A Journey of Cause Related Marketing from 1988 to 2016

Cause-related marketing (CrM) has been a topic of interest to academicians, researchers and practitioners in disciplines of marketing. The increasing number of publications by various authors in this area reflects its importance. In this work, we review research papers on CrM that have been published in peer-reviewed journals in the past two decades to provide insights to researchers and practitioners into the various factors that influence the success of CrM. This study summarizes and critiques empirical findings found in cause-related marketing literature from 1988-2016 (August). Three hundred and two papers published in reputed journals during this period are reviewed. The review also identifies knowledge gaps in the area of CrM.


Introduction
Cause-related marketing has been an integral part of marketing for two decades.The concept of CrM was introduced in 1983 by American Express in partnership with Ellis Island Foundation during the restoration of the Statue of Liberty, aimed at raising $1.7 million.It has, since then, been adopted globally by business organizations as a mainstream marketing tool and paving the way for researchers to uncover the aspects of philanthropic behavior.
The underlying principle of profit-motivated giving by organizations has emerged as a differentiation strategy to position themselves as a socially responsible corporate citizen in the mind of consumers.Companies are in a highly competitive market flooded with various brands that are equal in quality and price.Intensely competitive business environments necessitate constant evolution in marketing strategies to suit times and situations.The widespread acceptance of CrM strategy globally has been a motivational factor for researchers to discover the underlying factors affecting CrM.
There has been an increasing trend among researchers in the field of marketing to study CrM.The present study contributes to the existing body of knowledge in the following ways: It reviews academic research papers in the area of CrM from 1988-2016 (August).There have been, to the best of our knowledge, no prior studies that have performed a descriptive analysis to trace the pattern of research in CrM from its inception.

Table 1. Definitions of cause related marketing Definitions Source
The process of formulating and implementing marketing activities that are characterized by an offer from the firm to contribute a specified amount to a designated cause when Consumers engage in revenue-providing exchanges that satisfy organization and individual objectives.(Varadarajan & Menon, 1988) The process of formulating and implementing marketing activities that are characterized by contributing a specific amount to a designated nonprofit effort that, in turn, causes consumers to engage in revenue providing exchanges.(Mullen, 1997) Commercial activity by which businesses and charities or causes form a partnership with each other to market an image, product or service for mutual benefit.(Adkins, 2000) A strategic positioning and marketing tool which links a company or brand to a relevant social cause or issue, for mutual benefit.(Pringle & Thompson, 2001) The joining of not-for-profit charity and a commercial company in an effort to raise funds and build awareness for the cause while building sales and awareness for the profit partner.(Polonsky & Speed, 2001) The action through which a company, a nonprofit organization, or a similar entity markets an image, a product, a service, or a message for mutual benefit.(Marconi, 2002) A general alliance between businesses and non-profit causes that provide resources and funding to address social issues and business marketing objectives.(Cui, Trent, Sullivan, & Matiru, 2003) Donating a percentage of revenue from the sale of specific items during an announced period of support.(Kotler & Lee, 2005) Commercial activity by which business and charities or causes form a partnership with each other to market an image, product, or services for mutual benefit.

Methodology
The paper conducted a systematic review of research articles published in peer reviewed journals between 1988 and 2016 (August) in the field of cause-related marketing.The literature search for the keyword "cause-related marketing" was carried out in the abstract, keyword list and title in the databases.This search produced 485 research papers.The full manuscript of each research paper was reviewed to remove articles that were not related to CrM.The review resulted in 302 research articles related to CrM that were published in peer-reviewed journals.
The papers were examined for relevance and duplication.Papers with cause-related marketing on the title were taken for review.Papers published in conference proceedings, working papers, and theses were not considered for the study.A descriptive analysis carried out for further classification of the research papers based on year of publication, research paper types, research methods, journal of publication.The structure, key word search was conducted on the following databases: EBSCO, SAGE Publications, JSTOR, Emerald Full Text, Springer, John Wiley, Publications, Elsevier, Taylor and Francis, ABI/INFORM.

