Cause-related marketing in an emerging market: Effect of cause involvement and message framing on purchase intention

Abstract

Cause-related marketing (CRM) benefi ts brands, consumers and society. In emerging markets where social upliftment is an imperative, CRM could provide an avenue through which those in need receive more support than can be provided by traditional means. Although considerable research on CRM campaigns and consumer responses to them has been undertaken elsewhere, not much has been done in the South African context. This study examines consumer responses to CRM, and in particular, seeks to investigate whether the consumers ' level of involvement with a cause and the way in which the message is framed infl uence purchase intention. Using factorial ANOVA, the study found that cause involvement signifi cantly infl uenced purchase intention while message framing did not. There was no interaction between cause involvement and message framing.

An Evolutionary Process Model of Cause‐Related Marketing and Systematic Review of the Empirical Literature

“…Grau and Folse found that consumers who are more involved in a CRM campaign perceived negative information (e.g., death rates) as more relevant to their evaluations, and consumers who are less involved in a CRM campaign perceive positive information (e.g., survival rates) as more relevant. However, Bester and Jere found no effect for message framing in their study and concluded that “cultivating consumer involvement with a cause is more likely to yield positive results.”…”

“…Twenty articles investigated involvement with the cause, the product, consumer CRM experience, or personal role. Consumer involvement with the cause was found to positively influence consumer attitudes toward the alliance and purchase intentions (Bester & Jere, ). Additionally, intentions and attitudes toward the campaign can be increased despite low‐cause involvement if the cause is local (Grau & Folse, ).…”

“…Almost all examined variables that positively influenced purchase intentions. Some examples are cause involvement (Bester & Jere, ), cause–brand fit (Bigné‐Alcañiz et al., ; Gupta & Pirsch, ), level of pricing (Boonpattarakan, ), cause importance (Hou et al., ; Lafferty, ), or cause choice (Robinson et al., ). Although Elving found skepticism negatively affects purchase intentions, Bigné‐Alcañiz et al.…”

Millennial Consumers’ Responses to Cause-Related Marketing in Support of LGBTQ Homeless Youth

“…Similarly, Duarte and Silva (2018) found a positive relationship between consumer-cause identification and consumers' attitude toward the cause. And other studies (e.g., Bester and Jere 2012;Grau and Folse 2007;Hyllegard et al 2010;Sunitha and Edward 2018) have demonstrated that personal involvement in a social cause is a strong predictor of purchase intentions.…”

Evaluating cause‐marketing campaigns in the Indian corporate landscape: The role of consumer skepticism and consumer attributions of firm's motive

“…Cause involvement, defined as a person's perceived level of importance towards the social cause and similar to personal involvement as defined by Zaichkowsky (), has been studied previously. It was found to influence purchase intention (Bester & Jere, ), yield favorable cause brand alliance attitudes through perceived brand motivations (Harben, ; Myers, Kwon, & Forsythe, ), and enhance the relationship between consumer identification with the company and purchase intentions (Bigné‐Alcañiz, Currás‐Pérez, Ruiz‐Mafé, & Sanz‐Blas, ). The global goodpurpose® (Edelman, ) study reported that in a country like India, personal involvement in social causes was more prevalent than in developed countries like the US and UK; however, academic research in India focusing on personal involvement with respect to cause marketing has never been attempted.…”