CAUSE RELATED MARKETING, A PERSPECTIVE OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

Abstract

Cause related marketing as a marketing tactic is being used by the Indian businesses since the 1990’s. As a result of wider media coverage of the sensitivity towards the environmental and societal issues consumer awareness of it has increased. Linking sales objectives to a social cause has been adopted as a CRM strategy by these Indian businesses. Objectives of the study are to investigate the extent of awareness about CRM among consumers and also to study its impact in purchase decision of the cause associated products, to understand the prosocial behaviour towards cause associated products/campaigns and the associated purchase intention/attitude, to understand their interpersonal influence suspensibility towards cause associated products/campaigns and the associated purchase intention/attitude. The independent variables adopted for the study are Knowledge, Prosocial behaviour and interpersonal influence suspensibility, the dependent variable is Attitude of consumers towards CRM campaigns. The sample was of 117 respondents, from some of the major cities of India viz, Hyderabad, Kerala, Karnataka and Vishakhapatnam. The findings of the study were that prosocial behaviour of the consumers has some influence on the purchase intension and interpersonal influence suspensibility has less influence. Homelessness/hunger/poverty was the cause which meant significant for the consumers for the brands to adopt. There also some of the limitations to the study such as lack of diversity in sample, lack of study in the fields of values, psychographics etc., and lack of awareness of the topic among the respondents may lead to biased data. Thus for future research marketers can refer to these finding and make the required changes in the type of cause they adopt, and also the demographic population they choose as students seem to have more awareness on the topic than the others.