Social and environmental ethics affect the image of the company and consumer’s perceptions. McDonald’s is a company that is known all around the world, and that has recently tried to convey a CSR image to its products.
However, this fast-food giant has been linked to bad ethical practices throughout the years like:
- Quality of the food offered in stores.
- Exploiting children with advertising.
- Animal treatment before killing them to turn them into fast food and the methods for doing so.
- Reason for child obesity in the US and other developing countries.
How can we distinguish something ethic from something that is not?
Ethics are subjective and they are based on our values and beliefs. “Corporate Social Responsibility refers to the economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic expectations placed on organizations by society at a given point in time” (Carroll and Buscholtz, 2000).
McDonald’s has worked to promote a more ‘ethical’ focus on their company after being involved with many lawsuits that questioned the ethics of their business model. It has recognized the importance that “corporate social responsibility” will have in years to come, since customers will seek for companies that affiliate to their values and have proof that they are helping the world we live in. It has been proven that people are willing to pay a small premium for ethically produced products or would choose them over other products, and they would expect lower prices from unethical products in order to buy them.
What have they done to fight these ethical issues?
- Highlight its efforts to offer healthier options (salads, apple slices instead of fries, milk and juice instead of soda)
- Emphasized where do their ingredients come from
- Hired nutritionists to alter the menu
- Promoted the importance of exercise by sponsoring the Olympics
- Increased recycling and reduced waste in stores around the world
- Is there enough information and proof to say that McDonald’s has embraced this new “Coorporate Responsible status”? or is McDonald’s only doing a Cooperate Responisbility Report in attempts of portraying itself as being a corporate citizen and gaining back long-lost customers?
- Launched a social media campaign to answer questions and foster transparency
In my opinion these are just attempts of McDonald’s showing the new phase it is trying to get to. Sponsoring the Olympics is not related to McDonald’s ethics, if it should be linked to someone’s ethics it would have to be to the Organizing Committee, I feel McDonald’s is trying to put itself as a reward from doing exercise to motivate customers to do so. However, is this just a tactic used because they know customers want socially responsible companies to buy from? Or is McDonald’s really trying to promote better/more ethic business practices and give an example as the fast-food leader? Is it ethical to use a trend to increase sales?
Healthier ad’s?
In the end, does it really matter what McDonald’s effort’s come from if we are all being positively affected by its results?
Consider the activities McDonalds has recently taken up to improve their image, including putting nutrition info on their packaging – do you think this has helped consumer perceptions? Also think about the reason people choose McDonalds – price, convenience, taste – do ethics play a role in their consumers’ decisions, and to what extent? Your post was great but watch your word count for future posts