Academic papers

predicated on outcomes-based metrics and social marketing

techniques informed by the phenomena of enviro-ethical dialogism,
requires a markedly flexible conceptual and operational framework.

limitations of social marketing as a strategy for climate change public

engagement, Global Environmental Change, Vol. 21 No.3, pp. 10051014.

Introduction

Crawshaw, P. (2012), Governing at a distance: social marketing and

the (bio) politics of responsibility, Social Science & Medicine, Vol. 75
No. 1, pp. 200-207.

In the last decade in the United States, the concepts and practices of
accountability and transparency have received increasing scrutiny
and revision, within the business sector and, increasingly, in public
arenas. This scrutiny has rapidly shifted the role of ethicsenlarging
and diversifying performance indicators, for examplein profitability,
but also in production and social impact. In the meantime, consumer
decision-making behaviors have also shifted. In this paper, we
present a preliminary discussion on the emerging paradigm of enviroethical dialogism, corporate social responsibility and consumer
dynamism. We provide an overview of a number of key shifts in the
relation between businesses and consumers, focusing on a different
mode of practicing CSR. We then pose an outcomes-based model for
measuring CSR, and argue for a more prominent role for CSR in
environmental ethical consumer relations. The main contribution of
this paper is to explore the relation between CSR and the current
communication and participation demands of consumers, in order to
identify emerging opportunities for businesses struggling to unify
approaches to corporate social responsibility, understand changing
modes of consumer decisions, and, ultimately, coordinate their profitmotives with their motives to support the environmental viability of
communities in which they operate. In fulfilling their responsibilities to
the communities in which they operate, businesses now must take on
an educative dimension in their CSR approaches, given the
increasing role environmental ethics will play in the marketplace
and the contradictory, often confusing metrics by which consumers
now make purchasing decisions.

Cromer, I. and Feeg, R. (1988), Forum of the future of pediatric

nursing: looking toward the 21st century, Pediatric Nursing, Vol. 14
No.5, pp. 393-396.

Dholakia, N. (2012), "Being critical in marketing studies: the

imperative of macro perspectives", Journal of Macromarketing, Vol.
32 No. 2, pp. 220-225.

Dibb,S. (2014), Up, up and away: social marketing breaks free,

Journal of Marketing Management, Vol. 30 No. 11-12, pp. 1159-1185.

Domegan, C., Collins, K., Stead, M., McHugh, P. and Hughes, T.

(2013), Value co-creation in social marketing: functional or fanciful?
Journal of Social Marketing, Vol. 3 No. 3, pp. 239-256.

Dresler-Hawke, E. and Veer, E. (2006), Making healthy eating

messages more effective: combining integrated marketing
communication with the behaviour ecological model, International
Journal of Consumer Studies, Vol. 30 No. 4, pp. 318-326.

Gordon, R. (2012), Re-thinking and re-tooling the social marketing

mix, Australasian Marketing Journal, Vol. 20 No. 2, pp. 122-126.

Gurrieri, L. Brace-Govan, J. and Previte, J. (2014), Neoliberalism

and managed health: fallacies, facades and inadvertent effects,
Journal of Macromarketing, Published online before print July 21,
2014, doi: 10.1177/0276146714542953.

Hastings, G. and Domegan, C. (2014), Social Marketing: From Tunes

to Symphonies, 2nd Edition, Routledge, UK.

Shifting Business Ethics and Consumer Behavior

Langford, R. and Panter-Brick C. (2013), A health equity critique of

social marketing: where interventions have impact but insufficient
reach, Journal of Social Science and Medicine, Vol. 83, pp.133-41.

According to the Union of International Associations, [t]he number of

international nongovernmental organizations that scrutinize the ethics
of organizations has increased worldwide from 30,000 in 2000 to over
60,000 in 2007 (Union, 2008). Similarly, according to the Social
Investment Forum, ethical and sustainable investing in the U.S.
increased from $639 billion in 1995 to $2,159 billion in 1999 and from
$2,290 billion in 2005 to $2,711 billion in 2007 (Social, 2007). These
figures alone suggest that the grounding assumptions for
understanding the constitution of ethical behaviorin a business
context, the construction of 3 a relation between businesses and
consumersis shifting rapidly. On the one hand, the demand on
businesses is rising, from all quarters, for accurate, objective
information about ethical performance; on the other, consumers
themselves have also become more active in demanding evidence of
the link between increased social awareness of environmental and
social impacts and practices in business ethics. Across the 2000s, for
example, consumers moved to greater expectations for businesses
ethical orientation. By 2008, 57 percent of U.S. consumers currently
say that their purchase decision could be influenced by whether or
not a product supports a worthy cause (Nielsen). This trend has
gone global: in a 2012 Nielson study, two thirds (66%) of consumers
around the world say they would prefer to buy goods and services
from companies that have implemented programs that give back to
society (Nielsen).

Maani, K.E and Cavana, R.Y. (2000), Systems Thinking and

Modelling: Understanding Change and Complexity, Prentice Hall,
Auckland.

Rundle-Thiele, S. (2014, July 23), Current issues & future challenges

in social marketing [Webinar], iSMA Advances in Social Marketing
Webinar
Series
#8.
Retrieved
from:
http://isocialmarketing.net/webinars/webinar8a/webinar_8_final_6_up.pdf

Spotswood, F. and Tapp, A. (2013), Beyond persuasion: a cultural

perspective of behaviour, Journal of Social Marketing, Vol. 3 No. 3,
pp. 275-294.

Stead, M., Gordon, R., Angus, K. and McDermott, L. (2007), A

systematic review of social marketing effectiveness, Health
Education, Vol. 107 No. 2, pp. 126-191.
Warfield, J. N. (1974), Structuring Complex Systems. Battelle
Memorial Institute, Columbus, Ohio.

Zainuddin, N. (2013), Examining the impact of experience on value

in social marketing, Journal of Social Marketing, Vol. 3 No. 3, pp.
257-274.

Perhaps more telling, the Nielson 2012 survey results indicate that,
among a list of eighteen causes that companies should support,
environmental sustainability was ranked most significant by 66
percent of respondents. The 2013 Cone Communications Social
Impact Study makes an even more trenchant statement about the
consumer climate of expectation: More than nine-in-10 [American
respondents identified as socially-aware] look to companies to
support social or environmental issues in some capacity, and 88
percent is eager to hear from companies about those efforts. A
whopping 91 percent wants to see more products, services and
retailers support worthy issues up eight percentage points since
2010 (p. 7). The trends in consumer expectations are clear. Or so it
seems.

Number: 26

Enviro-ethical Dialogism: Implications for CSR and Consumer

Engagement

Will McConnell
Mine ok Hughes
Woodbury University
Abstract

In this paper, we discuss the emerging paradigm of consumer

dynamism and corporate social responsibility (CSR), which we call
enviro-ethical dialogism. Increasing scrutiny of businesses in a
climate of accountability and transparency is shifting profitability
opportunities and re-focusing consumer attention on historically
externalized operations of businesses. Identifying and coordinating
variables that are driving changes in the relation between consumers
and businesses can help businesses better understand ethical
metrics of CSR which will continue to interpenetrate business and
consumer loci of decision-making. An overall marketing strategy

The problem posed to businesses by this bewildering set of decisionmaking vectors and the issue of selecting inputs to define accurate
metrics for tracking choices in the current consumer-driven climate is
daunting: how can businesses respond proactively to such a rapidly
shifting, volatile set of metrics, actors, stakeholders, external
organizations, communication demands, etc.? As Bucic et al. (2012)

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