EST1 Task 1
Social responsibility should be an important part of every business. Businesses need to be accountable when it comes to doing the right thing for its employees, customers, shareholders, and the community. When businesses give back to the community and create a positive atmosphere of trust for its customers, everyone benefits. While it is important that a business should make a profit, it should be made by making the right choices to determine the impact on society.
When evaluating Company Q, it is important to look at the actions the business has taken in the past to determine if they were indeed socially responsible. The first piece of information about Company Q is that it is a small local grocery store chain located in a major metropolitan area. This tells us that there is definitely going to be competition and Company Q needs to set itself apart from the crowd in order to be successful. Any advantage in business helps, and being socially responsible will make the community happy which will lead to consumer loyalty.
The second piece of information is that Company Q has recently closed a couple of its stores in higher-crime-rate areas of the city because the stores were losing money. Although it makes sense to close unprofitable stores, Company Q was not acting socially responsible in this situation. The people in these areas depended on the stores for their shopping needs, and rather than find a different course of action, they simply shut the stores down. The company could have tried different tactics, such as looking into loss prevention to decrease the amount of damages, especially in high-crime-rate areas. Company Q failed to be socially responsible, and closed down stores that many people relied upon for there daily needs.
The third piece of information is that Company Q has started to offer a limited amount of high-margin organic products, after years of requests by customers. Although...