Consumer social responsibility?

HEADNOTE

Allan Williams, Senior Policy Officer at Which?, introduces a special issue of Consumer Policy Review focusing on corporate social responsibility

This is the first of a trial of themed issues of Consumer

Policy Review to be published over the next year, intended to open up debate on key consumer policy issues. It brings together a number of different perspectives on the corporate social responsibility (CSR) agenda and the ethical and environmental debates that surround it. This editorial is also new to Consumer Policy Review. As well as drawing together some themes from the individual articles, it is intended to encourage discussion, in this case on the role that individual consumers and the consumer movement as a whole can - or should - play in promoting CSR and sustainable consumption more widely.

Which? has recently completed the Bite Back project, designed to find out more about the issues that really matter to consumers. Company behaviour was identified as one of the eight key concerns among consumers from survey research carried out in July 2004, which subsequently fed into further phases of online opinion research and survey work, generating a total of over 130,000 responses. Because this is a relatively new area for Which?, we asked two omnibus survey guestions on this topic, the results of which are in the graphs below.

The majority of consumers (66 per cent) believe that they can influence companies' ethical and environmental behaviour, and just over half (53 per cent) are prepared to pay more to achieve this. Although this inevitably raises questions about whether these attitudes correspond with actual shopping behaviour, it is clear that consumers are prepared to accept some responsibility for how companies behave, even if the onus for making improvements rests with the companies.

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Do consumers believe they can influence companies' behaviour?

CSR and environmentally/socially-sustainable consumption are therefore often considered as two sides of the same coin. As Clive Barnett et al. argue (on p45): 'markets are perfectly capable of expressing people's ethical, moral or political preferences' if consumers are properly informed. The growth of various markets - fair trade schemes, organic produce and ethical investments - arguably demonstrates this trend. Indeed, as Melanie Peters suggests in her article on p36, this can be regarded as a virtuous circle in which consumer demand for more responsible products 'enforces' CSR and encourages responsible innovation.

Yet although consumers are sometimes described as the driving force behind CSR, and despite a number of totemic and high-profile examples, such as the PepsiCo/Burma boycott, the evidence for a direct link between consumer concern and company behaviour remains largely anecdotal. Lord Borrie argues (on p64) that companies have a strong interest in protecting their reputation but, in practice, a number of factors can limit consumers' ability to influence corporate behaviour. Consumers often lack proper information; they can be misled by 'green-wash' and company PR; it can be difficult to organise sufficiently to influence a company's bottom line; and the chains of influence can be obscured by the complexities of branding, corporate governance, ownership and investment. Even when the picture is relatively simple, an ethically-strong reputation does not always translate into customer loyalty, as Emma Brock points out in her article on p58.

Many organisations are attempting to change this by encouraging consumers to take ethical issues into account when they are shopping. Stuart Bond's article (p38) explains how WWF has become a 'consumption-focused organisation' which engages directly with consumers, for instance, to promote sustainable forestry products. Similarly, the recent Greenpeace 'Alien Invasion' campaign addressed viewers as consumers, encouraging them to 'get behind the good companies'.1 Companies themselves have also adopted some of these tactics, as Stephen Youd-Thomas explains in his article on p52. The Co-operative movement has sought to change both consumer and business behaviour through selling fair trade products, and has even adopted the vocabulary of campaigning organisations in its bank's Customers Who Care campaigns.

This raises guestions about whether consumer organisations such as Which? also have a role to play in articulating and strengthening the links between consumers and CSR. A survey of Which? readers found that people are keen to receive more information on ethical issues, and recent articles covering fair trade and ethical investments have been widely read and well liked.2 Melanie Peters describes how the Dutch consumer organisation, Consumentenbond, has led the development of this approach within Europe, in terms of how ethical and environmental information is both collected and reported, and the organisation now provides this as part of its regular product testing. Despite the challenges of collecting and verifying this information, consumer organisations are well placed to provide the sort of independent advice that consumers rely on to make ethical or environmental choices, and to hold companies to account.

Nevertheless, there are limitations to this information-led approach. Clive Barnett et al. observe that providing consumers with information does not 'magically change their behaviour', while Stuart Bond goes further, suggesting that this approach 'has had almost no influence'. Both argue that consumers are 'locked into' particular patterns of consumption which mean that CSR and sustainable consumption can only ever work together and as part of wider social change within a consumer society. Part of the solution may be to make ethical consumption and CSR more mainstream, but it may egually require more radical steps, including significant behaviour change among consumers as well as businesses.

These articles suggest that there is a need to rethink the role of consumers and consumer organisations in the CSR and sustainable consumption debate, which, as Stuart Bond argues, has 'tended to focus on the production rather than consumption side of the equation. CSR has had some success in driving more socially- and environmentally-sustainable forms of business, but there is arguably a need for a corresponding notion of consumer social responsibility in order to achieve more sustainable forms of consumption. As Emma Brock argues: 'consumers have to take responsibility for their actions too', and consumer organisations like Which? may need to find new ways to help and encourage consumers to do so.

We welcome comments about anything in this issue: visitwww.which.co.uk, or email cpr@which.co.uk

REFERENCE

[1] www.greenpeace. org.uk/aliens/do.htm

[2] Which? readership survey August 2004