IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jacres/doi10.1086-688437.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Cause Matters! How Cause Marketing Campaigns Can Increase the Demand for Conventional over Green Products

Author

Listed:
  • Sarah S. Müller
  • Nina Mazar
  • Anne J. Fries

Abstract

Customers are increasingly attentive to the social and ethical ramifications of their consumption, which threatens the demand particularly for conventional over green products, as it may increase guilt and thus dull the hedonistic feelings experienced with those products. In an attempt to counteract this threat, some companies utilize cause-related marketing (CM) campaigns, in which they offer to offset some of their products' negative side effects. However, as such campaigns may emphasize the product's harmfulness, it is not clear if they are beneficial. One field and one laboratory experiment, both incentive-compatible involving real purchases, show that customers are more likely to buy a conventional over a green product when the former is bundled with a campaign that is offsetting an unrelated problem rather than a problem caused by the product--unless the donation offsets the specific damage caused by the customers' own consumption. These effects are mediated by guilt.

Suggested Citation

  • Sarah S. Müller & Nina Mazar & Anne J. Fries, 2016. "The Cause Matters! How Cause Marketing Campaigns Can Increase the Demand for Conventional over Green Products," Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, University of Chicago Press, vol. 1(4), pages 540-554.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jacres:doi:10.1086/688437
    DOI: 10.1086/688437
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/688437
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/688437
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/688437?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sarah Steenhaut & Patrick Kenhove, 2006. "The Mediating Role of Anticipated Guilt in Consumers’ Ethical Decision-Making," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 69(3), pages 269-288, December.
    2. Zdravkovic, Srdan & Magnusson, Peter & Stanley, Sarah M., 2010. "Dimensions of fit between a brand and a social cause and their influence on attitudes," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 151-160.
    3. Strahilevitz, Michal & Myers, John G, 1998. "Donations to Charity as Purchase Incentives: How Well They Work May Depend on What You Are Trying to Sell," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 24(4), pages 434-446, March.
    4. Ward, James C. & Barnes, John W., 2001. "Control and affect: the influence of feeling in control of the retail environment on affect, involvement, attitude, and behavior," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 139-144, November.
    5. Aradhna Krishna & Uday Rajan, 2009. "Cause Marketing: Spillover Effects of Cause-Related Products in a Product Portfolio," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 55(9), pages 1469-1485, September.
    6. Andreoni, James, 1990. "Impure Altruism and Donations to Public Goods: A Theory of Warm-Glow Giving?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 100(401), pages 464-477, June.
    7. Alexander Chernev & Sean Blair, 2015. "Doing Well by Doing Good: The Benevolent Halo of Corporate Social Responsibility," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 41(6), pages 1412-1425.
    8. Neeraj Arora & Ty Henderson, 2007. "Embedded Premium Promotion: Why It Works and How to Make It More Effective," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 26(4), pages 514-531, 07-08.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Elena-Simina Lakatos & Ligia-Maria Nan & Laura Bacali & George Ciobanu & Andreea-Maria Ciobanu & Lucian-Ionel Cioca, 2021. "Consumer Satisfaction towards Green Products: Empirical Insights from Romania," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(19), pages 1-15, October.
    2. Thamaraiselvan Natarajan & Daniel Inbaraj Jublee & Dharun Lingam Kasilingam & Gladys Stephen, 2018. "The moderating role of social themes in cause-related marketing advertisements," International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing, Springer;International Association of Public and Non-Profit Marketing, vol. 15(4), pages 433-454, December.
    3. Small, Felicity & Mehmet, Michael & Miles, Morgan P., 2019. "Applying a causal ambush marketing framework to social media: The ‘Pleasure is Diverse’ campaign and the Australian marriage amendment," Australasian marketing journal, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 149-157.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. De Vries, Eline L.E. & Duque, Lola C., 2018. "Small but Sincere: How Firm Size and Gratitude Determine the Effectiveness of Cause Marketing Campaigns," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 94(4), pages 352-363.
