An Analysis of Cause-Related Marketing Implementation Strategies Through Social Alliance: Partnership Conditions and Strategic Objectives

Abstract

cause-related marketing, resource-based view, resource-dependence theory, legitimacy, social alliance, corporate social responsibility,

How and When Socially Entrepreneurial Nonprofit Organizations Benefit From Adopting Social Alliance Management Routines to Manage Social Alliances?

“…Scholars characterize SENPOs as nonprofit organizations that employ social entrepreneurship to adopt innovation, marketing orientation, and sociality to address social and environmental challenges (Weerawardena and Mort 2012). The formation of SAs involves a firm making cash contributions to a SENPO in exchange for the right to associate itself with that SENPO and the cause represented by that nonprofit organization (Lafferty et al 2004;Liu and Ko 2011a). As a consequence, the firm can then use its association with the SENPO to influence public opinion about itself (Berger et al 2004;Varadarajan and Menon 1988).…”

“…As a consequence, the firm can then use its association with the SENPO to influence public opinion about itself (Berger et al 2004;Varadarajan and Menon 1988). From the perspective of SENPOs, the establishment of a SA leads not only to the cash contributions that they desperately need to further their social mission but also to other benefits such as business knowledge, volunteers, network relationships, and so on, which can help them to improve their competitiveness within the sector (Adkins 1999;Andreasen 1996;Liu and Ko 2011a).…”

“…This is particularly true in the SENPO-firm alliance. For example, SENPOs often demand that the majority of resources should be assigned to furthering their social mission, while firms naturally want to allocate more resources to activities that are consistent with their commercial agendas (Liston-Heyes and Liu 2013;Liu and Ko 2011a;Runté et al 2009). The SENPO staff tend to have a lower level of tolerance for the risks necessary to accomplish the alliance objectives, in comparison with firms' staff (Liston-Heyes and Liu 2013; Runté et al 2009).…”

“…Such SA employs marketing techniques to disseminate firms' corporate social responsibility performance (Lafferty and Goldsmith 2005;Liu and Ko 2011a;Varadarajan and Menon 1988). Herein, we define SA as the collaboration between the socially entrepreneurial nonprofit organization (SENPO) and the firm.…”

“…First, according to the resourcebased theory, alliance management routines comprise a set of specific organizational routines through which the organization can systematically manage firm-firm-based alliance relationships to overcome organizational differences (Heimeriks and Duysters 2007;Schilke and Goerzen 2010). Despite acknowledgement of the importance of managing the SA relationship systematically (e.g., Liu and Ko 2011a;Samu and Wymer 2013;Simpson et al 2011), whether alliance management routines in the SA context (SA management routines, thereafter) can also impact on SA performance remains unresolved and underexplored due to a recognition that different sets of management tools may be required to manage the SA relationship (e.g., Selsky and Parker 2005).…”