Frysdisketiken : Vikten av att kommunicera Corporate Social Responsibility inom livsmedelsbranschen

Sammanfattning: The purpose with this essay is to explore the importance of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) within the food industry. We have decided to focus on how five different ethical labels are communicated towards students and the standpoint of the study is the students understanding of the communication. The labels that we have chosen to examine in the study are KRAV, Fairtrade, Svanen, Ekologiskt Jordbruk and Rainforest Alliance. The primary research question in the study is ” How are the students purchase behavior affected by ethical labels in the food industry?”. Throughout the study we will refer to CSR-products as products are stamped with one or several of the named ethical labels. The study also contains one sub-question that will help to support the main research question and provide the study with a broader base. You will find the sub-question below. ”To what extend does the students understand the communication of the ethical labels?” The theories that we will use in this essay are ”Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)”, ”Brands”, ”Social Identity” and ”Encoding/Decoding”. CSR will be used as the main theory for this essay. The reason for this is that not only is it a theory but also the main topic that we investigate in this essay. We use branding as a theory because we want to examine if the communication from the labels affects students.  Social Identity is used to explore if the students at Karlstad University chose products with ethical labels because of trends and a feeling of belonging with specific groups. Encoding/Decoding is used to analyze and understand the communication of the ethical labels between the ethical labels and the students. We have chosen to use a Webb survey in our study to gather empirical data. The survey has been available for the population on Karlstad universities study platform “It’ s Learnings” homepage during two weeks. The result of the survey displays that the area of concern that the respondents believe is the most important is the environment and labor conditions.  The link that we see here is that KRAV, Fairtrade and Svanen all have high demands on environmental and labor condition-initiatives if a product should be allowed to carry their label. This means that this two area of concern is most important for the students. We can also see from the result that KRAV, Fairtrade and Svanen are the labels that are most visible in commercials and food stores. The research displays that friends together with social media are the channels where the students understand the highest amount of communication from ethicals labels work. We can also see in the result that quality is the most valued feature regarding products in the food industry. Quality is also one of the most important features for the products that are approved by the ethical labels presented in this study. The most notable result is that the students valued the labels but the ethical values did not always lead to a direct purchase. The result also pointed out that the reason for not always leaded to a purchase is different kinds of difficulties. The communication reaches the students but sees as deficient and has to develop to reach its full potential.