The Influence of Corporate Social Responsibility on UK Clothing Retail

This report investigates the impact of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) on consumer behavior within the UK clothing retail industry, focusing on brands like GAP and H&M. The study explores the influence of CSR on customer purchasing decisions, brand preferences, and willingness to pay more for ethical products. The research methodology involves interviews with consumers and analysis of secondary data from company reports and academic literature. The report examines the awareness of CSR among consumers, their perceptions of ethical brands, and the factors that drive their buying behavior. The findings provide insights into the significance of CSR in the fashion industry and its influence on consumer choices, highlighting the importance of ethical practices and sustainable initiatives for retailers in the UK market. The report also discusses the customer's decision making process and how they react towards the CSR.

Research method The
influence of corporate
social responsibility on
consumer behaviour in
the UK clothing
retailing

Abstract
Main aim of this project report is analyse influence of the Corporate Social
Responsibility on the customer behaviour within UK's clothing retailing. The Corporate social
Responsibility refer to numerous efforts or action taken by the organisation with the motive to
bring down the environmental changes that help the society and save the plane. These practices
of organisation improve their brand image. Few brands have their own causes they picked
annually & dedicate the entire department to help them. Other brand do not have a string value
but they still efforts to utilise the eco friendly approaches.

Table of Contents
Abstract ...........................................................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................2
Background to the research organisation....................................................................................2
Research Rational ...........................................................................................................................3
Research Objectives....................................................................................................................4
Literature Review ............................................................................................................................4
Methodology ...................................................................................................................................5
Research methodology................................................................................................................5
Validity and reliability ....................................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
References:.......................................................................................................................................9
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INTRODUCTION
A movement towards the CSR has had an influence in various domains. Many
organisations have taken actions to improve environmental sustainability for their effective and
effective operation, by measure including installing renewable energy sources and purchasing the
carbon offsets (Chan, Ren and Liu, 2022). This report is going to demonstrate that how
significant the Corporate Social Responsibility is for the customers & are they happy to pay a
high amount for the clothes of ethical brands. Therefore this report will undertake the most
suitable research method so that an accurate outcome can be obtained.
Background to the research organisation
To produce this report, mainly two famous and well known retailing brand are chosen.
First one GAP and second one is H& M.
The H&M has more than 5000 stores across the world wide within around 80 nations. It
is a very popular brand that has collaborated with popular tennis, players, singers and many
more. In last 2 years, respective organisation has decided to pay more attention on specific areas
that re mentioned below;
 Environmental education
 Water shortage
 Utilization of the sustainable materials & minimizing waste materials produced by the
company.
 Livelihood enhancement & providing the equal work opportunities for both the men and
women.
GAP is an another international brand that has more than 4000 stored within 60 nations.
Respective company was founded during 1969 by the Donald Fisher & Doris F. Fisher. Its
headquarters is located within San Francisco, California. GAP is a biggest retailer firm across the
globe and around 135000 employees work within this company. It has been identified that Gap
has a high standard and it is very strict for its policies. Its key corporate-social-responsibility are:
 Fighting against the child labor
 improving the organizational work conditions
 Working towards the equal rights & a fair pay rate across the world wide
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Research Rational
As it has been determined that since last 10 year, the Corporate-social-responsibility has
become an inevitable part within fashion industry, therefore, organizations that engaged in the
fashion industry has started to produce the sustainable clothes. As people has started to pay more
concern on environment, therefore they prefer to buying more sustainable shoes and clothes.
Large organizations has started to create campaigns based on how to save this planet and how to
aid the world-wide shortage of water supply. Along with this, companies also started to spread
awareness regarding to minimize the harmful emissions (Gardetti and Pedersen, Eds., 2022).
Purpose of this project report is to analyze that to what extent individuals care for the
ethical & Eco-friendly firms and if so, are they actually prepare to pay a high amount for their
clothes. Then again, several individuals still purchase the products from the companies that have
a poor CSR values because of a better cost (Hayat and et. al., 2022). This report will be based on
the two organization- GAP is an American organization that has the strong CSR campaigns and
H&M is a well known and famous brand through out the world. This report will analyses that
what individual think about the middle class brand and are they influenced by the ethical values.
Additionally, a detailed analysis will be conducted on the basis of interviews of individuals who
buy product from these brand. Few question will be asked by the, based on the ethical brand,
whey they prefer to purchase things from the GAP and H&M, do they will pay more for causes
of the brand and many more.
 For primary method of the data collection, an interview will conducted with four
individuals met on the Oxford Street with London.
