Consumer response to retailer use of cause-related marketing: Is more fit better?

Although marketers increasingly rely upon cause-related marketing strategies to increase sales, controversy exists regarding whether a retailer should partner with causes offering high or low fit levels with its core business practices. The present investigation extends prior research by examining how retailer–cause fit affects consumer evaluations of retailers’ cause-related marketing strategies. The results indicate that the effects of retailer–cause fit are moderated by consumer perceptions of the retailer's motive for engaging in cause-related marketing (Study 1), by the affinity that consumers hold for the social cause component of the campaign (Study 2), as well as by the interactive effects associated with the two moderators (Study 3).     

The effects of framing messages and cause-related marketing on backing intentions in reward-based crowdfunding

This study explores the main and interaction effects of framing messages and cause-related marketing on backing intentions by manipulating frame types, frame valences, and cause-related marketing in the message narratives of crowdfunding projects. We conduct an online experiment for a crowdfunding campaign and analyze data using independent-samples t-test and ANOVA. This study's findings show that negative messages lead to higher backing intentions than positive ones regarding attribute and goal framing messages. Narratives with cause-related marketing in crowdfunding projects had a more significant effect on increasing backing intentions than those without cause-related marketing. Positive attribute framing messages combined with cause-related marketing had significantly higher backing intentions than messages without cause-related marketing; for negative attribute framing, there was no significant difference between with and without cause-related marketing. This study theoretically advances the literature on reward-based crowdfunding, which provides scholars with insight into the effects of the written narrative design of crowdfunding projects on backing intentions and extends to the applications of framing effect theory and cause-related marketing. Practically, this study provides project initiators and crowdfunding platform operators with new perspectives on proposal copywriting content design and project operation.     

Cause-Related Marketing: An Exploratory Study of Campaign Donation Structures Issues

ABSTRACT

Over the past decade, cause-related marketing (CRM) has become a popular and unique promotional tool for brands. Academic research indicates outcomes of such campaigns are generally positive for all stakeholders. Consumers feel they are making a difference, firms benefit from improved public image and increased sales, and the cause or nonprofit organization receives increased publicity and funding. However, there are ethical issues involved when linking a firm with a nonprofit organization as well as potential negatives (Smith and Stodghill 1994; Andreasan 1996; Meyer 1999; Polonsky and Wood 2001). An exploratory research study was undertaken to understand the impact of the structural elements of cause-related marketing campaigns, including how the donation is quantified, the size of the donation relative to the price of the product, the presence of donation deadlines and caps, and the level of promotion used to publicize the campaign. Findings suggest that the structural elements of cause-related marketing campaigns do influence consumers' perceptions of the campaigns. Based on these results, implications for CRM campaign managers and future research ideas are provided. This information will help practitioners, including marketing managers, advertising managers and advertising creative professionals to design the most effective communication tactics for a cause-related marketing campaign.     

Cause-Relating Marketing: The Effects of Purchase Quantity and Firm Donation Amount on Consumer Inferences and Participation Intentions

A conceptual model for a cause-related marketing (CRM) campaign, which examines the effects of purchase quantity and firm donation amount on consumer perceptions of the firm (i.e., firm motive and corporate social responsibility) and participation intentions, is developed and tested in three separate studies. In Study 1, we find the positive effect of firm donation amount on participation intentions was fully mediated by consumer inferences about the firm and the negative effect of purchase quantity on participation intentions was only partially mediated by these inferences. In Study 2, and consistent with the persuasion knowledge model, we demonstrate that the effects of purchase quantity on firm inferences and subsequent participation intentions are moderated by consumer participation effort where higher participation requirements (e.g., mail-in proof-of-purchase) yield more negative purchase quantity effects. We extend the model in Study 3 to incorporate multiple exchange mechanisms and find that although purchase quantity does affect participation intentions by social exchange, the effects of purchase quantity are primarily the result of the economic exchange. Recommendations for the design of cause-related marketing campaigns and for future research are discussed.     

An empirical study of the impact of consumer emotional engagement and affective commitment in firm-hosted virtual communities

ABSTRACT

Emergent perspectives in marketing highlight new opportunities for leveraging social media as a means to build customer–firm relationships through consumer engagement. Drawing from cognitive appraisal theory and aspects of the service dominant logic, this study delineates and empirically tests hypotheses regarding the effects of key components of consumer engagement (cognitive appraisal, affective states, participation) on consumers’ affective commitment, in the context of two service companies where the firms used social media to host virtual communities. The research examines how consumers’ cognitive appraisal of the engagement experience aligned with their online interaction propensity and participation in value-creating activities drive engagement outcomes. The results confirm the need to contextualise, personalise and respond to the consumer’s engagement experience to develop this engagement.     

