The impact of corporate social responsibility on brand awareness. Case study of Unilever Zimbabwe Private Ltd.

Abstract

The study was carried out on the impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on brand awareness with reference to Unilever Zimbabwe Private Ltd since the research has noted that customers are not aware of the firm’s food brands from the implementation of CSR programmes. The objectives of this were to explore Corporate Social Responsibility activities carried out by Unilever Zimbabwe, to determine the attributes (trust, closeness and credibility) that should be taken into account by the organisation when measuring their brands from implementation of corporate social responsibility programs and to establish the relationship between CSR and brand awareness. Causal research design was employed in this study and a sample of 80 respondents was drawn from Harare CBD and company’ Head Office through the use of simple random sampling technique. Questionnaires in the form of 5 point Lirket scale were used to collect primary data. Data was presented using statistical tables and analysed using Special Package for Social Science software (SPSS version 16.0). The findings revealed that the organisation is much involved in donating to charities, environmental awareness activities, training for employees and information dissemination however some activities were not mostly used by the organisation such as donating for education, sponsorship of sport activities, poverty alleviation and provision of equal employment opportunities. Product attributes were also examined from the implementation of CSR programmes. The relationship between CSR and brand awareness was measured using regression coefficients and the relationship was tested on each product. The researcher concludes that there is a positive relationship between CSR and brand awareness. The researcher recommends that future researchers can use this research as a threshold for other researches on CSR as a marketing tool in exploiting marketing competitive advantage.