Indledning
“In April 2013, the Rana Plaza, an eight-storey factory complex on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh collapsed, crushing 1,138 people to death and injuring about 2,500”.
It is now more than seven years ago this event took place and a lot of action hasbeen taken since.
Companies are held accountable for their actions by consumers. Many companies have taken action and implemented a strategy for their corporate social responsibility.
Sustainability is a wide term,a company could be environmentally sustainable but not socially sustainable and vice versa.
This essay will analyze the challenges faced by manufacturers of fast fashion and discuss the importance of corporate social responsibility to companies and consumers.
Optimer dit sprog - Læs vores guide og scor topkarakter
Uddrag
By implementing a CSR-strategy the right way, a company can cut expenses, which could result in more sustainable companies in the future “But it's also a big bet that this is how all companies will be making shoes in the future when the traditional petroleum-heavy methods become far too costly”.
Meaning that in the future production prices might increase for non-sustainable production at the same time companies could cut production prices by reusing materials and in that way both cut expenses and be more sustainable.
This means that companies will make more money in the future by caring about CSRwhich speaks in favor of CSR being of huge importance to companies.
On the other hand,the differencebetweenthe number of sustainable shoes sold compared to the number of conventional shoes sold is still huge “One million shoes is obviously not very many compared to the millions and millions the company sells on a yearly basis”.
Meaning that the most majority of Adidas’, and other businesses’, revenue still comes from products manufactured in an unsustainable way, which speaks in favor of CSR being of less importance to companies.
Corporate social responsibility is very important to consumers. Research has shown that CSR is crucial for the consumer’s decision to buy a product “87% would purchase a product because that company stood up for or advocated for an issue that they care about”.7
So, 87% of the consumers would buy a product if the company stood up for the same values as the consumers themself.
Meaning it is almost 9 out of 10 who will buy a product based on a company’s CSR-actions. This is a substantial number that speaks in favor of CSR being of huge importance to consumers.
On the other hand, sustainability is not that important to younger consumers according to LIM College professors Robert Conrad and Dr. Kenneth M. Kambara “millennials care more about a product’s brand name and uniqueness than its sustainability”. 8
So, sustainability might not be as important as the brand is to younger consumers. Younger consumers decision is not based on whether the company or brand shows corporate social responsibility or not, which speaks in favor of CSR being of less importance to consumers.
In conclusion, the behavior of the consumers has changed from not careering that much about anything else but the product to making the buy-decision based on the brand’s CSR-profile.
This is a huge challenge for manufactures of fast fashion as the industry is based on an unsustainable use and throw away culture and is the second most polluting industry in the world.
Corporate social responsibility is very important to businesses as it can help them cut expenses by recycling the materials, they would have thrown out otherwise.
On the other hand, most of their sales still come from unsustainable products which could argue that CSR is not that important to companies.
CSR is very important to consumers as almost 9 out of 10 consumers would make the decision to buy or not to buy a product based on the CSR of the company the product comes from.
Skriv et svar