Corporate motive and fit in cause related marketing
| Date | 24 May 2013 |
| Published date | 24 May 2013 |
| Pages | 200-207 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-04-2012-0125 |
| Author | Dirk C. Moosmayer,Alexandre Fuljahn |
| Subject Matter | Marketing |
Corporate motive and fit in cause related
marketing
Dirk C. Moosmayer
Department of Marketing, Entrepreneurship and Tourism (MET), Nottingham University Business School China, Ningbo, China, and
Alexandre Fuljahn
imug GmbH (Institute for Market – Environment – Society), Hannover, Germany
Abstract
Purpose – Cause related marketing (CrM) has gained popularity in Europe within the past decade. Therefore, the authors aim to investigate corporate
motive and the fit of a company brand with the CrM cause as determinants of CrM campaign success.
Design/methodology/approach – Conjoint analysis is applied to campaign evaluations from 278 students in Germany. Campaigns attached to
laptop purchases supporting an African hospital with either medical (low fit) or IT (high fit) infrastructure and were based on altruistic, neutral, or profit-
oriented company motives.
Findings – The authors find that altruistic motives increase consumer evaluations. In contrast to their hypothesis, campaigns are evaluated more
positively, when product cause fit is low.
Research limitations/implications – Based on their findings, the authors suggest exploring the fit of CrM campaigns in more detail: future research
might explicitly consider the congruence of a CrM donation with a company’s product, with the brand’s claim and philosophy,and with the supported
NPO.
Practical implications – Companies should think twice before using CrM as means of profit maximization. When selecting an adequate cause,
attention should be paid to the company brand and to a product’s potential impact on society. Moreover, the donation type (money versus product)
should be chosen in a way to clearly support the cause and to avoid potential allegation of aiming at an increased distribution of own products.
Originality/value – The authors apply conjoint analysis to corporate motive and cause-brand fit; this integrated consumer evaluation appears more
realistic than most existing studies. Based on their results, the authors develop diverse perspectives on fit in CrM. These may be applied in future
research.
Keywords Cause related marketing (CrM), Brand cause fit, Corporate motive, Conjoint analysis, Germany, Marketing
Paper type Research paper
An executive summary for managers and executive
readers can be found at the end of this article.
1. Introduction
The social dimension of corporate behavior has increasingly
moved into the focus of public and academic discussion in the
recent years (Crane et al., 2008). Firm performance on the
social responsibility dimension is more and more impacting
consumer brand perceptions (Huber et al., 2011). And
consumers have shown to directly respond to firms’ corporate
social performance by rewarding good and punishing bad
corporate behavio r (e.g. Beckmann, 2006 ; Moosmayer,
2012). In this context, cause related marketing (CrM)
allows companies to associate their brand with positive
social commitment by supporting an expert in the social field
without the need to build its own related expertise (Luo and
Bhattacharya, 2006; Morsing and Schultz, 2006). While CrM
has been a common marketing instrument for about 25 years
in the USA (Kotler and Keller, 2006), it has only been
introduced in continental European countries in the past
decade (e.g. Moosmayer and Fuljahn, 2010; van den Brink
et al., 2006).
Different determinants of CrM campaigns’ success, such as
donation size (Strahilevitz, 1999) and product type
(Subrahmanyan, 2004), have been investigated. In this
study, we examine the impact of two specific CrM
campaign characteristics: companies’ motives to engage in
CrM as perceived by consumers (perceived motive) and the
similarity of a product sold within a CrM campaign and the
cause attached to it (cause-brand fit). While these factors have
been investigated in earlier studies (e.g. Bigne
´-Alcan
˜iz et al.,
2009), we add to existing res earch by integrating the
consideration of both aspects into a conjoint design and
thus using an integrated consumer evaluation. Moreover we
investigate the relevance of these factors in the German
market, which has particularly high economic relevance as the
dominant European economy. We first define CrM and
discuss perceived motive and cause-brand fit as determinants
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1061-0421.htm
Journal of Product & Brand Management
22/3 (2013) 200–207
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited [ISSN 1061-0421]
[DOI 10.1108/JPBM-04-2012-0125]
This research has been conducted at the Institute for Marketing and
Consumer Research of the G.W. Leibniz University of Hannover,
Germany. The authors are grateful for the institutional support offered
by Ursula Hansen as well as for the helpful comments and support by Ulf
Schrader.
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