The Chinese province of Shandong is taking a proactive role in integrating corporate social responsibility into its appraisal of famous brands, urging companies to fulfill their social responsibilities and improve the quality of famous brand products.
Gu Yuanqiang, deputy director of the Shandong Provincial Quality Inspection Department, said that to enhance its famous brand evaluation system, Shandong included CSR into famous brand appraisals in 2008 and this has helped improve the image of the province's well-known products and enriched their content.
It is reported that Shandong's famous product CSR appraisal focuses on two factors of the average salary level of employees and the percentage of charity expenditure from the total sales revenue. It puts more value on enterprises' efforts in innovation; energy saving and emission reduction; social evaluation; and overall corporate citizenship as opposed to their sales revenue.
In 2008, 616 products from 585 companies in Shandong were accredited as famous products, and 81 service items of 81 companies were made famous service brands. To date there are up to 1,479 famous brand products and 203 famous service brands in Shandong.
Yu said that Shandong would strengthen on its efforts on nurturing famous service brands this year, particularly on services that are closely related to people's daily lives.
