FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Since February, student organizations at major U.S. universities have led a campaign to kick Coca Cola off their campuses. (See the April 14 Chronicle of Higher Education story by Anne K. Walters.) The students argue that the Coca-Cola Company has committed labor abuses at bottling plants in Colombia and damaged the environment in India by polluting groundwater.

Some universities have stopped selling Coca-Cola on their campuses, while others are reconsidering their multimillion-dollar deals with the company. The movement has caused some students to push for colleges to establish vendor codes of conduct that set moral guidelines for companies with which the colleges do business.

Betsy Creyer, professor of marketing in the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas, is available to comment on the Coca-Cola controversy and the issue of corporate social responsibility.

For the past 10 years, Creyer’s research has focused on issues related to public policy, consumer welfare and corporate social responsibility. Her research has been widely published in the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Journal of Public Policy & Marketing and other journals.

Articles specifically related to corporate social responsibility include:

• Creyer, Elizabeth H. and William T. Ross Jr. 1997. “The Influence of Firm Behavior on Purchase Intentions: Do Consumers Really Care About Business Ethics?” Journal of Consumer Marketing 14 (6): 421-432.
• Creyer, E. H. and W. T. Ross, Jr., “The Impact of Corporate Behavior on Perceived Product Value,” Marketing Letters, 7(2), 173-186, 1996.
• Creyer, E., W. T. Ross, Jr., and J. Kozup, “Consumer Response to a Pro-social Marketing Initiative: The Case of Discount Stores and Gun Sales,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 34 (1), 206-218, 2004.

Creyer has also researched and written extensively on the impact of nutritional labeling on health.