L'oréal, Estée Lauder and Procter & Gamble - Comparing and Evaluating the Csr Activities in the Cosmetic Industry

Exclusive Summary

Nowadays, corporate social responsibility has become very important in measuring the performance of a company. Moreover, a popular trend of pursuing natural lives calls for natural ingredients and natural remedies, which leads to more concerns on cosmetic industry. As a result, a host of cosmetic companies implement activities to achieve their corporate social responsibility. This report examines the corporate social responsibility activities within three cosmetic companies: L'Oréal, Estée Lauder and Procter & Gamble.

In order to find out the differences and similarities of corporate social responsibility within these companies, this report compares and contrasts their corporate social responsibility activities in four aspects: environment, health and safety, cosmetic tests and community contributions. In environmental aspect, this report analyzes their solutions to packages issues and other environment-friendly measures. Then, in the section of health and safety, this report focuses on how the CSR activities indicate their attitudes toward using two toxic chemicals: hydroquinone and phthalates. In addition, this report provides many details to describe their CSR practices dealing with cosmetic tests. Finally, some charitable activity and employee's policies are researched to show the community contributions within these three companies.

In conclusion, this report finds that although L'Oréal, Estée Lauder and Procter & Gamble took various measures to perform their corporate social responsibility, all of them have the same limitation which is lacking in performing CSR activities thoroughly.

1. Introduction

In the present age, although corporations become the crucial creators of social wealth, many companies like oil enterprise Royal Dutch (Aldred 1997) have caused irreversible resource-wasting and environmental damages. Moreover, because highly publicized, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a hot spot in the global society (Brammer, Williams & Zinkin 2004). However, for many years there is no a unified concept of CSR around the world. In general, the notion of CSR is based on the principle of sustainable development, which requires that companies not only be responsible for corporate profits, but also be answerable to employees, consumers, the community and environment (Lea 2002). As customers are now more concerned about corporate social and environmental performances rather than their economic performance, companies today are expected to be active in solving environmental and social problems in return for the society.

In order to promote their public image, a mass of companies carry out a variety of programs, which can be referred to as CSR activities. Even though the CSR activities of different industries are varied, all these activities are conducted in accordance with the uniform basic principle of CSR, which is sustainability.

In recent decades, the natural trend, which calling for natural ingredients and natural remedies like herbal remedies, has become very popular (Article 13 2002). Meanwhile, those people who follow natural tread emphasize natural lives. Thus, increasing numbers of customers pursue natural lives and pay more attention on organic and natural food and personal care products (Matthews 2008). As a result, cosmetic companies are expected to perform their CSR in a wide range of aspects such as environmental protection, resources conservation, health and safety and community contributions.

So far, many cosmetic companies take a large number of approaches to achieve their CSR. However, their practical actions have certain limitations which are the obstacles of their CSR performance. Therefore, it is import to find out these limitations so that they can give back to the society successfully. This report compares and contrasts CSR activities within three mainstream cosmetic firms L'Oréal, Estée Lauder (EL) and Procter & Gamble (P&G) from four aspects: environment, health and safety, cosmetic test and community contribution. It also evaluates the CSR practices of these three firms, including the limitations of their CSR activities.

2. Comparing and contrasting CSR activities

As CSR is playing a growing important role worldwide and the development of natural trend, cosmetic companies have taken numerous actions to fulfill their CSR duties and to reach the expectations of customers. The famous cosmetic companies L'Oréal, EL and P&G have carried out various CSR activities in the following four aspects.

2.1 Environment

With the rapid development of industry,