An Eye on Cause-Related Marketing Ads: Using Eye-Tracking to Investigate the Effects of Execution Style and Product Type

摘要

Partnership between product and cause is referred to as strategically cause-related marketing (CRM) and is a major corporate philanthropic trend to donate money to a charity each time a consumer makes a purchase (Varadarajan and Menon 1988). Advertising has been identified to determine the success of CRM, especially regarding how the product and cause are portrayed in an ad (Chang 2008,2011, and 2012; Lafferty and Edmondson 2009). Traditional CRM ads emphasize products and product images and the CRM information is relegated to small text in the ad. However, some recent CRM messages are constructed to highlight the charity incentive, or a representation of the cause, with the product taking a supplementary role in the advertising copy. This alternative execution style may enhance the user's image of the company since companies involved with CRM are perceived as generous and altruistic. Two major observations are drawn from previous research. First, previous research adopted self-reported measures of attitudes or/and purchase intentions as indicators of advertising effectiveness (Chang 2008, 2011, and 2012; Lafferty and Edmondson 2009). Second, product type has been identified as an important factor in CRM research and distinguished into two types: hedonic and utilitarian (Chang 2008 and 2011; Strahilevitz 1999; Strahilevitz and Myers 1998). Chang (2012) recently suggested that, to enhance advertising effectiveness, selection of execution style should depend on the product type being promoted.