Cause-Related Marketing: Keys to Successful Relationships with Corporate Sponsors and Their Customers

SUMMARY

An increasingly popular method for nonprofits to raise awareness, educate the public, and receive financial support from corporations is through cause-related marketing. The distinctive feature of cause-related marketing is the corporate sponsor's contribution to a designated cause being tied to customers' participating in revenue-producing transactions with the sponsor. The sponsor benefits from favorable publicity and increased sales. This article discusses factors contributing to the potential success of a cause-related marketing campaign: the sponsor's product quality, fair pricing, and customer traits; the nonprofit's and the sponsor's reputation, shared values, good communication, and commitment; a well-planned and executed campaign, and specific terms that protect both party's assets and clearly outline each party's responsibilities.     

Employee Participation in Cause-Related Marketing Strategies: A Study of Management Perceptions from British Consumer Service Industries

The purpose of cause-related marketing (CRM) is to publicise and capitalise on a firm??s corporate social performance (CSP) by enhancing its legitimacy in the eyes of its stakeholders. This study focuses on the firm??s internal stakeholders ?C i.e. its employees ?C and the extent of their involvement in the selection of social campaigns. Whilst the difficulties of managing a firm that has lost or damaged its legitimacy in the eyes of its employees are well known, little is understood about the extent to which managers and their social partners listen to and involve their employees in the legitimation process. Through telephone interviews with non-profit organisations and senior managers of service sector firms, the extent of employee involvement in CRM campaigns and the perceived benefits of doing so are investigated.?Amongst other things, we find that (i) the extent of employee participation varies significantly across firms; (ii) larger CRM campaigns tend to be managed centrally with relatively less employee participation than smaller ones and (iii) financial services firms are more likely to make CRM decisions centrally, with relatively less employee participation than retail services firms.     

The influence of individual and firm level social capital of marketing managers in a firm’s global network

Firm success is dependent, to a degree, on a marketing manager’s ability to develop social capital within the firm’s global network. A model is developed employing individual social capital (both internal and external) as the foundation for three types of firm level social capital (i.e., customer, business partner and governing agency) resident in a firm’s global network. It is theorized that customer, business partner and governing agency social capital provide a basis for enhancing customer value delivery and thus firm performance. Specific marketing management strategies necessary for the development of each type of firm level social capital, as well as the benefits derived from each type of social capital are presented. This analysis raises a number of previously unexplored research issues concerning the nature and scope of social capital in a firm’s global network and how social capital can be employed in a global marketplace.     

A Framework for Understanding Corporate Social Responsibility Programs as a Continuum: An Exploratory Study

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs are increasingly popular corporate marketing strategies. This paper argues that CSR programs can fall along a continuum between two endpoints: Institutionalized programs and Promotional programs. This classification is based on an exploratory study examining the variance of four responses from the consumer stakeholder group toward these two categories of CSR. Institutionalized CSR programs are argued to be most effective at increasing customer loyalty, enhancing attitude toward the company, and decreasing consumer skepticism. Promotional CSR programs are argued to be more effective at generating purchase intent. Ethical and managerial implications of these preliminary findings are discussed. Julie Pirsch, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Villanova University. She researches in the areas of cause-related marketing, corporate social responsibility, and new product development. Shruti Gupta, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Management at The Pennsylvania State University at Abington, in Abington, Pennsylvania. Dr. Gupta’s research interests lie in the area of corporate social responsibility, cause-related marketing, environmental consumerism, and social marketing issues. Stacy Landreth, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of North Texas. She researches in the areas of cause-related marketing and social marketing alliances, as well as advertising source effects.     

Impact of Traditional Chinese Culture on Business-to-Business Relationship Marketing and Service Firm Performance

ABSTRACT

Purpose: This work addresses the mixed findings in relationship marketing studies regarding the importance of traditional culture-level (i.e., interpersonal) relationships on service firm outcomes.

Methodology/approach: This article leverages customer relationship marketing (CRM) theory to advance a framework for understanding the causal relationship between the Chinese cultural worldview and relationship marketing in order to better predict firm performance.

