Marketing with a social conscience: strategic windows for aligning societal marketing with corporate identity

Purpose
This study proposes a conceptual framework for strategically integrating societal marketing (SM) into corporate identity to effectively represent a firm’s SM programs to stakeholders. The framework is crucial for firms to align their SM efforts with their identity in a manner that minimizes, if not eliminating, the accusations of dishonesty, such as greenwashing, brownwashing, or greenhushing.

Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on corporate identity theory and synthesizing the literature on SM, the study identifies three levels of corporate identity (strategic, operational, and functional) and three dimensions of SM’s alignment with business objectives (direct, indirect, and remote). Subsequently, the study develops a conceptual framework based on an interaction between corporate identity levels (strategic, operational, and functional) and dimensions of SM’s alignment with business objectives (direct, indirect, and remote) to identify strategic windows to represent SM to stakeholders.

Findings
The study identifies nine strategic windows at the strategic, operational, and functional levels of corporate identity to represent a firm’s SM programs to stakeholders. At the strategic level, CSR, corporate citizenship, and sustainability programs may be utilized to represent SM programs to stakeholders when SM respectively aligns with business objectives remotely, indirectly, and directly. At the operational level, environmental safety, stakeholder marketing, and business/marketing ethics programs serve this role. At the functional level, philanthropy, cause-related marketing, and green marketing are identified to represent SM to stakeholders, depending on the respective alignment of SM with business objectives remotely, indirectly, and directly.

Research limitations/implications
The study implies that firms can minimize corporate misrepresentation of SM programs, especially when diverse stakeholder expectations demand varied representation of SM across levels of corporate identity. Additionally, firms can mitigate stakeholder confusion and misinterpretation by highlighting the differing degrees of alignment between SM and their economic goals when competing firms promote SM programs in the same context.

Practical implications
The study implies that firms can selectively prioritize different SM programs at different contexts depending on how stakeholders’ expectations are satisfied by the interaction between levels of corporate identity and dimensions of SM.

Originality/value
This paper advances corporate marketing research on corporate identity by proposing strategic windows to integrate SM into corporate identity for effective representation of SM programs to stakeholders.