Formulating and Prioritizing CSR Strategies: A Marketing Strategy-Informed Approach

A major challenge for CSR managers is the lack of strategic guidance for their decisions. No prior research has offered a framework that clarifies when which CSR initiative is advised. To address this gap, the authors argue that capitalizing on insights from marketing strategy empowers CSR decisions that cater to the demands of stakeholders and in turn pay off for the firm. The first marketing strategy principle—strategy formulation—leads to the distinction of four unique CSR strategies that link different relational approaches to the needs of different stakeholder groups (market stakeholder promotion, institutional stakeholder promotion, market stakeholder protection, and institutional stakeholder protection). The second marketing strategy principle—strategy prioritization—informs how to effectively deploy CSR strategies by matching them with marketing’s relative strategic emphasis (on value appropriation vs. value creation). The novel framework is tested with panel data from 3,572 firms over 19 years. The study reveals that the alignment of CSR strategies with marketing’s relative strategic emphasis is key for CSR’s effect on firm performance. Institutional stakeholder promotion fits best when value appropriation is the dominant marketing emphasis while market stakeholder protection matches best with an emphasis on value creation. A major implication of the study is that bringing marketing strategists to the CSR table helps firms to identify those CSR initiatives that also yield a business case for the firm.