BRANDING THROUGH CSR: A COMPARISON OF FAMILY VERSUS NONFAMILY FIRMS

Motivation and background: The present paper explores the relationship between CSR uptake and branding in SMEs. It builds on and extends the goals and activities carried out in the Responsible Med project, a European project involving 9 institutions of 6 different countries in the Mediterranean Area. One of the effects of CSR on competitiveness has been connected to their marketing effect, which includes its contribution to corporate branding. Although SMEs are in real need of optimizing their processes and investing on differentiation, their lack of scale is a common hindrance to capitalizing on their CSR actions, including its branding possibilities. An additional problem is that many SMEs do not consider the strategic importance of CSR. These circumstances make it relevant to understand better the current state of CSR and its use as part of SMEs branding. A better knowledge can help design policies or support for SMEs to streamline CSR into their competitive strategy. To tackle this topic, the research questions of this article are: how do firms use CSR as a branding strategy, why do firms engage in CSR, and whether there are differences between family and non-family business in their branding through CSR.