Högskolan i Skövde

In the food industry, the concept of CSR has been around for several years and has been developed to play a significant role in food business communication with its consumers, in the context of the environmental impact of the industry has become a debated topic. The purpose of this study is to investigate consumer awareness about the food businesses work with CSR. The authors want to provide an understanding of how consumers receive the message about food company's CSR work and how it affects their buying process.

To investigate how consumers' buying process is affected, we have conducted 35 interviews with consumers who have different demographic data. The interviews indicate that there is a shortage of information regarding how food companies convey their CSR work to their consumers, referred to the interviewees lack of perception in this study.

Furthermore, during the interviews, there were significant differences regarding the younger and older generation, but also the level of education, personal engagement and gender. The mentioned variables seem to have an effect on how respondents receive the message. Therefore, we argue that there is scope for improvement, where food companies can increase their efforts to communicate information to their consumers. If food companies take the above-mentioned aspects in mind when communicating their sustainability efforts, it can lead to a competitive advantage, which in turn benefits companies' profitability.