Corporate social responsibility is a self-regulatory mechanism that organizations employ to effect positive social change by going above and beyond their legal and regulatory obligations (Henriques, 2013). Companies engage in corporate social responsibility as a way of fulfilling their legal, ethical, economic and philanthropic responsibilities with the aim of giving back to society while accruing the benefits that come with the positive publicity. The triple bottom line, on the other hand, is a concept used to evaluate a company's performance by gauging their actions using economic sustainability, social sustainability, and environmental sustainability (Henriques, 2013). The comparison of the Nestle Global and the Summit Springs Inc will find that while Nestle Global is actively involved in corporate social responsibility efforts. Summit Springs Inc barely has a corporate social responsibility history even on their website (Mallin, 2013). Nestle Waters is a market leader compared to Summit Springs Inc, and their engagement in CSR and their bottom line is an impactful contributing factor to their market leadership compared to Summit Springs.
Nestle Global is a Swiss food and beverage production and distribution company and the largest company in the industry going by revenue and ranks sixty-fourth in the fortune 500 2017 list. The company’s product portfolio includes beverages, baby and health foods and a confectionary products line. Nestle Waters North America Inc is a subsidiary of the transnational company that deals in the production and distribution of bottled water (Henriques, 2013). Their water varieties include pure life, perriere, San Pellegrino, Poland spring, acqua Panna, arrowhead, contrex, ice mountain, and Vittel. Summit Springs also operates in the drinking water production and distribution industry as well and deal with the packaging and distribution of natural spring water.
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Both the Nestle Waters North America Company and the Summit Springs Inc share certain similarities but also have differences in their approach to corporate social responsibility and their triple bottom line. Both are in the water packaging and distribution industry and have markets all over the world, but Nestle is actively involved in corporate social responsibility than Summit Springs (Henriques, 2013). Nestle Waters engages in corporate social responsibility activities like donating water to victims of disasters like hurricane Harvey and Ike, Haiti, the Midwest disaster, and in environmental conservation which saw the company awarded a Green Building Council Gold Standard for sustainable building. The company was also involved in giving relief to Iowa tornado victims, hurricane Dolly survivors, and teamed up with an environmental conservation initiative dubbed Keep America Beautiful to provide $10,000 Recycle on the go grants. Therefore there is a visible difference in the way both companies operate when it comes to corporate responsibility which contributes to the strong brand equity enjoyed by the company (Mallin, 2013). Despite the fact that Summit Springs packages water directly from the springs and uses fewer chemicals on the products making it the preferable water product the public seems to relate more to Nestle due to their great contributions to society.
The triple bottom line assesses the success of an organization based on three aspects which are the planet, people, and profit (Mallin, 2013). The profit aspect is measured profit margins while the people aspect is judged by how impactful the business is to society and the planet aspect on how the company’s business practices affect the environment. Nestle is big on making an impact on the community’s lives through their corporate social responsibility activities while Summit Springs is not as engaged in the people aspect of the triple bottom line. However, Summit Springs wins in the planet aspect comparison since it utilizes minimal chemicals in the extraction and packaging of their water products (Henriques, 2013). They sell raw Water straight from the spring untreated and the premium spring water which is filtered to remove impurities. This ensures that the company's carbon emissions in the packaging and processing processes are minimized compared to big companies like Nestle that drill boreholes and pump water from underground.
Nestle Waters North America Inc is, therefore, a market leader and packages and distributes a big capacity of water compared to the Summit Springs company (Mallin, 2013). The profitability is also higher compared to the Summit Springs whose production capacity is limited by their technique of tapping only the overflow that goes downhill from the spring to its bottling plant instead of using pumps to pull the water from underground. The lessons learned from the comparison are that the triple bottom line and corporate social responsibility are important aspects of building a customer base and increasing customer loyalty (Henriques, 2013). Customers will always favor brands that give back to society and the CSR activities during the highly publicized rescue missions during disasters give the companies free marketing and visibility boosts. The companies’ approach to CSR and the triple bottom line have therefore boosted their marketing effort.
In sum, CSR and the triple bottom line can boost or negatively affect a company’s marketing efforts. They can help increase customer engagement, build brand loyalty and increase visibility. The failure to be socially responsible on the other hand can reduce customer loyalty and limit their brand visibility like in the case of Nestle and Summit Springs.
References
Henriques, A. (2013). The Triple Bottom: Line Does It All Add Up . Hoboken: Taylor and Francis.
Mallin, C. A. (2013). Corporate governance . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
