Corporate Social Responsibility Marketing of American and Western European Multinational Enterprises: A Longitudinal Study of Stakeholder Engagement

Master's Thesis, submitted 2008, published 2009

The objective of this paper is to provide general comparisons between corporate social responsibility (CSR) marketing communications tools of American and Western European multinational enterprises (MNE). The results of the comparisons demonstrate that there is significant (yet unempirically proven) evidence of varied approaches to using marketing communications tools as a means of stakeholder engagement.

In the first chapter of the paper, the problem and purpose are set out, along with definitions of some CSR terminology and delimitations of the paper. In the second chapter, literature from various sources such as the ProQuest electronic database is reviewed and critiqued. The third chapter of this paper focuses on a practical application of CSR marketing communications under the scope of a type of marketing known as "greenwashing" and debates the practice‘s positive and negative consequences. The fourth chapter of this paper presents case findings by comparing and contrasting CSR/sustainability reports from three different American MNEs with reports from three different Western European MNEs. These findings are further synthesized in chapter five, which contains an overall analysis of findings in chapters two, three, and four. Chapter six contains concluding remarks on the subject matter and suggested directions for further empirical research on the subject.