To Trust or Not to Trust? Consumer Responses to Cause-Related Marketing

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to understand if company trustworthiness and the type of cause-related marketing (CRM) campaigns (strategic vs. tactical) affect purchase intention and company image of a yogurt producer, under the control of socially responsible consumer behavior, general trust, income, attitude toward the CRM campaign, and initial company image. The study applies a quantitative (experimentation) research to test the proposed model. MANCOVA was applied with data obtained from 600 respondents who were selected by a two-stage cluster sampling method. The research model is partially supported. Company trustworthiness and CRM type are found to affect only company image and without any interaction effect. Being a highly trustworthy company applying a CRM campaign has more positive influence on company image than a less trustworthy one. Additionally, a strategic CRM campaign creates more positive influence on company image than a tactical one. The findings are further deliberated with the managers of the two selected companies with focus group discussions.

Keywords:

• Company trustworthiness
• strategic cause-related marketing
• tactical cause-related marketing
• purchase intention
• company image

Notes

Notes

1 Within the last two decades, Turkey has witnessed several earthquakes which resulted in thousands of people’s deaths and injuries.

2 On 13 May 2014, 301 mine workers were killed because of an explosion at a coal mine in Turkey.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by Bogazici University Research Fund with a project code of 09HC102D.