate ASP.net is expensive with respect to memory usage due to long code paths. Good memory servers can provide efficient access based on the concurrent number of users	Strong More efficient memory usage and faster execution due to smaller code path. Libraries are available to provide pre compiled versions of PHP pages.
Licensing Price (Platform)	Not Free Licensing price for production environments. Can be solved using host applications on shared or dedicated servers.	Free No licensing for production environment
Application & Web Servers	IIS 5, IIS 6 and IIS 7	Apache and other commercially available servers
Server Security Concerns	Moderate IIS with bad record of vulnerability. Hybrid server approaches available but examples not available on commercial basis	Strong Apache Server with good track record of security features
Licensing Price (Development)	Free No licensing required for development	Free No licensing for development
Cross-platform applicability (Server)	Moderate to Weak Windows Servers, IIS only, Easy to configure and manage	Strong On all major platforms
Open Source	No	Yes
Reporting Engines	Strong Compatibility with Crystal Reports and other Reporting Engines.	Freeware and paid libraries available with limited features and support.

Reference

http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/hull_asp.html
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/php-top-10-net-myths-exposed
http://weblogs.asp.net/bleroy/pages/193608.aspx
http://www.promoteware.com/Module/Article/ArticleView.aspx?id=10 (Good to read)