Social Responsibility in the Marketing Activities of Small and Medium Farms

The paper deals with the issue of social responsibility and its application within agricultural sector. Main goal of the paper is to reveal an evidence of social responsibility as specific marketing tool of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in agricultural sector. Partial goals are: to identify key areas of social responsibility with regard to key stakeholders; to identify tools of social responsibility used in Czech agricultural firms. Primary data are collected via a qualitative exploratory research which is based on structured interview with representatives of SMEs. Preliminary outcomes shows that often manifestations of social responsibility belong to economic and social areas. Activities in environmental area do not exceed legal framework. Many of them emerge from nature of agricultural production. Social responsibility at SMEs is applied mostly as not actively planned activities. Moreover it was fined that these activities are not communicated to key stakeholders at all. As part of dealing with these issues, the following areas of research have been identified: 1. The expectations of stakeholders in agricultural firms; 2. Feasible approaches to Corporate Social Responsibility in the resort of agriculture, including methods of assessing social responsibility of agricultural firms; 3. The tools of social responsibility deployed by firms as a function of the firm's size, its production orientation and used farming method; 4. The position of the environmental pillar of social responsibility within the Triple Bottom Line; 5. Consumer's perception of concrete manifestations of social responsibility.