Elevating Brand Values through Corporate Social Responsibility in China - Essay Example

The focus was on transactional marketing where the end was to increase transactions by calling on more customers to become interested in the products of a company. Contemporary marketing on the other hand requires some degree of social marketing on the part of the corporate entity in order to enhance the value of the brands of the entity (Lindgreen et al 124). This is because most marketing drives involve some kind of social marketing to present a firm as a responsible entity that seeks the overall good of the society, not just their personal parochial interest as a profit-oriented entity.

Over the years, the concept of social marketing involves different aspects like concepts from commercial marketing to plan and implement programs designed to bring about behavior change that will benefit individuals and society” (Ihlen et al 114). Social marketing is distinguished from commercial marketing because it is not focused on products and profitability and has a mission that is completely different from commercial marketing. Instead, it involves behavior. It is steeped in influencing social behavior to benefit a target of the population and the wider society in general.

Social marketing seeks to improve behavior and provide a change in order to improve health, safety and the environment (Ihlen et al. 115). In the last few decades, the corporate world has witnessed high amounts of corporate scrutiny and many companies such as Arthur Anderson, Enron in the USA (2001), Merrill Lynch, Exxon Valdez in Alaska (1989), WorldCom in the USA (2002), Wal-Mart in China (1992), Union Carbide in India (1984) and Nike in Vietnam (1996) have made headlines for their reported misdeeds (Aktüre and Jaldín 5, Walker and Kent 743).

A large number of people have started to realize that large corporate businesses have much more power over the lives of people than was earlier imagined. In view of the heightened public scrutiny over their business practices, governments, stakeholders, investors, etc. have called for an increased corporate social responsibility among businesses.