Cracking Bhattacharya and Sen's Findings

C.B. Bhattacharya and Sankar Sen wrote an article, Doing Better at Doing Good: When, Why, and How Consumers Respond to Corporate Social Initiatives for the University of California Berkeley. In their article, Bhattacharya and Sen provide several findings on how doing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities help companies. They examine the internal and external outcomes for companies and consumers. I believe the NFL breaks some of the principles discussed in their article.

The league has quickly increased its CSR activities in domestic violence by mandating all players, personnel, and leadership to take educational programs to help prevent domestic violence. Moreover, the league developed a video on the bad impacts of domestic violence and sent it to all college and high school sports team. Here is the video.

Now Bhattacharya and Sen do discuss how the NFL's recent domestic violence CSR activities may have led to fans to doubt the sincerity of their actions. While I believe this is a possibility, this year's ratings haven't dropped, jersey sales haven't slowed down, and fans have not stopped attending the games. Part of the reason I believe they have sustained their following and loyalty is because the NFL has teams across the country. Each team provides community support and increases the loyalty of the fans to the NFL. It has helped them continually market to the communities that they serve. This is similar to Congress. No one likes Congress but people like their individual members of Congress. This is seen because typically around 90% of members are re-elected every year.

Furthermore, Bhattacharya and Sen said, "Our focus groups and surveys revealed that consumers are more likely to make positive attributions and have positive attitudes when the company engaging in CSR is small rather than big, local rather than national, and a small, personal, privately owned operation rather than a big impersonal conglomerate or multinational." In the case of the NFL, I believe the fans buy into the individual teams over the league itself. Those connections are more local as described by Bhattacharya and Sen but they are all part of a larger national organization.

Another area which may place the NFL and leagues like it into a similar category is the type of competition. While their are jobs at stake, and each owner is attempting to make a profit, the fans do not see the league as a means to put food on the table. Unlike many other companies, most of the people who work in the NFL, players, coaches, front office executives, and even the referees make a sizable income. This may dilute the views on competition, however, companies tend to focus on increasing their profits so they can pay their employees and expand their opportunities. For most of these companies the competition typically comes at the expense of another company, or community.