Дополнения, перепечатывала из учебника Market Leader.

Corporate social responsibility. or CSR, is fundamentally about the obligations of a company to society and the ways in which it can affect society and the environment. CSR has recently become a fashionable item on the corporate agenda.

However, the demands and expectations of government and society have become grater, many think that business need to show a stronger commitment to issues such as social responsibility., sustainability and transparency.

The fashion business particularly faces significant challenges. in the 1990s, Nike hit the headlines with allegations that some of its products were made in sweatshop conditions and by child labour. In 2005, Nike published the names and locations of more than 700 suppliers that manufacture its goods in an attempt to highlight the sportswear group’s ethical working practice in developing countries. Companies are now seriously considering the commercial viability of ethical fashion.

The tendency to switch production frequently, to achieve the cheapest prices, means that relationships between brand owners ant their producers in developing countries are often short term. Nevertheless, many believe the time is right for companies to market their ethical stance and that brands can leverage their position internationally by being ethical. A brand’s value nowadays may not just be about profit and loss, but also accountability – being able to demonstrate clearly where and how a product is made.

Brand owners also risk being criticized for exploiting the concept of being ethical for commercial gain. Some would argue that the product comes first and ethics will always be secondary to the consumers' self-interest. Nevertheless, evidence suggests that consumers, specially younger ones, do care about where and how the clothes they buy are made,

Companies need to be specific and transparent about every aspect of their business. Transparency has always been an important aspect of corporate responsibility, and a growing number of companies are struggling with the challenge of reporting on social, environmental and economical issues, encourage by governments and regulatory authorities. The Netherlands, Denmark and Norway have required environmental disclosures for several years.

A growing numbers of companies are voluntarily producing CSR or sustainability reports about non-financial issues and impacts that could significantly affect the business. But there are many multinational which say nothing about issues such as carbon-dioxide emissions, suppliers’ labour conditions or community relations.

The nature and standards of CSR reports varies widely/ Sustainability experts say that companies should integrate financial and non-financial reporting and that many reports are too vague to provide useful information, but that is beginning to change.

Such companies, such as Andersen, Enron and Worldcom, have suffered from allegations of unethical corporate governance or financial irregularities at management level, demonstrating that business ethic play a role on both the macro and micro level.

 

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Organizations which make ethical marketing decisions will probably be trusted by consumers and respected by the business community. Unethical marketing activities can damage sales and destroy a company’s reputation.

The Italian clothes manufacturer, Benetton, caused a lot of controversy when it ran series of advertisements that were designed to highlight “global concerns”. The company chose a picture of an AIDS victim – who died soon after the photograph was taken – for one advertisement. In another one it used a new-born baby – it also raised many objections. In 1991 – an advertising campaign – includes an ad picturing a not-so-platonic kiss between a priest an a nun dressed in old-fashioned habits. That was offensive to Catholics. The explanation of Benetton – the firm tries to distance its ads from boring old commercial considerations. They aim to capture people’s attention, provoke reflection and break through the barrier of indifference.

Benetton reckons its campaigns address the major social issues of our time including AIDS, overpopulation, environmental problems and racial harmony. An old Benetton ad showing a black woman breastfeeding a white child created uproar among American blacks. Another ad depicts an angelic-looking white child embracing a black one whose hair has been shaped into devil’s horns.

Companies should operate within an established code of ethics. On the other hand, marketing ethics is too subjective to make certain standardization possible.

The methods used to promote and sell drugs are under attack, putting Glaxo, the world’s second-biggest pharmaceuticals company right in the line of fire. The industry stands accused of conducting promotional drives disguised as educational and fact-finding campaigns; of offering doctors hard cash; of distorting data to suit its promotional needs; of blurring side-effects; of bad-mouthing rival products and unnecessarily alarming doctors and patients. Even Glaxo long admired for its marketing shocked the industry when announced that it had conducted tests on a rival product made by Sweden’s Astra, which had shown that it causes cancer. That was a taboo beforehand.

In Britain critics believe that relations between drug firms and the Medicine Agency is too cosy. All information that passes between them about the approval of a drug is confidential. Doctors are highly dependent on the industry’s marketing men for information, which means that an appropriate debate on potential side-effects can never really take place.

Unethical behavior – taking bribes in business (or so-called “gifts”).

Holiday companies and travel agencies sometimes give misleading descriptions in their holiday brochures. No one is responsible for monitoring the activities of travel agents or tour operators. They can promise close proximity to the beach, to the center, national dishes served in the hotel, miles of empty golden sands. But in fact they send the tourists to overflowing with tourists resorts far from the center, bars, nightclubs and the beach

 

Customer service

First of all, it is important to define what is it – customer service? So, Customer service is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction – that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer expectation. Customer care is extremely important to a company’s success.

When you deal with service department you can meet some irritating things, for example, when you try to deal with SD by phone you can be put on hold, speak to a disinterested person, have to dial several numbers before getting to the right person, find the Customer Service number is continuously engaged, be cut off. When you deal Face-to-face with SD you can meet unhelpful customer service personnel, indifferent staff, salespeople with poor product knowledge, too few staff at peak times, no company policy on customer service or complaints. Repairs and refunds – delays on repairs, delays in getting one’s money back, no replacement equipment while repairs are carried out.

So, companies need to know how to deal with customer complains: show the customer that you are listening by checking that you understand; allow the customer to show emotions if they are upset or angry + show that you are sorry; Admit that the problem was your fault as soon as possible, be firm if you are sure of your facts; Make sure you get full details of the problem; Ask the customer to put the complaint in writing; Try to find out what result the customer wants; Concentrate on the situation not the personalities.