Distribution of Research Papers across Years
Academic research in the area of CrM started with a seminal study by (Varadarajan & Menon, 1988).There has been a steady increase in the number of research papers in this field since then, as seen in Figure 1.The early period (1988)(1989)(1990)(1991)(1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999) of research in CrM shows a trivial pattern and infrequent publications.The later period shows significant increase in the number of publications.The years between 2011 and 2016 appear to have had maximum number of publications with 45 % of all articles being published during this period.Thus, CrM has elicited considerable interest among academicians and researchers in the past decade. ijbm.ccsene

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Distribution of Research Papers across Journals
Research papers in the area of CRM have been published in about 114 journals.The journals that had a significant number of publications are listed in Table I.It is seen that CRM-related papers are being published in journals that specialize in areas as varied as marketing, brand management, advertising, retailing, corporate social responsibility, services marketing, and emerging markets.Journals catering to marketing appear to focus a lot on CRM and nearly 46%of research papers in these journals are in this area.The Journal of nonprofit & public sector marketing (20) and Journal of business ethics (18) have the maximum number of publications in the area of CRM.Papers related to CRM are published in journals indexed in Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus, American Psychological Association (PsycINFO).
Table 3 indicates excellent opportunities for academic research in CrM and the possibility of publishing papers in reputed journals.In particular, research papers dealing with CrM appear to have an edge over other areas of marketing in terms of suiting the scope of a variety of journals belonging to different functional genres.

Research Themes
A summary of empirical findings of research papers with significant findings are presented for the convenience of the readers.The full texts of papers are reviewed and they are categorized into five research themes namely brand-cause fit, partnership dynamics, brand equity, consumer attitude and behavior, Campaign characteristics.The research themes are categorized based on the findings of (Guerreiro, Rita, & Trigueiros, 2015).

Brand-Cause Fit
Brand-cause fit is studied both as antecedent and consequence in CrM literature.Subsequent studies has also used them as moderator and mediating variables in CrM.This signifies the importance of brand-cause fit in the success of CrM campaigns.There are studies that postulate that brand-cause fit does not have any influence on impact of CrM campaigns and some state brand-cause fit play a significant role in influencing consumer's attitude towards CrM.The brand-cause fit is thus being subjected to cultural and geographical context of consumers.The brand consciousness, brand awareness, and brand attitude play a major role in determining the congruence between the brand and cause.Consumers expect the social cause supported to be in alignment with brand image.The congruence between the brand and cause is always considered as being very important in CrM campaigns.The findings relating to brand-cause fit are presented in Table 4.
Table 4. Research findings on Brand-cause fit in CrM Source Significant Contribution (Pracejus & Olsen, 2004) The brand-cause fit plays significant roles in accomplishment of the CrM campaign.(Hamiln & Wilson, 2004) The "fit" between the product and social cause plays a major role in the success of CrM campaign.(Xiaoli & Heo, 2007) The brand-cause fit do not have significant influence on CrM messages.The consumers with high brand consciousness have positive feeling towards brand-cause fit when compared to consumers with low brand consciousness.(Lafferty, 2007) The brand cause fit does not always play a vital role in influencing the consumer attitude and purchase intentions.
(Bigné-Alcañiz, Currás-Pérez, The brand attitude formation and attitude towards corporate social responsibility is amplified when consumers perceive high cause-brand fit.(Chéron, Kohlbacher, & Kusuma, 2012) The high brand cause fit and longer duration of the CrM campaigns creates positive attitudes towards CrM campaigns and women are more positively influenced by CrM campaigns than men.

2012)
The brand-cause fit creates a positive impact on the CrM campaign by enhancing the consumers altruistic brand motivation.

