EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF THE ROLE OF GUILT IN CAUSE RELATED MARKETING

Abstract

Cause-Related Marketing (CRM) constitutes a critical ingredient of the CSR portfolio of many firms. It is also evolving as a vital promotion tool among marketers. It has attracted the attention of academicians and marketing practitioners for over three decades. Though research in the CRM domain is more than three decades old, the role of moral emotions and their interaction with moral cognition has yet to receive sufficient attention. Hence, it forms the critical under-researched area that offers the potential for enhancing CRM effectiveness. This research aims to fill the gap by investigating the role of moral emotion and its interaction with consumer personality factors of moral and CRM significance. This study examines how and when CRM guilt appeals work. It also examines the interaction of CRM guilt appeal with individual differences of moral and CRM importance, namely, moral identity internalization and consumer-cause identification. Invoking the established theories of marketing and psychology domain such as cognitive appraisal theory (Smith & Lazarus, 1990), the process model of self-conscious emotions (Tracy & Robins, 2004), self-discrepancy theory (Higgins, 1987), and moral identity theory (Aquino & Reed, 2002), a model is proposed which is empirically tested through one factor between the subject design experiment with students as respondents. The research reveals that CRM guilt appeal is better than CRM non-guilt appeal and non-CRM ads (control) in the utilitarian product context. CRM guilt appeal advertisement impact is transmitted through the mediation effect of anticipated guilt. Further, moral identity internalization moderates the mediational impact of anticipated guilt on the consumer response. Similarly, this research found evidence for the moderation effect of consumer-cause identification on the mediational effect of anticipated guilt on consumer purchase intention. In other words, this research found evidence for moderated mediation effect of moral identity internalization and consumer-cause identification. Further, consumer cause identification moderates the direct effect of CRM guilt appeal on the purchase intention. This research's results generated consumer insights with theoretical and practical implications. Though there was evidence of CRM guilt appeal effectiveness in eliciting consumer purchase intention to utilitarian products, there was no empirical evidence of an underlying mechanism.This research tests the anticipated guilt mediation effect and offers empirical evidence. Though consumer decisions are the outcome of emotions and cognitive personality factors, there was little research investigating the interaction of these two vital factors in the CRM context. This research has found evidence for the interaction of two personality factors of moral and cause significance (moral identity internalization and consumer cause identification) with the CRM guilt appeal. Marketing practitioners can benefit from the consumer insights generated in the research. CRM guilt appeal works best when targeted to an audience with a high moral identity internalization. Similarly, guilt appeal is most effective among the audience identifying with the cause. Thus, this research adds value to the existing body of literature on CRM and guilt in marketing, benefiting both the researchers and practitioners.