 For secondary research, it has been decided to take use of the official information or data
which cane be collected through online mode on specific topic and for the particular
organization as well as several reports, articles and magazines related to the Corporate-
social-responsibility.
 At late, the overall result will be summarize properly & recommendations will be given
by the overall discussion.
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Aim
To analyse influence of the corporate social responsibility on consumer behaviour in
the UK clothing retailing
Research Objectives
Main object vie of this research is to analyse that how customer buying behaviour is
influenced by the corporate-social-responsibility. In this report, the primary & secondary,
method are used to analyse given topic & define actual outcome of this. Additionally, this report
will also review that how customer's purchasing decisions are being made & what drives
individual to pick a particular brand. As the customer actually interested in the e-co- friendly
brands? What do customer know about the CSR & why do they like the GAP and H&M?
Literature Review
The term Corporate-social-responsibility has been developed before many years ago and
now it is defined as a business self regulation that enable the organisation to become socially
accountable. As per the Carroll (1979) Corporate-social-responsibility include the economic,
legal and ethical responsibilities. It has been observed that these practices of CSR impact the
organization in a positive ways and also provide various benefit to the society (Lopez and
Rangel, 2022). Nevertheless, it is significant for the customers to be aware about the Corporate-
social-responsibility's values that an organization has. Otherwise, it will become difficult for the
customers to take and decisions regarding their purchase. According to Duncombe and Heeks
(2002), awareness itself in not translated into the actual actions. A good Corporate-social-
responsibility lead better brand image, awareness and trust among the customers.
 Customer purchase behavior
The customer purchase behavior is described as a process of selecting a specific service
or product. Te retail organization need to understand nature of the customer behavior as it
demonstrate what affect the customer to decide & purchase particular product & what actually
catchers their attention (McCormick and Ram, 2022).
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The customer buying behavior is broadly influenced by the social media platforms such
as Instagram, Facebook, You Tube and fashion magazine as well. Of course, other components
such as quality, style, price and brand are also very crucial for the customers. There are mainly 3
key component that influence the customer buying behavior. These factors include
psychological, personal and social elements.
 Customer buying decision
this process is defined as an act of taking a decision related to purchasing certain product
or services. It is final step of the customer buying process that show customer's trust towards a
specific brand. It is significant to state that customer's decision making procedure consist various
steps including recognition, seeking the information, an evaluation, buying decision and
behaviour after the purchase (Pedersen, Andersen and Schiavon, 2022).
 How the customer react towards the CSR
this procedure consists of various actions and steps and depend mainly on the customer.
Firstly customer receive the information regarding Corporate-social-responsibility of a particular
company. Then this information is analysed & judged. At last, customer take a decision when
they interact with the chosen brand. As per the Brown and Dacin (1997), customers are more
interested into mainly two significant aspects related to a brand: the corporate-social-
responsibility (what a customer think about different ethical, social and e-co polices of a firm)
and services that company provide to them. It prove that customers are influence by the CSR of a
company and take in to the account when selecting any brand (Reza and Du Plessis, 2022).
Methodology
 Approaches- In this report, the inductive approach has been taken with to motive to
generate a meaning from collected data to identify the patterns. This approach allow a
flexibility that make the data collection more easy.
 Design- In this, report, the descriptive design has been chosen with the purpose to define
the phenomenon in a more systematically and accurately (Rienda and et. al., 2022).
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Research methodology
In this report, both the quantitative and qualitative and quantitative data will be used in
order to determine that how the Corporate-social-responsibility influence the customer's
behaviour. Furthermore, the mixed methods is used to produce this report. Along with this, these
two approaches will help in understanding the issues & efficaciously examine it & validate it.
For the aim of this project report, the information will be collected based on specific
topic. The data collection is a process of collecting data or information for an issue or specific
topic. Therefore, interview, focus group, survey, oral histories, documentation and review of
articles are considered as most popular and effective way of data collection.
In this report, to collect the reliable data, interview data collection methods was
considered as most suitable. In this, all the participant will receive six question base don the
Corporate-social-responsibility & it affect the customer's buying behaviour within UK's clothing
retails industry. For secondary research, different literature sources are reviewed such as articles,
magazines official online website and journals for the H&M and GAP.
Research paradigm
Main purpose of this report is to analyse influence of the Corporate-social-responsibility
on the customer behaviour in UK clothing retailing. In order to conduct this research project, two
reputed brand are selected that are GAP and H&M. Both of these organisation are very famous
and also have a large customer bases across the world. These company have the stable
Corporate-social-responsibility policies & corporate values. Information based on these
company's CSR has been collected from their official website in which all the significant
informations are available in details (Shih, 2022).
