To Trust or Not to Trust? Consumer Responses to Cause-Related Marketing

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to understand if company trustworthiness and the type of cause-related marketing (CRM) campaigns (strategic vs. tactical) affect purchase intention and company image of a yogurt producer, under the control of socially responsible consumer behavior, general trust, income, attitude toward the CRM campaign, and initial company image. The study applies a quantitative (experimentation) research to test the proposed model. MANCOVA was applied with data obtained from 600 respondents who were selected by a two-stage cluster sampling method. The research model is partially supported. Company trustworthiness and CRM type are found to affect only company image and without any interaction effect. Being a highly trustworthy company applying a CRM campaign has more positive influence on company image than a less trustworthy one. Additionally, a strategic CRM campaign creates more positive influence on company image than a tactical one. The findings are further deliberated with the managers of the two selected companies with focus group discussions. © 2019, © 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.