The influence of a firm's cause-related marketing efforts on sales representative attitudes and behavioral performance is investigated. Results from a field study indicate that the influence of a representative's construed customer attitude toward the cause campaign on selling behavioral performance is mediated through cognitive identification and selling confidence. Further, the influence of construed customer attitude toward the campaign on selling confidence is moderated by cognitive identification such that the effects are stronger for salespeople with lower levels of identification with the company. The authors discuss the implications of the research and offer directions for further research.Keywords Cause-related marketing efforts . Selling confidence . Customer attitude Over the past two decades, corporate social responsibility (CSR) increasingly has been recognized by scholars and utilized by managers as a viable business tool and a potential source of sustainable competitive advantage (e.g., Cone et al. 2003). Charitable giving by corporations reached approximately $13.77 billion in 2005 in the USA alone (American Association of Fundraising Counsel 2006). Further, a growing body of academic research considers the influence of CSR on a variety of consumerrelated outcomes ranging from receptiveness to new products (Brown and Dacin 1997) to consumers' inferences about other individuals (Yoon et al. 2006).The influence of CSR on important audiences other than consumers, however, has remained largely unexplored, in spite of calls for greater focus on these groups (e.g., Drumwright 1996). Our research focuses on how a company's CSR-related promotional campaign, directed at consumers, can have important effects among members of the sales force, a key internal constituency. We deepen the CSR research stream by replacing the broad idea that CSR efforts will enhance insider morale with a model that depicts and tests (a) specific mediational paths through which salespersons' beliefs about customers' attitudes toward a CSR promotional campaign (i.e., construed customer attitude toward the cause campaign [CCA campaign ]) influence their behavioral performance with respect to selling, and (b) a key moderating condition on the influences of CCA campaign .In the following section, we discuss CSR, in particular focusing on cause-related marketing as one common application of CSR. Next, we develop a conceptual model that connects sales representative CCA campaign with behavioral performance. Finally, we present and discuss the results of a field study involving independent sales consultants working with a direct selling company that provide support for our hypotheses.

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Recently marketing has witnessed an explosion of interest in creating and maintaining relationships. It is widely being heralded as a revolutionary new way of responding to markets. But has this "new" method been explored or practiced before? Undertaking an early century literature review, the author uncovers evidence that writers and practitioners of 1910-1935, contrary to current belief, incorporated relational methods and espoused a relationship philosophy. Results indicate that relational selling was not only practiced for the benefit of the seller, but was also for the customer and the relationship. Conclusions about why relationship selling disappeared only to resurface again at the end of the twentieth century are put forth.

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