IMRD on Starbucks and Corporate Social Responsibility

IMRD on Starbucks Social Responsibility
Name: Class: Ling 200
Instructor
Date: 3/13/2015
IMRD on Starbucks and Corporate Social Responsibility
Introduction:
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a term that might be very vague to people who are not familiar with it. It means that a company should be responsible for its actions and how they affect their surroundings (Rowenna, 2008). It calls for any organization to practice ethical business practices by operating within the guidelines provided by the law. CSR entails activities such as giving back to the community, environment protection and safeguarding employee welfare among others. Even though the primary reason for doing business is to maximize profits, organizations have the mandate to operate morally, which is the reason to uphold CSR. There are many ways for a company to be socially responsible, but some might choose to let go of the ethical side and just focus on the media. That is why it is important that is a corporation is truly being socially responsible within the guidelines of the law. For instance, we have Starbucks. Starbucks is an American corporation that owns multiple coffee shops around the globe and has a huge customer base. We are doing a research trying to investigate if Starbucks has an active role being a socially responsible company or not. To facilitate acquiring the information needed for the research we created a questionnaire with 10 questions. Those questions cover the subjects that we have in question like if the customers cared or even knew if Starbucks is socially responsible or they prefer going there because of the service or some other factor. This questionnaire will answer if people necessarily care what Starbucks is doing or not, in terms of CSR, answering the questions of whether the firm is socially responsible or not. It will further reveal the public perceptions of their actions and if that is changing consumer spending habits.
Methods:
The method that was used to acquire information for this paper was a 10 points questionnaire. It helped in obtaining the peoples opinion about Starbucks, and clarified the reasons that made them prefer it to other coffee shops. The questions allowed us to collect types of information like: gender, age, and more demographic to specify the type of customer. Then the questions start to ask about Starbucks role in being socially responsible to see if people have any sense of knowledge about that. Then we ask for people’s opinion about the social activities that Starbucks is doing to be socially responsible. And in order the questions will start to reveal if Starbucks is truly and successfully promoting their public image as a socially responsible corporation or the opposite of that. We will also be able to know if people cared about the recycling done by Starbucks. And if those customers prefer using the disposable cups that the chain coffee shops offer or prefer to use a coffee mug. So in order to collect the information, we were divided into groups of 4 to 5 people in class, and we went out on campus and off campus and gave questionnaires to different people with different demographics to be able to collect the most accurate amount of information. We will also be using researc...