Good customer service is about exceeding customers’ expectations. New technology can help improve customer service. For example. Marks and Spenser have a unit at their till points that when customers pay they can press different buttons and say whether they were happy with the service they received today.

Companies are increasingly aware of the importance of “word-of-mouth” advertising – when customers talk to others about their experience of products and services. In the increasingly competitive service sector, it is no longer enough to promise customer satisfaction. Today customers’ delight is the stated aim for companies battling to retain and increase market share.

Surveys showed that customers receiving good service will stimulate new business by telling up to 12 other people; those treated badly – to up to 20 people. Interestingly, 80% of people who feel their complaints are handled fairly will stay loyal.

New challenges for customer care have come with the rapid growth in obtaining goods and services via Internet and telephone call centers. Preventing, avoiding “phone rage” – induced by delays in answering calls, being cut off in mid-conversation or left waiting for long periods – has been tackled by vast investment in information technology and training courses for staff. The staff should be trained to answer quickly, with their name, job title and “we are here to help attitude”.

Many people do not like talking to machines. Banks, for example, encourage staff at call centers to use customer data to establish instant rapport with them. The aim is to make customer feel they know you and that you can trust them.

It is very important to prepare staff to give the best customer service. For example, in Harrods,The first step is to welcome customers within one minute entering the Department, so customers are treated as guests and when they walk into the store or into Department they are greeted in some way. So it may be a smile, that may be a more formal good morning or good afternoon, or it may simply be eye contact. Company need to train stuff monitor customer’s behavior and look for an appropriate time go and start a conversation with the customers. Staff should use their product knowledge and select items to meet customers needs. Of course, the staff are encouraged to thank customers and invite them to return.

Recommended ways of inducing customer delight include: under-promising and over-delivering (saying that a repair will be carried out in 5 hours, but getting it done within 2); replacing a faulty product immediately;throwing in a gift voucher as an unexpected thank you to regular customers; always returning calls even when they are complaint.

Aiming for customer delight is all very well, but if services do not reach the high level promised, disappointment or worse will be the result. That can be eased by coupling an apology and explanation of why the service didn’t meet usual standards with empathy and possible solutions (replacement, compensation).

Airlines face some of the toughest challenges over customer care. Competition has convinced them that delighting passengers is an essential marketing tool, while there is great potential for customer outrage over delays caused by weather, unclaimed luggage and technical problems.

Recommended ways of improving customer service include: giving key customers special discounts;organizing research to find out what customers need;investing in staff training programmes in customer care; customer-focused procedures – the customer is always right; acting quickly with complaints.

25)

Globalization both homogenizes and fragments. On one hand, it allows nations and

citizens of the world to share common events, values and knowledge, often

instantaneously thanks to advances in telecommunications and information

technology.

Douglas W. Blum: In a study of three globalizing states and cities in post-Soviet Eurasia - Russia (Astrakhan), Kazakhstan (Almaty), and Azerbaijan (Baku) - Douglas W. Blum provides an empirical examination of national identity formation, exploring how cultures, particularly youth cultures, have been affected by global forces. Blum argues that social discourse regarding youth cultural trends - coupled with official and non-official approaches to youth policy - complement patterns of state-society relations and modes of response to globalization. His findings show that the nations studied have embraced certain aspects of modernity and liberalism, while rejecting others, but have also reasserted the place of national traditions.

 

Globalisation (or globalization) describes the process by which regional economies, societies, and cultures have become integrated through a global network of political ideas through communication, transportation, and trade.

A reasonable conclusion is that nations gain more from with other nations than from national isolation.

The future of business.

Futurology, with its futurologists or futurists, is haphazard (непредсказуемый) activity, despite attempts to formalize it. There is the Delphi method, where experts make their forecast about a subject independently, and a referee circulates each forecast to the other members of the group, who comment on each other’s observations until they reach a consensus.

This can be one element of the strategy, where companies make long-term plans about future activities. Here, they have to anticipate (предвидеть) competitor’s activities as well as trends in the general economic environment. Very large companies work on scenario planning, imagining different ways in which they current situation may evolve (эволюционировать), and their place in it, including ways in which they may ‘encourage’(содействовать) it to develop in their favour. Future successful products are notoriously hard to predict, as are the subtle (тонкий) combinations of social, cultural and technological circumstances that something may succeed at one time but not another. The E-commerce business brief looks at some of the trends in e-commerce and Internet use in this context.

One of the social predictions made 30 years ago was that people would work less and have more leisure time, but the opposite has occurred. No one foresaw haw the computer would evolve away from the mainframe (громоздкий) and facilitate a social development like working from home and while on the move, thanks to laptops and, in a parallel development, mobile phones. Similarly, the Internet may have social effects that we cannot envisage, let alone predict.

A powerful force 30 years ago was protest at the way society and the economy were organized, for example against ‘faceless multinationals’. After a long period where youth shed its rebellious (повстанцы) reputation, in this context at least, there are signs that activism outside traditional political parties is re-emerging (возникать) as a social force, this time organized on global level – witness (свидетельствовать) the regular violent (жёсткие) demonstrations against recent meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization, with planning of protests co-ordinated over the Internet. This trend may intensify (усилиться).

Another factor that will certainly affect the way the future of business develops is global warming, which is now, after ten years of debate over whether it is happening or not, an incontrovertible fact. Some possible consequences (последствия) of the greenhouse effect have been predicted, but there will certainly be others we cannot even imagine.