Responsible Retailing in the Greek Crisis? Corporate Engagement, CSR Communication, and Social Media

Abstract

In June 2012, in the midst of much uncertainty in the political and business world of austerity-stricken Greece, seven supermarkets decided to embrace the cause of supporting Greek products as foregrounded by the citizen movement ‘We Consume What We Produce’.¹ The retailers took to the cause by promoting the movement through posters, banners, and plastic bags — one of the promotional strategies with which corporate entities (retailers) engaged in order to ameliorate consumer confidence. In a shifting terrain of trust and legitimacy, citizens turned to the marketplace for support; in a comment to the Facebook site of a supermarket, a citizen exclaims: ‘Do whatever you can with your offers, because these sold-out politicians plan to exterminate us. Make your offers real offers, in order to provide us with the possibility of survival. Thank you’. As wages, pensions, and employment were continuously slashed, the human fabric of sustenance and economic subsistence became explicitly entwined and torn throughout. The traumatic reconfigurations of the Greek political system and culture directly impacted the market, causing an adaptation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication to the crisis setting. CSR communication is understood here as a type of global communication which defines and describes the ways in which Multinational Corporations (MNCs), but also national and local businesses attempt to communicate their responsibility towards their location and context.