The impact of strategic vs. tactical cause-related marketing on switching intention

Abstract

This research aims to investigate the impact of strategic vs. tactical Cause-related Marketing (CrM) on customer’s intention to switch service providers. Strategic and tactical CrM differ in the level of the following dimensions: company-cause congruence, duration, amount of invested resources, and top management involvement in CrM. The experimental design was used to test the conceptual model in the context of mobile phone services in Egypt. The responses of 193 participants to a survey were used for data analysis using partial least squares (PLS-SEM). The findings demonstrated a possible indirect effect of CrM dimensions (amount of invested resources in CrM, top management involvement, and campaign duration) on switching intention. Also, a significant direct effect of CrM dimensions (company-cause congruence, amount of invested resources, and top management involvement) on switching intention was found. Moreover, customer satisfaction, emotional value, and attitude towards switching played a mediating role in the effect of CrM dimensions (company-cause congruence and top-management involvement) on switching intention. Furthermore, the levels of customer satisfaction with, perceived emotional value from, and trust in a strategic CrM adopting mobile service provider were significantly higher than in a tactical CrM adopting mobile service provider. The results imply that adopting strategic CrM could help in reducing current customers’ intention to switch to other mobile service providers and may attract potential customers. Additionally, top management involvement in CrM and company-cause congruence may be the two most important dimensions of CrM. This research attempted to fill some gaps in the literature such as the limited studies about the differential effects of strategic and tactical CrM and their effect on behavioural intentions (switching) especially in the services context.