For aim of this project report, it is decided to use the questionnaires which consist
mainly six question divided into two parts. These question will be close ended and open ended as
well. These question are related to examine that which brand is most beloved of the customers,
from where customer shop and what is most important for them (price, material, style, quantity
and other etc.).
All the customers will be interviewed in the London on Oxford Street while shopping.
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Validity and reliability
To complete this research successfully, four individual were interviewed. They do not
know one another & shop from the London at Oxford Street. All the participant gave permission
to utilize their responses for research & analyze them. Not any personal information were gathers
and neither of them received any payment for their participation.
Part 1
1. Do you ever shop from the GAP and H&M ? Which one do you like the most?
2. What are the key characteristics when purchasing clothes: quality, brand, price or style?
Please start with most significant one for you.
3. Why do you pick out these brands?
Part 2
1.Do You prefer to buy products from those brands who promises for eco-friendly
and sustainability?
2.Did you ever choose ethical brand for purchasing clothes?
3.Are you ready to pay extra prices to those clothing brands which are having
good CSR activities?
ANSWERS:
1. Do you shop at GAP and H&M? Which one do you prefer better than
other?
P1: Yes, I prefer to buy clothes from both brands but I will choose H&M over GAP
due to their designs and quality of clothes.
P2: Yes, I buy clothes from both brands but I prefer to shop with GAP.
P3: Yes, I have used clothes of both brand but I prefer to become loyal customer
of H&M brand.
P4: Yes, I have tried both brands and I get more satisfied with H&M clothing.
2. What are the main reason to choose the brand?
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P1: I choose H&M over GAP due to their attractive designs and quality.
P2: I choose GAP due to their amazing quality of jeans.
P3: I choose H&M due to their effective customer service and good prices.
P4: I prefer H&M for quality and price.
3. What is the main characteristics while purchasing clothes from your
chosen brand, quality, price, style? Please choose most preferred
characteristic for you
P1: Quality, price and style are chosen by me.
P2: My first preference is quality and second is price.
P3: Designs.
P4:I prefer quality and price.
1. Do You prefer to buy products from those brands who promises for eco-
friendly and sustainability?
P1: Yes, I care about my planet and nature and hence, I prefer to buy from such
brands who sell eco-friendly and sustainable clothes.
P2: Yes, I prefer such brands sometimes.
P3: I prefer to buy clothes from those brands which uses sustainable material.
P4: Yes. I prefer such brands.
2. Did you ever choose ethical brand for purchasing clothes?
P1: Yes, I do.
P2: Yes, I support such brands.
P3: Of course.
P4: Commonly, I did not prefer to buy from such brands but I want to try soon.
3.Are you ready to pay extra prices to those clothing brands which are
having good CSR activities?
P1: Yes, I can pay more for such brands but if the prices are extremely high then I
will avoid to pay.
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P2: Yes, I will but I will also prefer to check quality of clothes.
P3: Yes, I support such brands.
P4: No, I will not pay extra for such brands.
DATA ANALYSIS
The questionnaire is chosen to collect data and 75% of customers prefer H&M over
GAP. The main reason for these customers to choose H&M over GAP is the quality and
designs of clothes. After this the questionnaire have the questions related to CSR
activities and customers preference toward CSR companies.100% customers agrees
that they prefer to buy eco-friendly and sustainable clothes. This shows that the
customers are more influenced toward such brands who provide eco-friendly products.
Most of the customers are also ready to pay extra amount for purchasing sustainable
products. It is recorded after receiving respondents’ response from questionnaire that
75% customers are ready to pay extra amount to buy from those companies who are
having good CSR activities. This proves our statement that customers are really
influenced by CSR in the clothing retail.
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CONCLUSION
From the above report, it has been analysed that CSR play a crucial role in the fashion
industry. Therefore, this report was based on how CSR impact the customer behaviour in UK
clothing retailing industry. For this, two well known organisation ( GAP and H&M) of fashion
industry are chosen. An interview was conducted with the four participant who answered all the
question about the chosen brand. In this, interview they share thought regarding the Corporate-
social-responsibility in their chosen brand. Therefore, in this finding, it has been analysed that
customer mainly prefer to Purchas the ethical brand which are made with the sustainable
materials. Therefore, it is recommended to the organised engaged in fashion industry to get
involved in promoting their CSR campaign through different social media platform as it will
improve their brand image in more effective and efficient ways among the customers.
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