Level:

Final assignment for Master Degree in Business Administration

Title:

Integration and branding of social and environmental responsibility: Case of food-retail industry in Sweden, The Netherlands and Germany.

Authors:

Sander van der Linde BA Bsc

Yahya Saadaldeen Ali Talib Msc

Supervisor:

Maria Fregidou-Malama PHD

Examiner:

Daniella Fjellström PHD

Date:

2019, June

Aim: To understand how both socially and environmentally responsible activities are integrated and branded within the food-retailing industry.

Method: An exploratory, cross-sectional, qualitative study design has been adapted. Sweden, The Netherlands and Germany are the investigated country-cases. In-depth semi-structured interviews were held on both store-level and company level and analysed.

Results & Conclusions: Food-retailers are actively involved in environmental responsible activities and inform consumers through various branding efforts, being initiated through changing customer demand, referred to as customer behaviour. The latter is influenced by informing parties such as media/press, food-retailer branding efforts and private label price. Environmental activities is mostly referred to as local production and through reduction of energy, packaging and food-waste in the supply chain. Social initiatives vary in origin but are mainly locally focussed and initiated by other actors. A model showing the integration is proposed. 

Suggestions for further research: It is suggested to extent the proposed model by adapting varying research designs to test, validate and extent the model including more food-retailers on company and entrepreneurial level.

Contribution of the thesis: the study proposes a new model regarding the integration of social and environmental activities in the food-retail industry. It has been the first study to address the integration of CSR in branding efforts and concentrates on three countries: Sweden, The Netherlands and Germany.

Key Words: Branding, Food-Retail Industry, Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate environmental responsibility, Integration