    2. Müller, Sarah S. & Fries, Anne J. & Gedenk, Karen, 2014. "How much to give? — The effect of donation size on tactical and strategic success in cause-related marketing," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 178-191.
    3. Christina Schamp & Mark Heitmann & Robin Katzenstein, 2019. "Consideration of ethical attributes along the consumer decision-making journey," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 47(2), pages 328-348, March.
    4. Jasjit Singh & Nina Teng & Serguei Netessine, 2019. "Philanthropic Campaigns and Customer Behavior: Field Experiments on an Online Taxi Booking Platform," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(2), pages 913-932, February.
    5. Kopalle, Praveen K. & Krishna, Aradhna & Rajan, Uday & Wang, Yu, 2022. "How does regulatory monitoring of cause marketing affect firm behavior and donations to charity?," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 947-966.
    6. Chun-Tuan Chang & Xing-Yu (Marcos) Chu, 2020. "The give and take of cause-related marketing: purchasing cause-related products licenses consumer indulgence," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 48(2), pages 203-221, March.
    7. Michel Ballings & Heath McCullough & Neeraj Bharadwaj, 2018. "Cause marketing and customer profitability," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 46(2), pages 234-251, March.
    8. Dongho Yoo & Jung-Ae Kim & Sun-Jae Doh, 2018. "The Dual Processing of Donation Size in Cause-Related Marketing (CRM): The Moderating Roles of Construal Level and Emoticons," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-21, November.
    9. Kull, Alexander J. & Heath, Timothy B., 2016. "You decide, we donate: Strengthening consumer–brand relationships through digitally co-created social responsibility," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 78-92.
    10. Hagtvedt, Henrik & Patrick, Vanessa M., 2016. "Gilt and Guilt: Should Luxury and Charity Partner at the Point of Sale?," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 92(1), pages 56-64.
    11. Levens Michael, 2017. "The Influence of Organic Product Classification On Charitable Contributions Embedded in Retail Prices," Economics and Culture, Sciendo, vol. 14(1), pages 31-40, June.
    12. Fei Gao, 2020. "Cause Marketing: Product Pricing, Design, and Distribution," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 22(4), pages 775-791, July.
    13. Ganesh Iyer & David A. Soberman, 2016. "Social Responsibility and Product Innovation," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 35(5), pages 727-742, September.
    14. Ernan Haruvy & Peter T. L. Popkowski Leszczyc, 2015. "The Loser’s Bliss in Auctions with Price Externality," Games, MDPI, vol. 6(3), pages 1-23, July.
    15. João Guerreiro & Paulo Rita & Duarte Trigueiros, 2016. "A Text Mining-Based Review of Cause-Related Marketing Literature," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 139(1), pages 111-128, November.
    16. Rapert, Molly Inhofe & Thyroff, Anastasia & Grace, Sarah C., 2021. "The generous consumer: Interpersonal generosity and pro-social dispositions as antecedents to cause-related purchase intentions," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 838-847.
    17. Tejaswi Patil & Zillur Rahman, 2023. "Mapping the Cause-Related Marketing (CRM) field: document co-citation and bibliographic coupling approach," International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing, Springer;International Association of Public and Non-Profit Marketing, vol. 20(2), pages 491-520, June.
    18. Fennell, Patrick B. & Coleman, Joshua T. & Kuo, Andrew, 2020. "The moderating role of donation quantifiers on price fairness judgments," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 464-473.
    19. Michele Fioretti, 2022. "Caring or Pretending to Care? Social Impact, Firms' Objectives, and Welfare (former title: Social Responsibility and Firm's Objectives)," SciencePo Working papers hal-03393065, HAL.
    20. Teisl, Mario F. & Roe, Brian, 1998. "The Economics of Labeling: An Overview of Issues for Health and Environmental Disclosure," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 27(2), pages 140-150, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucp:jacres:doi:10.1086/688437. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JACR .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.