An Assessment of Customer Shared Value in the Restaurant Industry – a Survey from Sweden

Abstract

The article tries to investigate to which extent the concept of Customer Shared Value (CSV) is relevant for a particular industry, the restaurant industry. We wanted to know if there is a correlation between social benefits and economic benefits for restaurants. We also wanted to know if restaurants already conduct their business according to the concept of Creating Shared Value, but maybe without reference to the concept as such. We found that restaurant companies in Sweden actually work to create economic benefits and social values. However we did not find that there was any clear pattern between economic value and social values. The companies with the highest total shared value are in fact the companies with the highest revenue, but there are also companies with lower revenue which have scored high in total shared value and vice versa. Most of the restaurants implicitly work with several factors of the concept such as having knowledge of the costs and causes of environmental impacts and the notion of how to treat employees fairly. The findings are valuable because they show to what extent CSV is a reality in the restaurant business today. This may have implications about how practitioner and scholars alike view the concept of CSV.

Keywords

• Creating shared value
• Corporate social responsibility
• Corporate social values
• Restaurants
• Business and Society
• Shared value