Can corporate social responsibility exist without brand image?

Photograph of consumers and familiar brands
Source: Own Personal Collection

The Question:
This post is more of a question rather than an answer, but I will give my own viewpoint. Although it may first appear that these two terms corporate social responsibility (CSR) and brand image are very similar, they do have different meanings. Corporate social responsibility, loosely, is where a firm or company does some social good that is not required by law. Brand image on the other hand is a way of marketing a good or service that is in line with their reputation or even 'personality' of a brand. So more clearly when I ask can we have corporate social responsibility without brand image is whether a firm will do some social good even if it is not (partly) in their own interests.
  

This question also raises the question of whether corporate social responsibility is intrinsically valuable or is instrumentally valuable. If it is intrinsically valuable then the social good that it creates is good in itself. If it is instrumentally valuable then the social good that it creates is only good if it serves another purpose such as having a positive effect on brand image (like a stepping stone.)So if its instrumentally valuable, then corporate social responsibility may only exist to serve the purpose of a brand image. Can we say that this is true, or does corporate social responsibility have a good in itself.
  

We commonly see CSR and this inevitably influences our decisions on what we buy, where we go and what services we choose. Some people choose to part with more of their money because they know that by buying that product they may be contributing to a 'social good.' This is inevitable. However, I ask, what if we do not know what good or bad firms do by making a product or offering a service, if we do not know whether product A or product B have done some social responsibility or not, would firms really invest into corporate responsibility.
  

If CSR is real then there must be a distinct and fundamental difference to brand image and marketing. That is to say if CSR was to exist, then firms and companies would still do some social good ( like sponsoring a charity or something along those lines.) They would simply do it because they want to give back to society, even if it does not change consumer decisions. If  not then it may be the case that CSR is a marketing tool that creates some social good as a result of trying to get customers to purchase their product or service.
  

The question, I think, remains open for discussion whether firms believe CSR is something worthwhile regardless of cost-benefit, whether CSR is just a way of building brand image or even something that is a combination of the two.

    

My answer:

I acknowledge that there are many different answers and counter arguments to what I say and I accept there will be, this is just what I think.
I believe that CSR cannot exist without brand image. I believe it is brand image that fuels many of the social goods that is generated. I do not regard this as a bad thing as, after all, we get the social good out of effective marketing management.
However, the reason why I do not believe that CSR would exist without brand image is that the firm would have to bear a lot of cost without getting any benefit. Though I believe that CSR cannot co-exist with there being no brand image, some social goods from firms would still arise though on a much smaller and infrequent periods ( to which I would rather describe them as 'donations.') I believe that the scale of CSR would not exist without brand image, even though firms may contribute from time to time.
 
An analogy I would like to make is to one of a volunteer. They volunteer X amount of hours a week, but if they volunteer an extra amount of Y hours then they will get an award and get recognised. Say this volunteer will do the extra hours to get this award, they may not have done those extra hours if their work had not been recognised. However, the volunteer still contributes X even without this recognition. In this sense the volunteer is the firm and the number of hours is the amount of social good they 'create.'
*(Counter point: Some may argue that the volunteer even will not work X amount of hours without recognition, because without recognition a person may not gain from volunteering.)
  

 Although, CSR may work on a smaller level if it was targeted by improving the skill assets of its staff and its potential applicants. Though it's fairly limited to the skill sets of its own employees as the firm may not benefit from the cost if it did not change employability preference as well as customer preference. For example, brand image as well also work for employment as if the potential applicant cannot differentiate between companies on their brand image, it does not make sense to maintain such a cost.

 

"The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits" - Milton Friedman, The New York Times Magazine (13 September 1970)

( I neither endorse nor refute the quote above but rather it is to serve relevance to the question.)

Consumerism as the key to happiness

GDP, Growth, Sales, Advertising and Confidence, these things are all part of our economy but are these too influential I ask? Has consumerism taken the form as progression, ambition and the common goal in life?

To answer this question (briefly) I will try to explain whether the change in consumer habits has changed our outlook in life. For the purpose of simplicity I shall not consider religious arguments as it would raise too many questions, not because it doesn't matter.

First of all we need to know what we need as a comparison, lets take half a century ago (in the 1960s.) Back in those times consumerism is not what we know of it today. There was no real high demand to consume goods such as the latest fashions apart from those who were in the 'elite' of society. So many may observe that these were the times of simple lives without vast amount of consumption. However, I object that this would mean these were 'good times' as we have it better than people had it then. I feel that people are clouded by nostalgia of what it was to live a simple life. Without 'mad consumerism' we picture a scene of a family sitting around a fire reading books, playing games and singing in a jolly way. Almost picturesque until you consider the flip side. Without consumption, choice was limited to those who could afford to pay for it. Scenes alternatively pictured of families eating bread and butter to get by, and even when people had the choice they had the choice of what was stocked in their local shop. So it seems after considering this that people would not so surely reject consumerism as a good thing to have.

However, as always, that isn't always the case. In some ways these mistaken nostalgic persons have a point. The problem of consumerism is that while it has given us choice of luxuries in which we can afford and cannot bare to say no, it has changed how we act and how we view our outlook in life. Whereas in the past many people wouldn't ask for more they could need, restricting their ambition, in recent times people ask for more than they should. This change has led to an jump from people having barely what they need to a situation where greed has clouded their decisions and judgement. To explain why an over-emphasis on consumerism can lead to disaster, I needn't look back no further than the credit crisis. To sum up the growth of the economy gave the illusion of an everlasting world of growth, causing a dangerous boost in confidence. Because of our consumerism nature that had been built up over the years, our time was now to spend spend spend, to live beyond our means and a party that led to a inevitable economic hangover.

Even if you weren't so sure before, I hope that you now consider that consumerism isn't as clear cut. It seems neither good nor bad in itself but the extent to which it improves our lives and the extent to which it dominates our lives. Both extreme saving and extreme consumerism can never be bad, the solution is the middle ground. But where is this middle ground, well if you can answer this feel free to put yourself amongst the top leading economists. The truth is that we have to balance blindfolded at the moment as people try determine the complexities of the economy, market and consumer behaviour.

Note: I will consider different responses in order to further edit this short piece in the future.