Corporate Social Responsibility Brand Awareness

By Author: Janaki Ravi
Total Articles: 2
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The aim of this study is to investigate whether brand awareness influences the attraction of customers towards the purchase of products which relates to consumer behavior, welfare & market outcome.
The objective of this research is to address the broad question: what is brand awareness? What is corporate social responsibility (CSR) and brand equity?
The Analysis is based on a survey conducted on a sample of customers to understand their awareness and perception of corporate social responsibility and the degree to which they consider CSR to influence their buying choices.
On a primary level a total of 50 customers of both high involvement and low involvement goods were surveyed, of which 27 were male customers & 23 female customers. On the secondary level a few Companies were surveyed Ex. Tata Motors, Rallis India ltd., Bajaj Electricals ltd. A structured questionnaire consisting of 26 scaled questions was used for customer survey & a questionnaire comprising of 50 questions was used for Company survey.

The study covered the concept of CSR in detail. The importance of Brand, Brand Equity & ...
... the implication of Brand awareness on Brand equity were also covered in detail.
As per our research findings based on customer survey over 87% of the candidates were aware about CSR and its effect on Brand awareness & Brand Equity. Among the age group of 45+ years were the maximum people who strongly agree that effective CSR activities are necessary for Brand Awareness. The age group of 18-25 years was the minimum people who disagree with the necessity of CSR for Brand Building. This may be because they are very young and lack proper exposure. Among the age group of 25-35 years almost 90% agree/strongly agree that CSR activities have a direct impact on the Brand awareness & consequently on Brand Equity.

The research finding on Company survey suggests that companies should attempt to go for Corporate Social Responsibility activities if they would like to reap the benefits of their brand image. Those companies who are not involved in the Corporate Social Responsibility activities can change their brand equity or brand image only if they start working on the Corporate Social Responsibility concept.

Conclusion

Brand awareness is an important part of the purchase decision making process. Marketing efforts should to be tied to improving this presence. The benefits of improved brand recognition are increased sales, enhanced trust & credibility and boosted loyalty.
Brand Equity is the culmination of a hierarchy consisting of Brand awareness, Brand knowledge, Brand linking, Brand Preference, Brand conviction, brand purchase.
Awareness, interest, desire, action coupled with conviction, preference, purchase intent and purchase facilitation.
Brand marketers must consider how to manage awareness throughout a products entire life cycle right from introduction, growth, maturity and finally decline.
There are differences in buying behaviors between different cultures.
Buying behavior varies with respondents having varying preferences, economical limits and different buying behavior.
A person with regular income and with no economical limits would probably be having different behavior affecting the factors like brand loyalty, quality and brand awareness.
The factors are again changing if the products are not everyday commodities. For instance a person is more loyal when buying a car than a package of rice. Similarly, in buying shampoo quality is the most important factor than brand awareness and in purchase of rice quality is most important factor than its price.
Thus importance of brand awareness varies from commodity to culture to economic privileges and to purchase luxury items as against essentials.
In a culture with high uncertainty avoidance people are looking for more security and want to make safe decisions
The research results cannot be matched to the theory, brand awareness is the most important factor at the first purchase. Quality can be linked to brand awareness in the way that to be aware of the brand and to know the brand name and to remember the good quality.
From another perspective this may refer to quality as a visible quality in the store and they did not have to be aware of the brand to judge the quality.
Thus quality, price, advertising, group influence, innovators, brand loyalty, brand awareness and culture would affect the purchase decision more than the other factors but the result remain different, prominent and have high means.
Businesses with strong branding are trusted more by consumers who are looking to purchase a new product.
Entire marketing campaigns can be constructed around promoting awareness of a brand.

Dissertation by Janaki Ravi
For LLM 2018-2019 (Trimester)
Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj University
Panvel, Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra, India