Doctoral Degrees (Business Management)

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Browsing Doctoral Degrees (Business Management) by Author "Human, Debbie"

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    The influence of cause-related marketing campaign structural elements on consumer intention, attitude and perception.
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2016-12) Human, Debbie; Terblanche, N. S.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. Dept. of Business Management.
    ENGLISH SUMMARY : Cause-related marketing is a transaction-based approach characterised by an offer from a firm to make a contribution to a donation recipient when consumers purchase a particular cause-linked product. It is a technique that offers benefits to firms, non-profit organisations and consumers in an era where firms are held responsible for their societal actions, non-profit organisations are confronted with increasing social demands and decreasing funding, and consumers value the social identity and warm glow provided by charitable involvement. Cause-related marketing campaigns are constructed from various campaign structural elements. Such elements include the product featured in the campaign, the donation promised and the donation recipient. Research has indicated that consumers are generally positive toward cause-related marketing and that campaign structural elements influence consumer responses, both independently and interactively. Given the number of potential campaign structural elements, the multiplicity of their possible permutations, the simplicity of some previous studies and the contextual nature of cause-related marketing, further inquiry into the influence of these elements on consumer responses have been recommended. The current study responded to this call for research. The purpose of the research was to explore South African middle- to high income consumers’ knowledge and opinions about cause related marketing, and to investigate the independent and interactive influence of selected campaign structural elements on consumer responses. The research was conducted by means of qualitative focus groups and a quantitative 2 X 2 X 2 X 2 factorial experiment. The study adopted a communications approach and therefore focused on the campaign structural elements that are typically communicated to consumers as part of a cause-related marketing offer. The campaign structural elements that were investigated as independent variables in this study were product involvement (high; low), donation recipient specificity (specified; vague), donation magnitude (high; low) and donation expression format (actual amount; percentage-of-price). Product involvement and donation recipient specificity have received limited attention within the cause-related marketing research arena, whilst previous donation magnitude and donation expression format findings have been elusive and indicative that their influence often occur in interaction with other elements. As previous studies focused extensively on cause-related marketing outcomes derived from the campaign, the purpose of this research was to investigate those consumer responses pertaining to the communicated campaign itself. The consumer responses that exert the most determinant influence on cause-related marketing effectiveness are attitudes and behavioural intentions. Given this knowledge, purchase intention, participation intention, attitude toward the cause-related marketing advertisement, cognitive and affective attitude toward the communicated cause-related marketing offer and attitude toward the alliance featured in the offer were investigated as dependent variables along with perceived firm motives for participating in cause-related marketing. The qualitative research revealed that South African consumers are positive toward cause related marketing and that they prefer positive prosocial campaign messaging. The experiment confirmed that campaign structural elements exert significant independent and interactive influences on consumer intentions, attitudes and perception. A low involvement product, a specified donation recipient and a high magnitude actual amount donation were found to have the most positive impact on consumer responses.