Healthy eating promotion: Translating consumer expectations into CSR strategies

Industry reports indicate that more than half of consumed calories come in packaged goods and soft drinks with questionable nutritional properties. Considering expanding waistlines worldwide and the centrality of retailers and suppliers in food distribution, many hold these organizations at least part responsible for helping consumers to eat more healthily. Deploying stakeholder theory, we propose that marketers should undertake health promotion activities as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices, thus benefitting consumers, public health, corporate reputations, shareholder value, and alignment with public policy priorities. The work contributes to CSR literature by positioning healthy eating promotion in the CSR domain and exploring potential initiatives in the retailing context. Literature review in parallel with managerial group discussions helped to identify activities supporting healthy behaviors adoption, and translate these requirements into actionable CSR strategies. Open-ended questionnaires (n=176) explored in detail consumer expectations of identified CSR strategies. Content analysis confirmed expectations of retailer and supplier involvement in healthy eating promotion. Quantitative surveys in the USA (n=277) and the UK (n=223) validated the derived list of activities in terms of consumer expectations and approval.