Abstract
The influence of a firm’s cause-related marketing efforts on sales representative attitudes and behavioral performance is investigated. Results from a field study indicate that the influence of a representative’s construed customer attitude toward the cause campaign on selling behavioral performance is mediated through cognitive identification and selling confidence. Further, the influence of construed customer attitude toward the campaign on selling confidence is moderated by cognitive identification such that the effects are stronger for salespeople with lower levels of identification with the company. The authors discuss the implications of the research and offer directions for further research.
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Notes
To ensure that respondents were actively engaged with the company as a profession and not as a hobby, on the advice of corporate managers we required that a sales consultant had worked with the company for at least 3 years and had sales revenues of $12,500 or more in the previous year.
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Larson, B.V., Flaherty, K.E., Zablah, A.R. et al. Linking cause-related marketing to sales force responses and performance in a direct selling context. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 36, 271–277 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-007-0056-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-007-0056-y