Partnership Dynamics
The partnership between for-profit and nonprofit organizations plays a crucial role in CrM.When formulating a CrM campaign, both parties must ensure that the campaign is a win-win for both organizations.Many studies have focused on the factors that play a major role in forming a successful partnership.The studies addressing the partnership characteristics are given in Table 5.
Table 5. Research findings on partnership dynamics in CrM Source Significant Contribution (Larson, 2001) There should be a careful evaluation of the non-profit partner organization for CRM campaigns and the employees must be happy with the association.This will enhance the corporate image that will, in turn, help organizations attract more talented employees to the organization.(Bennett, 2002) For-profit organizations must select nonprofit organization partners on the basis of the commercial feasibility rather the philanthropic policies due to the increased CrM budgets.
(Dong-Jenn Yang, 2007) Both sponsorship and CrM help in establishing a positive image of the organization among customers,.
However, only CrM helps with sales promotion.The organization selecting a most supported cause leads to greater increase in its image and sales revenue.(Du, Hou, & Huang, 2008) CrM is a marriage between the non-profit and for-profit organizations for mutual benefit.(Runté, Basil, & Deshpande, 2009) The for-profit organizations must ensure that they have fully understood the motives of the non-profit organization beyond the funding and they should work together to increase their image and reduce the risk in CrM for the non-profit organization.
(Lee Thomas, Mullen, & Fraedrich, 2011) Organizations must invest time and money in partnering with a charity organization that supports a cause that is appealing to the customer base.(Svensson & Wood, 2011) The for-profit and non-profit organizations should evaluate their partnership and their CrM activities before presenting it to customers.If their campaigns are perceived to be commercial rather than altruism, it will backfire against both organizations.The CrM campaigns have equal share of advantages and disadvantages (Liu, 2013) The implementation strategy should be formulated both by sponsoring organization and nonprofit organization for attaining their desired objectives.(Boenigk & Schuchardt, 2014) Non-Profit organizations implementing CrM along with luxury firms can be successful in generating a large quantum of donations towards the cause.
The collective findings suggest that the success of CrM is significantly influenced by the proper selection of non-profit organization partner.CrM reflects on the credibility of both non-profit and profit motivated organization.Customers tend to judge and rely on the fact that non-profit organizations involved in the campaign have better visibility and transparency in their operations.The non-profit organization should be able win the trust and faith of customers, which will result in framing a positive frame of mindset towards the CrM campaign.
If the organizations fail to identify a suitable partner, it will lead to disastrous results.There are many instances in which a non-profit organization with a bad reputation raises skepticism towards the campaign.The for-profit organization must identify credible non-profit partners supporting worthy causes that are perceived as nonbiased in nature with a wider appeal to customers.The findings show that organizations must select their nonprofit partner after evaluating the latter's credibility and image among customers.

Brand Equity
From the time of inception of cause-related marketing strategy, CrM has been known to enhance brand image among the target customers (Varadarajan & Menon, 1988).Initially CrM was seen as a course-correction tool for organizations with negative reputation.Now, brands involved in CrM are perceived to be altruistic in nature and socially concerned organizations.
The advantages of CrM in branding initiatives show that customers consider brands along with the non-profit organization and cause supported in CrM campaign as whole representations of the brand.Any negligence in framing the advertising strategy or wrong selection of nonprofit partner results in tarnishing the brand image among customers.Some studies that have explained the role of CrM on branding are given in Table 6.
Table 6.Research findings on brand equity in CrM Source Significant Contribution (Till & Nowak, 2000) CrM is a successful strategic tool for both for-profit and non profit companies and brand and cause act as stimuli for customers in participating in CrM promotions.(Chaney & Dolli, 2001) CrM campaigns can influence customers for brand switching and nonprofit organizations get increased visibility among customers.(Lafferty, 2001) CrM builds customer loyalty and enhances the distinctiveness of brands and causes becoming a part of brand personality.(Lafferty, Goldsmith, & Hult, 2004) The fit between the partners plays a significant role in customers' acceptance of the alliance and the cause is more benefited than the brand in the alliance.(Kim, Kim, & Han, 2005) The product-cause relatedness has a direct impact on product brand and corporate credibility influences the corporate attitude.Brand loyalty of customers is increased by strategic CrM campaigns involved with low involvement products.
The tactical CrM do not have an impact on brand loyalty either with high or low involvement products.
(Shu-Pei, 2009) The motivational attributes of donor brand influences the consumers to participate in the campaigns.(Ahmad, Batool, Quarshi, Hunjra, & Niazi, 2010) The customers switch to brands supporting causes and CrM is a potential strategic tool for attaining competitive edge.(Baghi, Rubaltelli, & Tedeschi, 2010) The organizations involved in CrM by ways of integrated mental accounting should communicate that supporting good causes is a primary attribute of the brand rather than secondary attribute of the brand.Consumers tend to select brands of the organizations that are involved in supporting the causes.(Baghi & Gabrielli, 2012) The co-branding strategy should be adopted by both non-profit and for-profit brands in CrM campaigns.
In a competitive business environment CrM can be very effective in increasing market share and it is evident from studies that customers are ready to switch brands for supporting good causes.Consumers are also ready to pay the price premium charged for supporting social causes and are more conscientious in selecting brands which contribute back to the society (Company, 2015).Campaigns with hedonic products have a negative influence on customer's attitude towards CrM.Products of high involvement are not suited to be associated with CrM campaigns.CrM can revamp brand images with properly executed CrM campaigns.There should be a careful evaluation of nonprofit partners and brand ambassadors involved in the campaign; any negative reputation of partners will cause drastic and inverse effect to the brand as whole.

