Enhancing Helping Behavior: An Integrative Framework for Promotion Planning

Abstract

Charitable organizations play a vital role in our society, as is evidenced by their enormous economic and social impact. Yet, for many of them, soliciting adequate resources to carry out their mandates is a continuing struggle. Confronted with a growing need for their services, fierce competition from other charities, and shrinking support from government agencies, charities may turn to marketers for help in developing effective promotional strategies. Unfortunately, marketing literature is unable to provide meaningful guidance because scant research attention has hampered a fuller understanding of why people help. The authors integrate relevant research in marketing, economics, sociology, and social psychology to advance theoretical understanding of helping behavior. They develop research propositions regarding specific promotional strategies that charitable organizations can employ to elicit help.

Intra-organizational Volunteerism: Good Soldiers, Good Deeds and Good Politics

“…Intra-organizational volunteerism as charitable support behavior Similar to OCB, charitable support behavior has been found to be motivated by both altruistic and egoistic factors (Bendapudi et al, 1996;Piliavin and Charng, 1990). The altruistic motivation behind much CSB is often referred to as ''warm glow'' feelings (Andreoni, 1990) which captures the emotion connected with pro-social helping behavior, a feeling that in itself is motivating, similar to the ''high'' that motivates many recreational runners.…”

“…Further, the norms enforced in work groups or within the larger corporate context can be an effective means of encouraging CSB, since individual CSB has been shown to be highly responsive to social pressure (Fisher and Ackerman, 1998;LaTour and Manrai, 1989) and the need for affiliation (Broadbridge and Horne, 1994). For example, pro-social behavior has been shown to increase when the help is solicited from within the individual's social network (Bendapudi et al, 1996). In the workplace context, Amos (1982) revealed that certain forms of CSB might even be an explicit condition of employment.…”

The Need to Give Gratuitously: A Relevant Concept Anchored in Catholic Social Teaching to Envision the Consumer Behavior

“…As in traditional marketing, one of the utilitarian goals of this type of research is to understand the most adequate means to stimulate people's generosity. Research on charity marketing is also widespread (Bendapudi et al 1996;Michel and Rieunier 2012). Beyond determining the qualities of donors (i.e., identifying the characteristics of those who donate to notfor-profit organizations), marketing research also tries to understand what drives ''altruistic'' behaviors, like giving money, time, blood, or even organs (Fennis et al 2009).…”

“…The Need to Give Gratuitously: A Relevant Concept Anchored in Catholic Social Teaching… Concerning charitable giving, Sargeant and Jay (2004) and Bendapudi et al (1996) propose different explanations than altruism for individual engagement. Some donors give time and energy because of the connections they want to cultivate with or within the charity, like making friends or introducing themselves through the charity.…”

“…It is considered as a transfer of goods or services between a donor (person/ people or organization) and a receiver (person/people or organization), without contractual obligation and without immediate return (Le Gall Ely 2014). The gift, whose aim is to create a social tie, is deeply embedded in the sphere of monetary exchange and relationships, whose roots are found in the theory of Marcel Mauss. The ''gift exchange theory'' articulated by Mauss (1924) and his concept of a threefold obligation (giving/receiving/ returning) is the dominant-not to say hegemonic-theoretical framework mobilized to explain the majority of gift issues in marketing (Belk 1976;Bendapudi et al 1996;Joy 2001;Marcoux 2009;Bajde 2012;Guillard and Del Bucchia 2012). Mauss's considerable work has for years influenced the traditional understanding of marketing (Le Gall Ely 2014).…”