Suggestion – University Collaboration
A potentially opportunity for Mr Lyn would be to build a mutually beneficial relation with one or more universities. An example of how he could achieve this is by offering his services as a guest speaker free of charge on a number of occasions throughout the academic term, in return for masters level research being carried out in on his company. Corporate Social Responsibility students could have their coursework based around Cleone Foods, providing detailed competitor analysis, systematic overviews and suggested policy amendments. The universities in which such deals are struck could make this an annual report, meaning that Mr Lyn would receive academic, relevant and recent reports and evaluation of both his own company and his competitors, at simply the cost of his time once or twice per year. There would be little or no cost to the
University, and such a deal would be in line with Mr Lyn’s echos of ‘trading services’ which can be beneficial to all parties. Course leaders could ‘cherry pick’ the best reports and forward them to
Mr Lyn for his reference. His feedback could also be of use to the tutors.
The development of hopefully a long term and fruitful relationship with one (or more) universities means that avenues could open in which Mr Lyn would be able to discuss universities stocking his product in canteens and shops. He discussed a barrier to his continued growth is the demographics of particular areas, in which there are smaller numbers of Caribbean population or presences amongst local cuisine. Universities can however be an exception to this rule; with
2013/2014 higher education statistics showing that one in five students would be classed as an
‘ethnic minority’, a figure that is continuing to grow (Higher Education Statistics Agency, 2015).
This diversity, coupled with a traditionally more liberal and open-minded cross section of student consumers (Jaschik, 2014) means that there is every chance of drawing profit from universities.
Suggestion – Social Media Communication
CSR concerns about the legitimacy of a corporation, which requires long-term thinking to gain the trust from various stakeholders. In this process, corporation cannot just generate favorable attitudes from stakeholder, but also need to strengthen its responsible image and keep learning the variety of stakeholders’ concerns and demands. Therefore, an efficient communication platform is necessary for a company paying much attention on CSR (Du, Bhattacharya and Sen,
2010). So far, the information about CSR or sustainability in the official website of Cleone Foods is quite informative and vivid, but lacking the space of interaction, which result in the incapability to communicate with stakeholders. However, patties, the main product of Cleone Foods, is youth-oriented food, so to launch an approach that enable Cleone Foods to communicate with the majority of teenagers is an critical step to build up the sustainability marketing strategy. Social medias, such as Facebook and Twitters can help to fulfill this purpose, and facebook should be of the first priority.
What should we do in social media?
1, To spread the CSR performance.
According to the introduction of Mr Lyn, the discharge of social responsibility is from the passion and is embedded in the regular operation of business, such as the workplace well-being, product safety, community involvement, etc. These aspects are not easily to be well-know, but at the meanwhile, those are essential for outside stakeholders to know about. So the most important part of the social media communication should be about the discourse of recent corporate social performance (CSP). What is more, emphasizing the company’s
CSR commitment is another effective strategy for the communication.
2, To focus on a specific cause.
It is a strategic choice to focus on a specific social cause that is
