A remarkable cause-marketing (CM) strategy has emerged in the marketplace: businesses promise to donate an identical product for each product sold (i.e., a “one-for-one” promotion). Yet despite prosocial tendencies, consumers hesitate when uncertain about others' preferences, which poses the question of whether one-for-one promotions are perceived to meet recipients' preferences. Five experiments (one field experiment and four laboratory experiments) reveal that the efficacy of in-kind, one-for-one promotions varies as a function of product type. Specifically, one-for-one promotions enhance purchase intentions for utilitarian products but undermine purchase intentions for hedonic products. Moreover, this difference is due to certainty regarding recipients' utilitarian preferences and uncertainty regarding recipients' hedonic preferences. Importantly, hedonic products' backfiring effects are attenuated when recipients' preferences are perceived as homogeneous or the recipient is familiar to the donor. Collectively, these findings emphasize the importance of consumer inferences regarding recipients' preferences in determining the efficacy of CM promotions that leverage in-kind benefits while elucidating the role of product type in the effectiveness of these promotions.

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当公益营销适得其反时：一对一促销对享乐和实用产品的不同影响

市场上出现了一种非凡的公益营销 (CM) 策略：企业承诺为每售出一件产品捐赠相同的产品（即“一对一”促销）。然而，尽管有亲社会倾向，消费者在不确定其他人的偏好时还是会犹豫，这就提出了一对一促销是否能满足接受者偏好的问题。五项实验（一项实地实验和四项实验室实验）表明，实物、一对一促销的效果因产品类型而异。具体而言，一对一促销会增强对实用产品的购买意愿，但会削弱对享乐产品的购买意愿。此外，这种差异是由于接受者功利偏好的确定性和接受者利益的不确定性。享乐偏好。重要的是，当接受者的偏好被认为是同质的或接受者对捐赠者很熟悉时，享乐产品的逆火效应就会减弱。总的来说，这些发现强调了消费者对接受者偏好的推断在确定利用实物利益的 CM 促销的功效方面的重要性，同时阐明了产品类型在这些促销有效性中的作用。