1. Introduction
The rising public distrust with private companies has been urging corporate social responsibility (CSR) practice. After the 2008 economic crisis, the world economy entered “a new equilibrium characterised by higher risk, low growth and diminished capital flow” [
1]. Capital flows and trade in goods and services among countries significantly retreated. Foreign direct investment declined from around 2 trillion dollars in 2007 to around 1.1 trillion in 2018 [
2]. As the economy slowed down, trust in private firms’ ability to take responsible, self-regulated activities to bring about desirable social changes was waning [
3]. In response to it, the international community and national and local governments strengthened regulations to monitor TNCs’ activities, including mandating CSR disclosures, such as the European Union’s Non-Financial Disclosure Directive [
4,
5,
6,
7]. According to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the number of instruments requiring or encouraging CSR disclosures rose to 400 across 71 countries in 2016, from 180 instruments across 44 countries in 2014 [
8]. Under such pressures, recently, 323 Fortune 500 companies have set CSR-related management targets they regularly report [
9]. Currently, 93% of the world’s largest 250 corporations report their sustainability performance [
10]. These corporations are not only publishing sustainability reports (traditional reporting) but also using digital reporting on their websites [
11]. In 2017, 63% of the largest 100 companies and 75% of the Global Fortune 250 (G250) applied the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) framework [
10].
As external and public pressures increase, private firms and corporations are no longer treating CSR as business cost or only philanthropic and ethical activities, integrating it into the process of central decision-making. Whether CSR practices augment corporate profitability and competitiveness remains unclear and controversial. Nevertheless, an increasing number of companies seem to understand it as central to strategic decision making and day-to-day operations and continues to report their CSR practices [
12]. As Chandler (2019) says, “CSR is no option; it is what businesses do” [
13]. Now, CSR must be seen as a part of value creation processes. In viewing CSR as integral to strategic decision making for value creation, one of the essential components is effective management of stakeholders. For example, corporate governance, which is a critical aspect of CSR in the relationship with the owners and shareholders, was proved to contribute to firm value significantly [
14]. Furthermore, among various stakeholders, consumers are one of the first layers or primary groups to be considered. From the value chain perspective, they are the origins of value creation. Consumers’ perceptions of and attitudes toward firms and corporations substantially and decisively affect the demand for their products and their financial and, in the long run, social profitability. As social responsibility and accountability of firms has become a salient issue which draws a growing international and domestic public attention, methods of implementing CSR will have an enormous influence on consumers’ perception and attitudes with regards to firms and the products they produce. Therefore, from a stakeholder’s perspective, this study focuses on the impacts of consumer perception of CSR practice on their attitudes toward and intentions to purchase products in the Vietnamese food processing industry.
Since the turn of the 21st century, Vietnam has been rapidly integrated into the international community and deepened relationships with the world economy. As the country became more extensively and intensively linked with the global economy and society, CSR observance became pivotal for Vietnamese companies to effectively adapt to expanding global value chains (GVC) in the world market. However, although the concept of CSR in Vietnam was recognised for decades, its implementation remains at the embryonic stage [
15,
16]. For instance, when the U.S. textile importers required local Vietnamese suppliers to implement CSR codes in return for access to the U.S. market, only 50 Vietnamese businesses got CSR standard certifications among 200,000 businesses currently operating in the country [
17]. The most common corporate response to CSR issues in Vietnam is still in the form of charitable deeds and donations, rather than a strategic approach to meet different needs and interests of stakeholders inside and outside a company [
15,
16]. Many companies even neglect their social responsibilities and indulge only in profit-making regardless of stakeholders’ interests in society. As a result, socially illegal corporate activities, such as unsafe working conditions and low wages, unhealthy and even harmful products, violation of local and national laws and environmental pollution are severely undermining the international reputation of Vietnamese firms. Hence, CSR is a severe challenge that Vietnamese companies must face to become competitive in external and internal markets.