Consumer Attitude and Behavior
According to the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991), behavior is an outcome of positive intentions.In the context of CrM, the challenge lies in creating a favorable intention towards the product or brand that is associated with the cause.These positive intentions influence behavior, in this case, the purchase intention of the product.According to attitude accessibility theory, the desired behavior takes place when the attitude is highly accessible from memory (Fazio, Powell, & Williams, 1989).If the purpose of advertising is to persuade purchase behavior of cause-related products then organizations should focus not only on the customer attitude but also accessibility from memory.Many studies have focused on factors that frame positive outlook towards the product in consumer mindset, which result in favorable behavioral output.
Table 7. Research findings on consumer attitude and behavior in CrM Source Significant Contribution (Ross, Patterson, & Stutts, 1992) Consumers accept CrM to be a good way to support causes and they develop a favorable attitude towards both sponsoring and nonprofit organization.(Mizerski, Mizerski, & Sadler, 2002) The amount of donation mentioned in the CrM ads do not influence customers purchase intention and the cause supported is not required to be associated with the sponsoring organization.(Basil & Herr, 2003) The charity attitudes of the consumers are influenced when the organization involved in the CrM campaigns and this should have a positive effect among customers (Hajjat, 2003) Consumers show some involvement towards CrM when the cause involvement is high and donation size is low.(Trimble & Rifon, 2006) Cause-familiarity influences customer perception about compatibility of sponsoring organization and cause.(Grau & Folse, 2007) The customers showing low involvement in CrM campaigns are influenced by communicating local impact of causes and CrM ads portraying output of the campaign.(Grau, Garretson, & Pirsch, 2007) Companies must communicate donation amount in advertisements and consumers compare the price of product with size of donation amount and if the donation amount is low it creates a negative attitude towards sponsoring organization.(Xiaoli & Heo, 2007) Customers show a positive attitude towards advertisements with CrM messages.The positive impression of CrM occurs mainly on consumers' attitudes toward the company, to a certain extent than their attitudes toward the brand or advertisement.(Tangari, Folse, Burton, & Kees, 2010) The organizations should expand their efforts in creating a positive attitude towards CrM campaigns for benefits of brand and consumer participation.(Folse, Niedrich, & Grau, 2010) The larger donation size of CrM campaign will help the consumer understand the altruistic motives of organizations and if the purchase quantity is higher than expected, a negative attitude results towards CrM campaigns.(Moosmayer & Fuljahn, 2010) The donation size influences the good will of customers towards CrM.The cause proximity does not influence the attitude of male consumers towards CrM but women customers are more influenced by cause proximity.(Fuljahn & Moosmayer, 2011) Consumers are not prepared to pay more for products that have high donations towards causes.
The findings point to the fact that customers develop a positive attitude towards organizations that adopt CrM.It also increases customer loyalty towards products supporting causes.Organizations must effectively communicate the intention behind the campaign to customers in order to benefit from CrM.The advertisements should be altruistic in nature and the amount donated and cause supported must be revealed in an appealing manner to customers.
The donation size has a significant role in success of CrM; customers tend to develop a favorable attitude towards campaigns with larger donation size.Smaller donation sizes are perceived to be marketing gimmicks rather than an altruistic efforts and causes skepticism among customers.The emotional satisfaction of the customer purchasing a product with large donation size is high.Thus, large donation sizes appear to reduce customer skeptism to a noticeable extent.

