Cause-related Marketing: A Trade-off between Marketers and Consumers

Abstract

The current market scenario is capricious, which makes it difficult to predict the buying intention of the customers. Even marketing practitioners are also facing difficulty in differentiating their products and services from others in an increasingly challenging business environment. This dynamism of market place generates the need for new practices. To compete with this unpredictable environment, cause-related marketing has emerged as a booming planned promotional means to satisfy the societal and ethical urge of the community. Cause-related marketing is a promotional movement of an organization wherein the charitable and communal cause is certified for brand marketing, in association with its products and services as a package. This paper is an attempt to design effective cause-related marketing strategies to compete in an uncertain environment. The analysis using statistical procedures of SPSS version 20 is done based on data of 178 consumers. Prospecting factors are identified with the help of factor analysis, which is further signified with the help of a t-test. Among those significant factors, the most prominent factor impacting buying intention is identified through hierarchical regression. The findings of this study will provide a strong base to the marketers in making decisions while designing their cause-related marketing stratagems to make cause-related marketing campaigns more operative and successful. The study concludes that management should concentrate on social cause while being concerned with the company’s bottom line. The author also put forward the research directions intended to facilitate scholars to further progress the assimilation of premeditated promotion and causerelated marketing.