Mothen Richard Amuaku.
Student Id: 102768828
Candidate no: 8561347

Synopsis title:
“Healthy Eating and the UK’s major food retailers: a case study in corporate social responsibility”

The reason why I chose this article was because e the headline attracted me as being very sophisticated and into depth about the healthy eating advertising in this country. Its also interested me because I did background research on America’s healthy eating campaigns in all of the major stores and I wanted to see the comparison between the two countries. This article summarises the impact that the UK’s major food retailers have on the healthy eating levels in the public’s eye. This means that the food retailers can start to dictate what can be seen as acceptable to eat and what is non-acceptable to eat in the view of the general public. Also in this article it says that the major companies in the UK have to have a certain amount of corporate social responsibility to the general public. This is whereby a business can take the option of reviewing and changing its impacts that is has on the general public.

In the article many interesting facts are stated about what the public has in mind. In the first paragraph of healthy eating the article manages to define what healthy eating is all about.
This is shown through a sentence which defines it as “the act of following a balanced nutritional diet” (Wikipedia, 2005). Also in this paragraph it manages to state the factors that might have a big impact on the healthy eating of the society. This paragraph also states that
“there is evidence to show that low income groups find it difficult to achieve a balanced diet”
(Riches, 1997). This means that one of the major factors that affect healthy eating is the amount of money that they earn. Another important fact that is stated in this paragraph is that “obesity is increasingly prevalent amongst children and that most children in the UK eat too much fat, particularly saturated fat, added sugars and salt, and too few portions and fresh vegetables” (Department of health, 2005).
The second paragraph is about food retailing in the UK. This paragraph gives facts and statements about how the major retailers have been affecting the market share in the UK.
This also shows that the market has been dominated by major food retailers, who ”account for just over 82% of food sales and just for food retailers, namely Tesco, J. Sainsbury, ASDA and the Wm, Morrison Group, had a massive 65.3 per cent market share (table I, mintel
2004).This part of the article also states the apparent fact that the supermarket chains are now directly linked in with the customers’ needs and wants and therefore have a direct impact on them.

The third paragraph is about the methods of enquiry about the top ten food retailers in the country. A search was done on Google in which the phrase “corporate social responsibility” was typed in along with each of the names. The whole point of doing this was to show the many ways how the top ten companies were adhering to their corporate social responsibility agendas. This was also to show whether their CSR agendas were used in their various forms of advertising. The second part of this section describes a survey that was conducted, in order to try and spot the healthy eating themes that were being used in the various advertising forms in the stores such as the posters and the banners.

The fourth paragraph is talking about the various companies’ ways of implementing their
CSR responsibilities by adhering to their customers’ requests. This part of the article breaks down some of the information on the major food retailers such as Sainsbury’s marks and spencer’s and also ASDA. The article states that out of all the companies, Sainsbury’s is the one of them that has the most defined corporate social responsibilities by trying to adhere to its customers’ needs and wants of a healthy food section. Also they article says