Social responsibility projects' affect on brand awareness: A research about enviromental social responsibility campaigns

Social responsibility stands as a supplying concept that makes the sustainable developement which makes an improving and awaring society possible. In a society, every individual has some responsibility for society as every living organization in that society has. Every application that an organization does, to take care of the society that it belongs to, under topics like health, education, enviroment, culture, art, etc. makes the concept of social responsibility concrete and helps finding a solution. At the same time, the mentality of corporate social responsibility is said to be necessary in order to let an organization stand on its own feet inside a global word and competitive enviroment and to make a brand that created by an organization known by consumers, by other brands and by the market, possible If we study the history and the evolution of corporate social responsibility, we can see that, between the time when the concept first came out and the 20th century, the only aim of theorganizations is to generate profit but if we look at present, we can see that the aim of an organization developed from generating profit to learning people's expectation and needs and taking steps that are related to them. Other aim of the present day organizations is creating a positive public image. The study that written according to these facts is aiming to display the level of environmental social responsibility projects' affect on public image of the organization that led them. In the first part of the study, the concept of corporate social responsibility is analyzed theoretically and a definition is made along with explanations about the revolution of corporate social responsibility, the detection of corporate social responsibiliy in Turkey, the models and the sizes of corporate social responsibilities, the advantages and disadvantages of corporate social responsibility and the connection between corporate social responsibility and public relations with approaches of corporate social responsibilty In the second part, the concept of "brand" and "brand awareness" –which is the researching part of this study- is explicated. In the third part –which includes the research-, the results of the survey which took place in three big shopping malls which are located in the Europe side of Istanbul are explained. In the lights of this study, we can see that the awareness of a brand that does enviromental social responsibility project increases together with the enviromental sensibility of its consumer. Even though a brand's awareness is high, the percentage of sale of that brand's product isn't that high if we consider the condition of consumers' choice about a brand that think social responsibility projects are important. In addition to that, most people which took place in that research think that most brands does not consider enviromental projects as important and they find most of the organizatons' social responsibility projects "unconvincing". Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility, Brand, Brand Awareness