Findings: The author suggests that five major Chinese cultural characteristics—iren-qing, wa-pao, mianzi, chaxu-geju, and collectivism—can qualify the business-to-business (B-to-B) relationship building process and impact the effectiveness of interpersonal and/or group relationships on service firm outcomes.

Research implications: The study’s framework suggests that Chinese cultural characteristics, universal concepts manifest in the activities of Chinese society and organizations, have a positive effect on customer relationship marketing. Chinese culture characteristics can be used to generate excellent relationships with customers and thus create a consumer preference for certain companies and drive service marketing repurchase.

Originality/value/contribution: This study’s theoretical framework (a) distinguishes between Chinese cultural characteristic and relationship marketing relationships; (b) suggests that Chinese cultural characteristics and customer relationship marketing have a positive and substantial effect on service firm performance and that Chinese cultural characteristics are related to customer relationship marketing in their effect on service firm performance; and (c) provides managerially relevant guidelines for strategic sales planning.     

Measuring customer equity and managing the customer asset: an explanatory study in the Australian hotels

Although there are a range of conceptual and theoretical studies about customer equity (CE) measurement and management in the literature, there are few empirical studies where these two concepts are examined together. This paper focuses on the need for a more synthesised approach and addresses calls for more research into this specific area of marketing management. A conceptual framework was developed that synthesises both customer lifetime value and customer relationship management from a customer equity management (CEM) perspective. The framework was used to empirically examine how four CE strategies, together with a firm’s use of the two types of customer data (aggregated and disaggregated), impact on CEM outcomes. Data were collected from 114 hotel managers in Australia and analysed through a decision tree methodology. The results show that hotels are utilising their CE strategies for acquisition purposes more than retention purposes (customer asset management), which overall appears to satisfice more than maximise their hotel’s capacity in achieving effective CE outcomes. The study’s contribution to theory is through empirically testing a framework that combines two discrete theoretical concepts in one study to provide insights to guide future research.     

Social Media Marketing Management: A Conceptual Framework

Managers today face many challenges when using social media in their marketing strategies. Drawing from social media literature, this study introduces a new framework to assist managers in developing and using social media as a marketing tool. This framework has four dimensions related to the actions managers perform when implementing and engaging with social media: messaging/projecting, monitoring, assessing, and responding. Each dimension of the framework may be applied differently based on the firm’s strategic direction or focus. The framework provides an opportunity for a firm to examine the entire scope of social media marketing from a broad strategic perspective as well as a more tactical perspective. Propositions formulated by the authors suggest how organizations with different strategic characteristics may manage social media differently. The study provides an understanding for managers of the variety of issues related to the specific aspects of maintaining a firm’s online presence based on a firm’s scope, culture, structure, and governance.     

Implications of marketing capability and research and development intensity on firm default risk

Marketing capability and research and development intensity are firm resources used to increase firm performance and reduce investor risk. This study aims to link marketing capability and research and development intensity, and their interaction to firm default risk. This study is the first to examine marketing capability and research and development intensity regarding their influences on firm default vulnerability and to demonstrate how marketing capability may strengthen research and development intensities’ power on risk reduction. The results reveal a U-shaped relationship between research and development intensity and firm default risk, while marketing capability’s impact is unidirectional. Further, marketing capability strongly moderates the relationship between research and development intensity and firm default risk. For low marketing capability firms, the U-shaped pattern is more significant. For high marketing capability firms, the pattern is not salient and the risk reduction power of research and development intensity is stronger. This research provides useful implications for marketing theories, as well as business practice.     

Social media marketing: Who is watching the watchers?

The ready access to and availability of social media has opened up a wealth of data that marketers are leveraging for strategic insight and digital marketing. Yet there is a lack of professional norms regarding the use of social media in marketing and a gap in understanding consumers’ comfort with marketers’ use of their social media data. This study analyzes a census-balanced sample of online adults (n = 751) to identify consumers’ perceptions of using social media data for marketing purposes. The research finds that consumers’ perceived risks and benefits of using social media have a relationship with their comfort with marketers using their publicly available social media data. The research extends the applicability of communication privacy management theory to social media and introduces marketing comfort—a new construct of high importance for future marketing research. Marketing comfort refers to an individual's comfort with the use of information posted publicly on social media for targeted advertising, customer relations, and opinion mining. In the context of the construct development, we find that targeted advertising is the strongest contributing component to marketing comfort, relative to the other two dimensions: opinion mining and customer relations. By understanding what drives consumer comfort with this emerging marketing practice, the research proposes strategies for marketers that can support and mitigate consumers’ concerns so that consumers can maintain trust in marketers’ digital practices.     

