Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in its marketing form is call social marketing. CSR is about doing all the good things for the good of the organisation. Looking at it this way, it is really another form of marketing where the organisation is marketing and conducting business for the social goods. Social marketing has 3 major components: proactive CSR activity, promoting charities and good causes, and encourage others to give support to charity as well as participate in projects, communities or group for the good of society and environment.

The emergence of social marketing comes about with the rapid increase of the global market and the increase in global competition. Marketers and businesses are finding harder and harder to find points of differentiations to distinguish their offerings. The difficult task of differentiating both products and services thus lead to the path in differentiating through CSR or social marketing. Social marketing allows an increase in its brand value as well as sustaining competitive advantage.

Social marketing works very well in today's societal conscious consumers. Consumers are trying and doing more good things for both society and environment. Organisations that actively does social marketing are thus able to 'engage' these consumers and achieve a higher brand share within its market.