Campaign Characteristics
Cause selection is a very critical factor for decision makers because the theme of advertisements and marketing strategy must revolve around the cause and customers must be persuaded to feel empathetic towards the cause.
The cause importance and familiarity of the cause directly influences the attitude towards the cause brand alliance (Lafferty, 2007;Lafferty & Edmondson, 2009).The studies on the campaign characteristics are listed in Table 8.
Table 8.Research findings on campaign characteristics in CrM Authors Significant Contribution (Kelley, 1991) The cause selected for CrM promotions should have a local and national appeal and CrM generates goodwill towards the organization among customers.(Scott & Solomon, 2003) Social marketers need to provide some benefits for consumers participating in the campaigns to make the campaign profitable to organization, nonprofit and customers.(Broderick, Jogi, & Garry, 2003) The customer's ethical considerations in their purchase decisions result in favorable attitude towards organization supporting causes.(Endacott, 2004) Global companies should identify a local good cause for sponsoring.(Hou, Du, & Li, 2008) The cause supported is considered to be a vital factor that influences the attitude towards product, firm and purchase intention of the customer.So organizations should partner with worthy cause partner.(Gupta & Pirsch, 2006) The company-cause fit influences attitude towards company -cause alliance and purchase intention of customers.The customer skeptism towards CrM does not play a role in purchase intention.(Upton, 2006) The organization should communicate the purpose of their association with cause to customers.(Sorribas, 2007) The success of CrM campaigns depends on various factors such as consumer perception, mechanism of donation, credibility with customers and overall design of the campaign.(Singh, Kristensen, & Villaseñor, 2009) Organizations must ensure that repetitive measures are taken to communicate their intention towards supporting causes to consumers to reduce skeptism towards the organization.(Gordon & Ko, 2011) The study present four types of CrM namely altruistic, commercial, social and integrative.(Stefanie Rosen Robinson, Caglar Irmak, & Jayachandran, 2012) Giving consumers a role in contribution by providing them with a choice of cause they wish to support will result in an effective campaign.(Vanhamme, Lindgreen, Reast, & van Popering, 2012) Marketers working on enhancing the corporate image should select a cause that is found to address a primary need of the people.(Lafferty & Edmondson, 2014) Cause is more important than cause categories.Consumers are more concerned about social causes which are of importance to society.(Hammad, El-Bassiouny, Paul, & Mukhopadhyay, 2014) The campaign feedback, cause importance and cause proximity are factors that influence the attitude towards brand and purchase intention.
The findings suggest that the cause selected for campaign plays a vital role in the success of campaign.An important factor to be considered in formulating a CrM campaign is the relevance and worth of the cause to be supported.The cause should be locally appealing to customers in campaigns launched in the immediate neighborhood, and when launching a nationwide campaign, the cause must be one of national concern.Major brands can concentrate on national causes and regional brands can focus on regional issues for good reach and response.The selection of the right cause must be followed by effective communication to the customer to prevent skepticism among them.This will increase consumer participation in campaigns supporting causes.Customers should also be given a choice to support the cause.
The cause must ideally not address a particular cluster of customers but must appeal to all customers.Causes that support women centric issues, child abuse, malnutrition for children, education and health issues for children and awareness programmes for diseases like cancer and AIDS are been supported by many companies.Cause familiarity is a key driver in the selection of cause for the campaign.Customers must feel associated with the cause supported.The fit between product and cause supported must be very high in order ensure that the underlying motive of the campaign is perceived as being altruistic in nature.

