Mitigating effect of providing specific information on consumers’ negative reactions to cause-related marketing

Abstract

Cause-related marketing (CRM) has received attention from companies around the world in recent years. Companies in Japan use CRM, but they are struggling with it because Japanese consumers have little interest in social contribution and have negative attitudes toward CRM. This study addresses the reason why Japanese consumers display negative attitudes toward products related to CRM from the viewpoint of company motives toward CRM. An online survey was completed by 290 university students in Japan. We estimated the data using the Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) method. We found that Japanese consumers displayed negative willingness to pay (WTP) toward a well-known brand’s product with CRM information (β = −2.485, WTP = −106.7, p < .001). Providing information on the company’s motive for long-term commitment to CRM (the company’s positive motive for CRM) mitigates the negative effect of CRM (β = −1.721, WTP = −46.3, p < .001). Given this information, the overall assessment (WTP) of CRM (whether a CRM campaign has positive effects on product choice or not) is 2.6, which value is larger than the −45.2 WTP value where a consumer is not given this information. Our results contribute to the theoretical and practical aspects of CRM. Theoretically, we investigate the negative aspects of CRM, whereas many studies focus only on the positive aspects. We concluded that, in Japan, a company is required to demonstrate the motive behind their CRM campaign for it to have an impact on product choice.