Consumer Processing of Cause-Related Marketing (CRM)

Cause-related marketing (CRM), a tool of corporate social responsibility, has grown significantly since the beginning of the 1980s. The strategy consists of a contribution to a cause through a purchase of a product/service by consumers. This book proposes a new model combining two known processing models to test the influence of gender and values on CRM message evaluations. Also, by perceiving and processing corporations' intentions as exploitative, consumers may develop resistance toward the company/brand/product and the sponsored cause. Therefore, an experiment divided in three sessions was employed, using a sample of 444 students, to examine consumers' attitudes and purchase intentions toward companies sponsoring causes. As predicted, women demonstrated more positive attitudes toward the company/brand/product sponsoring a health/disease cause and the sponsorship of a health/disease cause than did men. Although women evaluated themselves as more caring than did men, caring values did not mediate the relationship between gender and attitudes toward corporate sponsorship and purchase intentions. As expected, consumers (particularly men) showed more skepticism toward CRM programs.

Autorentext

Vilela, Ph.D., is an assistant professor at Towson University (U.S.). She received her B.A. in Advertising and Journalism from the UFMG (Brazil), her M.A. in Public Relations from Michigan State University (U.S.), and her Ph.D. in Mass Communications (with a minor in Education Psychology) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (U.S.).