Fit in cause-related marketing: An integrative retrospective

ABSTRACT

Thirteen years ago, “The role of brand-cause fit in the effectiveness of cause-related marketing campaigns” was published in the Journal of Business Research. Since then it has been cited over 400 times according to Google Scholar, making it among the top 100 most cited articles published by that journal. The paper’s contribution and impact may be explained by the fact that it demonstrated for the first time that fit in cause-related marketing can impact choice. In addition, the paper used a methodology (choice conjoint) that was, at the time, somewhat novel in the consumer research context. As a result, the paper not only demonstrated the importance of brand-cause fit in CRM, it also demonstrated how choice conjoint could be used to estimate dollar metric values for cause marketing and fit using the stated preferences of individuals making multiple hypothetical choices. Interestingly, these estimates of the dollar value of CRM were lower than the (somewhat high) donation amounts used. This essay attempts to (1) provide background into how the studies came about, (2) give insight into what the paper accomplished (i.e. why it achieved such high impact), (3) describe the subsequent developments in the field of fit in cause marketing by exploring a subset of the 400+ papers which have cited the original work, (4) discuss the managerial implications, and (5) discuss open research questions in this interesting area.

 

《The role of brand-cause fit in the effectiveness of cause-related marketing campaigns事业与品牌契合度对事业关联营销有效性的影响》(Pracejus & Olsen, 2014)一文于13年前在《Journal of Business Research》期刊上发表。根据谷歌学术的统计，至今此文已经被引用超过400次，使此文成为了该期刊被引用数最高的前100文章之一。这篇文章的主要贡献与影响在于它是第一篇研究及发现契合度对消费者在事业关联营销中的选择行为有重要影响的文章。此外，此文运用了选择联合分析 （choice conjoint ）方法，在当时的消费者行为研究中是比较新颖的方法。 因此，此文不仅展示了契合度在事业关联营销中的重要性，并且展示了如何运用个体在假设选择题中的倾向来估计事业关联营销的金钱价值以及契合度。更加有趣的是，估计出的事业关联营销的金钱价值比一般慈善捐赠的数量要低。在此，本文将（1）介绍这篇文章的一些背景信息，（2）分析这篇文章为何能达到如此影响，（3）通过对直接引用此文的400多篇文章中相关文献的回顾，来总结及介绍关于契合度对事业关联营销有效性的影响研究的后续发展；（4）讨论对业界的启示及应用；（5）探讨在次领域内的尚未解答的研究问题。

KEYWORDS:

• Cause-related marketing
• conjoint analysis
• consumer behavior
• sponsorship
• social marketing

关键词:

• 事业关联营销
• 联合分析
• 消费者行为
• 赞助
• 社会营销

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.