GOODWILL HUNTING: A new study in the Journal of Marketing offers a useful distinction between different types of CSR activities and their effect on sales. Initiatives “that genuinely seek to reduce a brand’s negative externalities” — which the authors call “corrective and compensating” initiatives — tend to boost sales. Those merely “focused on philanthropy” they refer to as “cultivating good will,” and these efforts can harm sales. If unconnected to a business’s actual operations, such activities can be seen as insincere. A bottled water brand that reduces the amount of plastic in its bottles — and publicizes the fact — tends to benefit. But a bottled water brand that donates money to literacy programs and tries to jolly up the public about that noble undertaking is likely to be perceived as insincere.

ZOOM IN, ZOOM OUT: Zoom Video Communications, which boomed during the pandemic, might already have peaked, The Motley Fool reports. Even if most of us will still be working remotely, smaller Zoom customers “are starting to drop Zoom, and large customers are putting more thought into their purchases.” Revenues hit $1 billion for the first quarter of 2021, and the demand from large customers is still solid. But customers with fewer than 10 employees, which account for 36% of its revenues, “are jumping ship,” and revenues are going back down. But even large customers “are also changing their behavior. While enterprises were quick to adopt Zoom last year, they’re starting to take their time.” As people return to the office — assuming they do — their need for what brand strategist Kelly O’Keefe calls “the pandemic’s most iconic brand” will also decline.

STAKING A CLAIM: Ever wonder how the term “stakeholders” came to play such an important role in the business world? “Stakeholders” in our time seems to have displaced such standbys as “consumers,” “customers” and “shoppers” as well as the generic “public.” A thoughtful, if somewhat dense, examination of the term’s rise to importance appears in the American Political Science Review. The earliest statements referring to stakeholders “as affected parties upon which a corporation depends” came in the early 1960s, when house intellectuals at Lockheed developed a theory of “stakeholder analysis” for corporate planning.