The Evaluation And Consumer Responses Toward Food Companies’ Social Responsibility Behaviours

With the development of economy, there is widespread concern related to corporate social responsibility around the world in recent years. However, it is not optimistic for companies to perform social responsibility due to the lack of awareness to corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the late startup of CSR activities. Furthermore, increasing food safety problems in food companies have drawn wide attention of public towards the bottom line of corporate social responsibility.Relevant literatures believe that consumers can decide the survival of the enterprise on the market by using dollar votes, which can urge the enterprise to perform its social responsibility. This thesis focuses on what Chinese consumers think of corporate social responsibility, whether they can respond to CSR and whether consumers’individual characteristics influence the cognition and purchase decision.The main objectives of this thesis are to study the content of CSR of food companies, build evaluation index system to assess the performance of CSR of food companies, and to test food companies’ social responsibility based on this evaluation index system, which can learn the situation of food companies’social responsibility towards the consumers in china. In addition, the thesis is to analyze the awareness and response of consumers towards CSR of food companies and its influencing factors. The main content and conclusions are as follows:First, based on the theories of stakeholders and ISO26000, this thesis identified the content of CSR of food companies and then on the basis of the characters of food industry, the thesis established the evaluation index system for CSR from the perspective of stakeholders including shareholders, creditors, consumers, employees, suppliers, government and community. Using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), the thesis established and weighed the various indicators. The thesis also assigned scores to indicators by using content analysis. Furthermore, applying this evaluation index system, the thesis evaluated the CSR behaviors of Chian’s food companies based on the statistics listed on Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange. The results indicated that the overall situation of food companies fulfilling social responsibility was unsatisfactory, and that apparent differences of fulfilling CSR existed among the food companies. The thesis also found that food companies performed their social responsibilities worst for the consumers.Second, by means of questionnaire data conducted in Jiangsu Province, this thesis empirically analyzed consumers’ cognition to CSR (CSR) and the main influence factors in food industries. The result showed that an overwhelming majority of consumers were concerned about CSR issues in food industries. Most consumers agreed that food companies should take the interests of various groups into account. As for different aspects of CSR in food industries, consumers paid more attention to their own interests than those of the government, creditors, employees, suppliers, shareholders and other stakeholders. And consumers were more concerned about food quality and safety than the other issues, donation least concerned. Moreover, the awareness level of CSR among consumers in China was still low and need be raised. The demographic characteristics of consumers had a significant correlation with consumer perceptions of CSR in food industries. The degree of concern to CSR, consumer’s age, education, occupation, personal income as well as job location were significantly and positively related to the level of the consumer’s awareness. The older the consumer was, the higher the education level was, and the higher the consumer’s income was, the greater the cognitive level of CSR was. The level of consumers’ awareness was also significantly related to their occupation and regional economic development. The consumer groups working at companies and living in developed areas had high recognition of CSR.Thirdly, on the basis of data obtained from the simulation experiment and survey, this thesis examined consumers’ evaluation on food companies’CSR activities, and their responses toward CSR as well as its influencing factors. The results showed that it was higher for consumers’ evaluation towards the food company which has the higher lever of food safety or philanthropic activity, but there were significant differences in consumer’s evaluation among different CSR activities such as food safety and philanthropic activity. Meanwhile, the results revealed a significant interaction between food safety and charity activities, the effect of charity activities varying upon food safety status. Charity donations would get higher consumer evaluation in case the company guaranteed food security. But once there were some problems in food safety, consumer evaluation would sharply decline in spite of the company’s charity behaviors. In addition, CSR activities had a positive impact on consumer’s purchase intention. For those food companies which really performed positive social responsibilities, consumers’ purchase intention would rise, and vice versa, which meant that consumers tended to support positive food companies’CSR activities or oppose negative food companies’CSR activities. On the other hand, different consumers responded to CSR significantly differently. More specifically, consumers’ characteristics such as education, income, and regional economy development had certain effect on the extent of consumers’ response. The consumers who responded more actively were those who paid more attention to food companies’ CSR and those who had higher education level and income, as well as those who lived in developed areas.This thesis analyzed consumers’ awareness and response towards food companies’ CSR, which had certain practical significances for administrators of food companies and policy makers. On one hand, the managers of food companies should strengthen their CSR consciousness, cared about different levels of consumer awareness and responses to social responsibilities, and performed their CSR activities. On the other hand, policy makers should take measures to guide, regulate and supervise food companies’CSR activities. Meanwhile, the government should increase the cognitive level of consumers towards food companies’ CSR.