Public Opinion Towards Corporate Philanthropy of Tobacco Companies: Implications on the Performance of Tobacco Firms in an Emerging World

Main Article Content

Joy Ifeoma Enemuo et al.

Abstract

Corporate philanthropy (CP) refers to  all of the ways in which companies achieve a sustainable positive social and economic impact through strategic and generous use of finances, employee time, facilities, or their own products and services, to help others in the community and support beneficial causes.Although the strategic relevance of corporate philanthropy is widely adopted by many organizations, most tobacco firms undermine its altruistic motives because of the public perception and opinion towards it. This study examines the relationship between corporate philanthropy (CP) and corporate performance with specific references toopinion that the public have towards tobacco firms that practices corporate philanthropy in Nigeria. The research design adopted was a cross-sectional survey design. The population consisted of 515 general public drawn from Enugu, Lagos and Kano states of Nigeria. A total sample size of 443 was drawn from the population using a finite population formula of Krejcie and Morgan.The main instrument used for data collection was questionnaire, structured on 5-point Likert Scale and was manually administered to the respondents.A pilot study was conducted using test – retest methodand tested with Cronbach Alpha reliability test. The result gave a reliability coefficient of 0.77.4, indicating a high degree of items consistency. Face and content validation of the instrument was done by five research experts from both the industry and academia. The hypothesis formulated was tested using Friedman chi-square statistics. The finding indicates that people have a positive public opiniontowards the corporate philanthropy activitiesof tobacco firms in Nigeria,and CP contributed significantly to the effective performance of the organizations. It was advised that tobacco’s firms corporate philanthropy (CP) should ideally be driven by strategic considerations. This is not to dismiss the other motivations for corporate philanthropy. Hence, the altruistic motives which expect nothing in return for return for a philanthropic gift other than social advancement should dominate the thinking in tobacco firms.

Article Details

Section
Articles