Question

Using Social Media to Tell the Story of TOMS TOMS offers more than a comfortable and trendy pair of shoes. It is about status and a story to tell. Mycoskie realised the power of the TOMS story since the early days of the company and has focused on it ever since. Mycoskie wrote in his book, acknowledging Kendall Haven, who authored Super Simple Storytelling: "Human minds rely on stories and story architecture as the primary road map for understanding, making sense of, remembering, and planning our lives - as well as the countless experiences and narratives we encounter along the way." He added that smart, future-oriented companies use this ancient impulse in new ways, by telling stories that people can watch on YouTube and share on Facebook. He quickly realised the strength of social and digital media to convey his story by saying: "People are no longer all listening to or watching the same few radio or TV stations each week - they're following their own carefully curated Twitter feeds, commenting on and creating blogs, channel surfing among more than 500 TV stations, watching Hulu on laptops, clicking on YouTube, reading Kindles and Nooks, and surfing on iPads." In 2009, Mycoskie partnered with AT&T by filming a commercial, which ran throughout 2009 and was an enormous success. The commercial profiled TOMS as a for-profit company that donates one pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair purchased, and founder Blake who uses his AT&T BlackBerry to conduct business from around the world. Lots of people tweeted about the commercial creating awareness about TOMS and AT&T, and support for the TOMS business model. 1- Discuss in your opinion, does business responsible for its society wellbeing or just making profit? Why? 2- How TOMS shoes utilizes the CSR in its marketing activities?

Answer 1

The traditional goal of firm is profit maximisation. The US supreme court in Dodge vs Ford motors Co has come to the view that profit maximisation for owners should be preferred. But this view is not given that much importance today. Today corporates are being viewed as responsible to society. Infact research has revealed that 55% customers were ready to purchase products of company at higher prices provided it engaged in CSR. So these goals are not mutually lay exclusive. Dodd had rightly said business organisation is an economic institution which has social service as well as profit maximisation function

2 Tom's shoes utilises CSR in its marketing activities. It is saying that it will donate one pair of shoes to the deserving for every pair of shoes it sells. In this way it is appealing to the social conscious individuals and showing them that it is contributing to the cause of society and is not just interested in profit making