Brewing Corporate Responsibility at Molson Coors

Molson Coors – Brewing Corporate Responsibility at Molson Coors        Jody Mackinnon 124414        

Issues:

How Can Molson Coors bring more business and social value to consumers through Corporate Responsibility?

How Can Molson Coors use corporate responsibility to drive Molson Coors global competitiveness?

Corporate social responsibility has become a strategy that many businesses are embracing. CSR enhances the economy and environment as well as increases media attention on company achievements. Molson Coors has come a long way with their beer print strategy for CSR. They have used it as marketing tool and media booster not only to educate and enrich the economy, deepen employee involvement and relationships, but also to attempt to create social and business value for consumers. The consumer purchase decision process is being rapidly influenced by CSR throughout each stage; the business community is quickly recognizing the strategic value of being more responsible and is beginning to align products and business relationships, in particular through their supply chains, accordingly. Molson Coors CR strategies rely on five key components that seek to enhance their social strategy and create competitive advantage through positioning themselves as a more socially enriched organization. Although all components of Molson Coors CSR are worthy and important to sustainability, greenwashing is a short term fix to see a return on profits. When a company or organization spends more time and money claiming to be “green” through advertising and marketing than actually implementing business practices that minimize environmental impact, it creates a media buzz but will not create the relationships with customers and suppliers to build business or social value, hence minimizing the chances of creating a competitive advantage. 

Beer print has been launched quite successfully, however, Molson Coors, along with many global organizations can struggle with creating a global competitive advantage when doing business with multiple sets of cultures. Cultures across the world have very different views on how the matrix of business situations, marketing efforts and economy sustainability should be addressed. The matrix influences how messages are received by customers in a way that is hard to quantify and fit into a strategic marketing plan. Molson has created a CSR strategy that they believe is the most beneficial to build brand awareness and increase profits. It appears that Molson has relied substantially on their internal research and has been lacking on external market research that enlightens on the demands of the customers. Market research can be time consuming and costly for organizations but without continuing to branch out and conducting market research to analyze alternative CRS that are specialized to the specific needs in the communities that they serve; they are essentially blocking themselves from increasing the global sustainable efficiency of their CSR. By using market and localized research and broadening CSR strategies, Molson Coors can help drive its global competitiveness by focusing on executing new corporate responsibility initiatives to engage employees and customers across the company’s range of geographic locations.  This allows for markets to be segmented to be sure that customers are being directly affected by Molson Coors CSR strategies and creating increased customer and business value. It is essential for Molson to build strong relationships with customers and suppliers as well as be aware of environmental changes and trends that can be used to create global competitive advantage. Engaging customers and providing public media to keep up to date with advances and products will assist in brand awareness that Molson has been trying to build with its global customers. Implementing an international marketing strategy using public relations and employee-customer outreach programs will influence consumer loyalty and build relationships through incoming and outgoing information that reflects what consumers expect and what Molson intend to do in order to meet new sustainability goals and improve their beer print CSR strategy.