Future Research Directions
A survey of research in the area of CrM shows that there is a wide scope for future research in this area.
The CrM phenomenon is significantly influenced by cultural impact and traditional factors pertaining to a specific geographical region.It is impossible to generalize the findings for all countries and this indicates that there is scope for extensive research; especially in emerging economies in order to understand CrM and its effects in these countries.Most research has hitherto been carried out in developed nations like United States and United Kingdom.Therefore, research must be extended to other developing nations.
Each nation has a distinctive consumer cultural background and corporate culture varies from one country to another.Identifying various factors influencing CrM in different contexts is a challenge to researchers.There is also opportunity for research to understand the psychological and psychographic characteristics of consumers that affect their attitude towards CrM (Christofi, Leonidou, & Vrontis, 2015).
The research in the past has largely focused on fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) segment and a little in sports event sponsorship.Industry-specific knowledge development in CrM is a great opportunity for future researchers (Stefan Stremersch & Dyck, 2009).
The hedonic and utilitarian product segments, services industries like tourism and hospitality, industrial products, fashion and apparels industry are few areas that require domain specific knowledge development for adopting CrM practices.
Researchers admit that there are many stakeholders in CrM but studies largely focus on the consumer and companies.The other stake-holders like nonprofit organizations, their characteristics and importance in success of the campaign have not been extensively studies.The role of antecedents influencing the consumer skepticism in CrM campaign, in the context of products that are potentially harmful to some segment of society to examined.(Chang & Cheng, 2015) The cause related sport marketing is identified as promising research ground in CrM literature and impact of psychographic and demographic factors in the context of cause related sport marketing.(Yuksel, McDonald, & Joo, 2016) There is need to indentify antecedents for cause-related sport sponsorship and research should focus on internal marketing to enhance the perception of employees of sponsor organizations.(Inoue, Havard, & Irwin, 2016) The incorporation of more psychological constructs like mood, self-esteem in new area of CrM participation in hospitality industry at presence and absence of self-service devices.(Hanks, Line, & Mattila, 2015) The role of multifaceted concept of innovation in CrM success and research in direction of how organizations can attain corporate sustainable competitive advantage.(Christofi et al., 2015) The CrM research should be reorganized in the direction of value creation and be more consumer-centric than focusing on economic outcomes.

2014)
There is a need in identification of moderators that impact the relationship between campaign tactics and strategy design in CrM campaigns.(Liu & Ko, 2014) Cross cultural studies should be done in order to identify factors influencing the attitude towards CrM in different nations.(Hammad et al., 2014) Future research must examine the consumer level of skepticism towards CrM campaigns of brands using prosocial marketing.

Conclusion and Implications
The main objective of this literature review was to analyze and identify research papers on various research themes in the field of CrM.This study provides academic researchers and industrial practitioners, a bird's eye view of CrM strategy.Finally, Marketers must make good use of CrM campaigns, as they successfully elicit a positive influence on consumers purchase intention, brand affinity, buying behavior, brand equity, and consumer perception.The benefits of CrM can be summarized as follows, CrM enhance the brand image, increases the consumer loyalty, and it gives a distinct competitive advantage over the competitor brands, improves the employee morale and gives a pride feeling to employees being part of the organization.The CrM has been accepted a proven successful strategy among nations as it beneficial for both for profit and nonprofit organization.
It is seen that a large portion of research on CrM has been carried out in developed nations.The growing popularity and implementation of CrM in developing nations with various cultural backgrounds indicate strong mandate for academic research pertaining to the specific cultural factors.CrM is a multifaceted phenomenon and hence it is important to study the various psychological factors that influence the underlying attitudes affecting the antecedents and consequences of CrM.The review shows CrM to be a reliable strategic marketing tool in enhancing consumer participation and brand building.The review article also has a few limitations.First, only one keyword 'cause-related marketing' was used in the study to extract relevant studies.There may be some other keywords given in other research papers.Secondly, only papers with 'cause related marketing' in their titles were considered for review.Finally, only research articles published in English language were considered.

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ready to switch brands for supporting causes.(Corbishley & Mason, 2011) Customers are ready to switch brands for helping worthy causes supported by companies and CrM helps

Table 3 .
Distribution of research papers in journals (Barone, Norman, & Miyazaki, 2007;Chang & Cheng, 2014)d size of the organizations in cause-related marketing further provides significant research areas(Liston-Heyes & Liu, 2013).Future research could also consider various factors like selection of cause, selection of nonprofit partner, communication strategy, cause-brand fit ,celebrity-cause fit, company-cause congruency, donation size, endorser credibility of endorsers in CrM advertisements, target audience congruency, consumer perception about donating products that they do not manufacture and factors influencing the branding dimensions of CrM and suggest more outcome-based factors of CrM(Barone, Norman, & Miyazaki, 2007;Chang & Cheng, 2014).