The effects of donation amount and ad orientation of cause-related marketing on consumers’ response

Abstract

Purpose Cause-related marketing (CRM) is an increasing popular marketing strategy in which a firm donates a specific amount to a designed cause when customers engage in revenue-providing exchanges. Based on balance and attribution theory, this paper aims to explore the interaction effect of donation amount and ad orientation, two important factors of formulation and communication of CRM, respectively, on consumer response and the mediating effect of consumers’ perceived company motives. Design/methodology/approach Two 2 (donation amount: small vs large) × 2 (ad orientation: product- vs cause-oriented) between-subjects experimental studies were conducted in marketing course with 284 and 157 Chinese undergraduate students participating in Studies 1 and 2, respectively. ANOVA and regression were used to test the hypotheses. Findings Study 1 shows the significant interaction effects of donation amount and ad orientation on consumers’ response. When CRM has a large donation amount, cause-oriented (vs product-oriented) ad leads to consumers’ more positive company attitude and higher purchase intention. The opposite is true for the small donation amount condition. Study 2 shows that the above interaction effect is mediated by consumer-attributed company motives. The attributed motive of sincerely caring about social cause has significant positive effect on consumer response, whereas the attributed motive of increasing sales or improving corporate image does not. Originality/value This paper contributes to the literature by empirically examining the interaction effect of donation amount and ad orientation on consumer-inferred motives and behavioral response. The findings are valuable because they indicate the importance of matching between factors at formulation and communication stage. In addition, this paper found that consumers are “tolerant” of companies using CRM to promote product sales and improve brand image.

Egoism or Altruism? The Influence of Cause-Related Marketing on Customers’ Extra-Role Behavior

“…At the end of each stage, the subjects were asked to fill in the corresponding questionnaire carefully. Among them, this experiment draws on the questionnaires of Yoon et al (2006) and Zhang et al (2020) on enterprise causerelated marketing behaviors, and designed four measurement items, such as "the company is to make better use of social welfare undertakings to achieve its own sales and profit growth, the company sincerely wants to support social welfare undertakings" etc. ; drawing lessons from Groth (2005) and Sha et al (2013) on customer extra-role behavior measurement questionnaires, 11 items were designed to measure customer extra-role behavior from the three levels of recommending, helping other customers and providing feedback, such as "you will recommend this company and its related products to friends and relatives, you will actively help other customers to use the company's products or enjoy services, and you will provide the company with suggestions for improving products or services" etc.…”

“…On the one hand, the existing research results mostly focus on the driving factors of enterprise CRM and their influences, such as corporate size, corporate image, involvement, fitness and donation on the organizational side, product price premium at the product level, and sales confidence at the employee level, etc. Research on the relationship between the results of enterprise cause-related marketing (consumers’ perception, attitude or response to CRM) ( Anuar and Mohamad, 2011 ; Jiang and Zheng, 2017 ; Si, 2017 ; De Vries and Duque, 2018 ; Luo and Lv, 2019 ; Zhang et al, 2020 ; Mo, 2021 ); on the other hand, it mainly explores the influence mechanism of consumers’ recognition or attitude toward enterprise CRM on their purchase intention ( Sun and Wang, 2016 ; Duarte and Silva, 2018 ; Sung et al, 2020 ; Ye et al, 2021 ). However, the existing researches on enterprise CRM perception and customer extra-role behavior are relatively scarce.…”

“…The enterprise CRM activities can not only provide customers with basic product utility, but also promote consumers to produce better self-perceived emotions ( Luo and Lv, 2019 ). Attribution theory believes that people always like paying attention to the reasons behind events or behaviors, and will perceive, deduce and judge the reasons based on relevant information ( Zhang et al, 2020 ). Individual behavior motivations mainly include internal attribution and external motivations ( Sun and Wang, 2016 ).…”

“…If a company promotes its corporate image and increases sales profits by carrying out CRM activities, but fails to fully fulfill its social responsibilities and pay attention to public welfare events, customers will judge the company’s CRM activities as hypocritical acts of using public welfare events for personal gain ( Fan and Ian, 2017 ). Therefore, customers can judge the real motivation behind the enterprise CRM activities based on their own perceptions of enterprise CRM donation to the society and their attention to and involvement in public welfare events ( Zhang et al, 2020 ). Different perceptions and judgments of customers on the marketing motives of the enterprise will affect their attitudes, which in turn affects the good image of the enterprise in the minds of customers ( Luo and Lv, 2019 ).…”

“…However, the existing research results are based on the relevant theories of social psychology, and they mostly focus on exploring the influence mechanism of enterprise CRM on customer attitudes ( Guerreiro et al, 2015 ; Savary et al, 2015 ; Hanks et al, 2016 ; Sung et al, 2020 ; Zhang et al, 2020 ; Ye et al, 2021 ), ignoring the influence mechanism of enterprise CRM on customer behavior, especially enterprise CRM plays an important role in customer extra-role behavior, so it is difficult to clarify the transformation mechanism between customer attitudes and customer behaviors, and promote the success of enterprise CRM. In view of this, this research is based on attribution theory and adjustment focus theory.…”