The role of cooperate responsibility image in Finnish cocoa industry : study focus area: eco-efficiency and responsible sourcing

Over centuries, cocoa products are widely consumed all over the world. The demand for this commodity is rising day by day. Cocoa farming is mostly conducted as a small family business and 70% of cocoa plantation are located in Africa. Make Chocolate Fair revealed on their website that even though cocoa deliver high revenue for many businesses around the world, cocoa farmer can only earn 6.6% out from this profit per ton of cocoa sold. Hence, different issues rose up from this poverty and mainly related to human rights and safety at work. Finland, on the other hand, has a cocoa consumption level above an average of 5.5kg per person per year, plus, Finland is part of the Nordic region, where the human rights and morality are highly defined and prioritized. The objective of the thesis was to find out whether cooperate socially responsible (CSR) image of Finnish cocoa firms would affect consumer choices. The thesis aimed to answer the three following questions: (1) How Finnish cocoa companies are implementing CSR into their businesses? (2) What are the preferences of Finnish consumers towards cocoa products? (3) Does CSR practices of a firm influences consumer choice in purchasing cocoa products? Literature review was used as the main method to address the topic. Several research papers, articles and books related to cocoa industry, cooperate socially responsible image both in Finland and in the whole world was revised and topic related information was filtered out and presented in the thesis. In addition, around 10 companies’ websites were also reviewed in order to get an overall picture on how cocoa businesses in Finland are coping with CSR issues. Without regards to some research limitation, it was revealed that consumer preferences towards purchasing cocoa products are affected by different reasons: color of packaging, taste, brand popularity, or even prices and promotion. Hence, it cannot be concluded that the social image of a cocoa brand would affect significantly to the consumer choice but only affect ...