慈善捐赠额度与产品类型对消费者响应的影响

Influences of Donation Size and Product Type to Consumer Responses in Cause-Related Marketing

随着经济发展和社会进步,消费者希望企业承担更多社会责任,慈善营销成为越来越多企业的选择。本文分别针对低价产品和高价产品,采用两个2×2的组间实验,探讨了慈善营销中企业捐赠额度对消费者响应的影响以及产品类型的调节作用。研究发现,捐赠额度越高,消费者响应越积极;相对于实用型产品,享乐型产品对消费者响应的影响更为显著。此外,捐赠额度与产品类型之间存在交互效应,相对于实用型产品,生产享乐型产品的企业捐赠额度越高,消费者响应越积极。以上结论丰富了慈善营销的相关理论,并为企业根据自身产品类型制定慈善营销策略提供了一些有益的启示。

As the growth of the economy and the development of the society, the consumer required the companies to take more social responsibility. At the meantime, the companies could gain profits from cause-related marketing （CRM） while enhancing social responsibility and promoting brand reputation. Therefore, more and more companies are introducing this strategy into their marketing planning which involved lots of problems, such as whether more donations is better, whether the product type will influences the consumer responses to CRM. On one hand, most researches in China were about the introductions of definitions, or case studies. Some Chinese researchers investigated CRM from the aspect of corporation social responsibility, the other investigated CRM from the influences of consumer attitudes and behavior intentions. On the other hand, foreign researchers found several factors which would influence the consumer responses to CRM, including brand familiarity, corporation social responsibility level and credibility, cause familiarity, type, importance, involvement and fitness, and consumer psychological descriptions, and etc. According to the literatures, little had done in the areas of donation size and product type. This paper discussed the influences of donation size to consumer responses in CRM and the moderating effect of product type, using 2 x 2 between-subject design for both high-price products and low-price products. The paper can enrich the relative theories in CRM and provide some implications to the companies. In order to verifying the following hypotheses ,including the influences of donation size （Hla,Hlb ,Hlc and Hld）, the influences of product type （H2a,H2b,H2c and H2d）,and the interaction between these two variables （H3a,H3b, H3c and H3d）, the author used the pretest to find the products （high or low price, hedonic or practical product）, the cause, and the donation size （high or low） which would used in experiments design. Then, the author designed the experimental questionnaire, including the manipulation checks of product type, the familiarity of the cause, and the fitness between the product and cause; the measurement of consumer responses （the attitudes towards the company and cause,the attributions of donation motivation, and the purchase intentions）. The respondents are assigned to eight different situations randomly. They would answer the questions after reading the experimental descriptions. The author used SPSS software to analyze the data collected from the experimental survey. The ANOVA outcomes indicated that, for both high-price products and low-price products, firstly, donation size in CRM has a significantly positive impact on consumer responses, and when donation size is larger, consumer response is more positive; secondly, product type also has an effect on consumer response, and compared with practical products, hedonic products influence consumer response more significantly. Moreover, the interaction of donation size with product type is that,in CRM campaign of a company which sells hedonic products instead of practical products, donation size influence consumer response more positively. In the end, the paper provided some marketing implications for the related marketing campaigns, they could formulate appropriate strategy conditions. Generally speaking, larger donation could bring about better managers. When companies launched causeof donation size on the basis of their own consumer response and campaign effectiveness. However, product type could influence the effect of donation size on consumer responses. When a company sells hedonic products, larger donation could substantially improve campaign effectiveness; on the contrary, larger donation for practical products could bring about limited effects. There still existed some limitations in this paper. Firstly, the author used college students as the respondents ac- cording to the literatures ; this method of sampling would limit the external validity of the research. Future research would choose the respondents from different demographics according to social level or value. Secondly, the author divided the product types into hedonic and practical products, and didn＇ t consider the other factors. Future research would use product involvement as the variable to analyze the differences. Furthermore, although the experiment had done the manipulation check on product type, the real consumer would focus on different product aspects. Therefore, future research would choose different product to verify the stability of the conclusions.