In the Vietnamese food processing industry, many companies are accused of running their businesses for short-term profit regardless of its adverse effects on consumers and the community. Currently, nearly 10 million farm households and 500,000 food-processing facilities are involved in food manufacturing and processing businesses, 85% of which are seasonally operating small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) [
18]. One of the most severe issues in the food processing companies is food safety incurred in the production chain. Most companies in the food processing industry are pre-occupied with cost reductions and seldom observe rules of food safety. As a result, most of their production equipment and facilities fail to meet the requirements for food safety. According to Do (2018), only 33.6% out of 408,821 food processing facilities meet the requirements of maintaining a clean and safe production system. In 2017, when authorities checked 625,060 production facilities, 123,914 facilities did not meet basic standards of food safety, which accounted for 19.8%. From 2015 to 2018, 713 cases of food poisoning occurred nationwide, which affected 19,543 people and resulted in 108 fatalities [
18]. Consequently, the issue of proper CSR practices emerged as a hot topic in Vietnam. Do (2018) argues that food processing companies in Vietnam are aware of their responsibility to the society but neglect to fulfil it because of weak pressures from the government and consumers who are directly using the products [
18]. In the absence of sufficient pressures and enforcement from the three major stakeholders of governments, society and consumers, food processing firms tend to disregard the weight of CSR observance for profitability and sustainability. In such a context, two main questions are raised in this study: (1) how do the consumers in the Vietnamese food industry perceive the CSR concept and its aspects? (2) do the Vietnamese consumers’ CSR perceptions influence their attitude and behaviours when buying food products? These two questions can be answered by examining the relationship between the CSR perception, attitude and behaviour intention of the Vietnamese consumers based on empirical data.
This paper is organised as follows.
Section 2 briefly reviews the literature that discusses the research challenges and open issues related to CSR in the Vietnamese food processing industry.
Section 3 addresses an analytical framework, hypotheses, measurements and sampling methods.
Section 4 presents the findings from the data analysis, which is collected from a self-administered survey by consumers in the Vietnamese food industry and their practical implications.
Section 5 concludes with some limitations of this study and suggestions for future work.
5. Conclusions
Recently, Vietnamese enterprises have been eager to join global economic integration and value chain. However, to get effectively engaged in global value chain requires CSR observance by Vietnamese firms. The requirement is more likely to become compelling and strict with the emergence of the SDGs regime. Under the SDGs framework, CSR has been forming an international norm and code of conduct for business activities all over the world. On the other hand, it has been emerging as one major instrument for enterprises to contribute to the SDGs and cultivate new business opportunities. Therefore, implementing good CSR practices is crucial to the management and operation of businesses. CSR also provides a strategic tool for enterprises to build brand reputation and customer loyalty and to effectively deal with risks and crisis. A bad reputation may hamper and even put a company into jeopardy. Good CSR practice can help a company with its social legitimacy and avoid or preclude a potential crisis. In that context, this paper dealt with the relationship between consumers’ CSR perception, attitude and behaviour intention. Based on research findings, Vietnamese consumers seem to have a good perception of CSR issues. However, their response to either good or bad CSR practices remains weak.
This research has some limitations. The sample is relatively small and not diverse in terms of locations and other backgrounds, concentrating mostly on the northern provinces of Vietnam and the student groups. Therefore, the snowball and convenient sampling method might lead to a relatively biased distribution of respondents. In addition, this research addresses only consumers as a unit of analysis to the exclusion of other stakeholders. Thus, it cannot provide a holistic view of the utility of the strategic CSR-based analytical approach. In terms of the research model, this study has partially adopted the RAA, not including the impacts of other factors than consumer attitudes on actual purchase and boycott decision. As a result, it cannot fully demonstrate the usefulness of the RAA in this research area. Finally, this study has a practical limitation. It deals with the CSR issue only in the manufacturing sector in Vietnam, where service sectors are expanding. For the above-mentioned incompleteness of this research, further studies need to be methodologically more inclusive and diverse and analytically more comprehensive.