Web-based social movements contesting marketing strategy: The mobilisation of multiple actors and rhetorical strategies

Abstract

Previous studies suggest that marketing strategy is developed and used to mobilise and configure the actions of firm actors, creating a set of stabilising activities focused on the firm–customer dyad. Destabilising forces precipitated by the Internet and associated digital technologies involving contention and disruption by multiple actors are much less prevalent in the marketing literature. The central point we advance is that rather than marketing strategy being a controlled and stabilising force for firms in their relationships with customers, it can often lead to socially produced spaces where consumers and, importantly, other multiple actors form a social movement to actively attempt to destabilise it and contest its legitimacy. Using an innovative research approach, the findings of this study show how social movements proactively enrol and mobilise a wide range of relevant actors into a network of influence. Critical to this are rhetorical strategies, acting as important levers in attempts to destabilise and delegitimise a dominant firm’s marketing strategy.     

Social Capital Initiatives: Employees and Communication Managers Leading the Way?

Organizations’ development of social capital and their decision to give back to society are becoming increasingly important to the business of managing organizations as much more than profit-driven entities. This article focuses on the rationale for an Australian–Canadian study on employees’ involvement in social capital initiatives and the communication management of these initiatives. As employees are key stakeholders, they play a vital part in achieving organizational goals. This study, a work in progress, highlights an in-depth, qualitative analysis of two organizations—one in Canada and one in Australia—committed to funding community projects as part of their corporate social responsibility development and commitment. The importance of a qualitative study that focuses on subjective components of social capital is that it develops understanding of employees’ attitudes, feelings, and viewpoints. It also begins to investigate why employees might/might not be committed, to organizations’ social capital initiatives. Using an interpretative analysis lens, an understanding of the moral, relational, and communication dynamics is explored. Questions surrounding concepts such as the moral fiber of social capital are highlighted and critiqued in the context of community engagement and what organizations’ social capital investments mean as part of their responsibility to society.     

MARKETING/LOGISTICS RELATIONSHIPS: INFLUENCE ON CAPABILITIES AND PERFORMANCE

Effective marketing/logistics relationships can help to create, develop, and maintain critical capabilities to support long‐term firm success. Recent research focuses on two distinct capabilities—information capabilities and firm‐wide integration. Empirical results are provided confirming the proposed relationship between marketing logistics relationship effectiveness and the two capabilities. Further, the capabilities are shown to positively impact logistics performance.     

Social marketing: A pathway to consumption reduction?

This article considers the potential of the discipline of marketing to contribute to consumption reduction from a social marketing perspective. The authors review the difficulties of applying conventional marketing theory and practice in pursuit of more sustainable consumption, and the logic of applying an adapted form of social marketing to promote more sustainable lifestyles and reductions in consumption. This study also uses a health-oriented social marketing campaign to demonstrate the potential of a social marketing approach to address ingrained forms of consumer behavior and to successfully ‘de-market’ products.     

Brand resurrection in an emerging economy

Abstract

Ramesh, the proprietor of Amalya Dairy Pvt Ltd, looks at the recommendations given by the market research firm for rebuilding the brand image after a major brand crisis. After Amalya Dairy suffered a huge loss recently, Ramesh is now being careful about spending the company funds. A 60-year-old and a late adopter of technology, he is not very comfortable with the suggestion of having a public relations manager represent his brand on social media. At the same time, he recalls the recent setback his brand image took due to the lightning speed at which the latest communication channels operate. He looks at the report and the recommendations given by the market research firm one more time, in order to make the final decision regarding the company’s integrated marketing communication plan.     

Cause-related marketing: More buck than bang?

Starbucks, Target, and Nike are just a few of the businesses partnering today with not-for-profit organizations in cause-related marketing campaigns. These campaigns are implemented for a dual purpose: on one hand, to raise awareness, support, and donations for social causes such as global hunger relief, and on the other, to enhance corporate reputations, customer loyalty, and financial gains for companies. An example of cause-related marketing is an effort organized by Macy's, Pfizer, and other businesses on behalf of the American Heart Association. The program has raised over $32 million in donations for the charity, while generating over 1 billion media impressions for corporate sponsors. In this article, we discuss the concept and practice of cause-related marketing, as well as some of its social-ethical complexities. We end with suggestions for increasing the effectiveness of this popular marketing tool and form of corporate philanthropy.