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Considering the essential rudiments of a strategic marketing plan, firms explore internal and external means. Corporate philanthropy is quickly becoming a viable strategic option in development of marketing strategies. Firms looking to further brand development, market recognition, and enhanced customer perceptions can integrate philanthropic initiatives throughout the planning process. Implementing these initiatives in a complementary fashion to the overall business plan brings forth the latency of creating a distinctive competitive advantage for those choose to do so. This marketing phenomenon provides a cogent social and economic approach to furthering the myriad of business agendas necessary to have market sustainability.
INTRODUCTION
Corporate philanthropy is a phenomenon which associates the business sector with the social sector. Social historians and researchers alike as a subset of a larger corporate social responsibility (CSR) subject, philanthropy provides an opportunity for corporations to establish an ethical and moral mantra within the organization (Gan, 2006; Madrigal & Boush, 2008). An organization is comprised of people who assume the responsibility of cultivating and maintaining a culture supportive of philanthropy and its range of objectives. Successful philanthropy - achieving the goal is as vital to an organization as the "core business" (Bruch & Walter, 2005). Philanthropic initiatives are complex and thus need to be developed, communicated, implemented, monitored, and lastly sustained, in order to guarantee its viability as a strategic tool.
Embarking on the journey of studying the underpinnings of corporate philanthropy and its assemblance of meaning, one must first determine the construct of the phenomenon. First, corporate is defined as a public entity organized around a central theme driven by a collectivist culture of economic, legal, and social purpose. Secondly, philanthropy is defined as a means by which public organizations externally exhibit corporate social responsibility - widely defined by a myriad of scholarly authors (Carroll, 1979; Gan, 2006; Halme & Laurila, 2009). Moreover, the term as simply put by Drucker (1984), "philanthropic, that is the love of his fellow men" (p. 54). Alternatively, Luo and Bhattacharya (2009) suggest, a "Friedman-esque view" of CSR as an acknowledgment of a more traditional economic or capitalistic perspective. However, for uses herein, the expression describes the role and responsibility of the firm to recognize its societal obligation and to execute initiatives to benefit its constituents -...