Abstract

Cause-related marketing (CRM) advertisements focus on promotional social cause (PSC) messages for a brand; however, recent social media-based CRM ads rely on partake-in-our-cause (PIOC) messages, which encourage consumer participation. This three-part study examined the identification of a boundary condition in message type effects and the underlying mechanisms of such effects in social network sites (SNS). The findings of Experiment 1 indicate that when exposed to a product-focussed visual, PIOC messages yield more positive CRM outcomes (vs. PSC messages). However, when subjects were exposed to a cause-focussed visual, there were no differences in CRM outcomes between PIOC and PSC messages. Experiment 2 and Experiment 3 investigated the underlying mechanism via serial mediation analyses. The findings show that positive CRM outcomes derived from PIOC messages (vs. PSC messages) arose mainly through consumers’ perception of CRM. Conversely, when exposed to the cause-focussed visual, consumers’ perception of CRM was not influenced by the message type. The current study contributes to the existing CRM literature by applying consumer attributions of a company’s motive in CRM messages.

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

摘要

事业相关营销 (CRM) 广告专注于品牌的促销社会事业 (PSC) 信息；然而，最近基于社交媒体的 CRM 广告依赖于参与我们的事业 (PIOC) 消息，这些消息鼓励消费者参与。这项由三部分组成的研究检查了消息类型效应中边界条件的识别以及社交网站 (SNS) 中此类效应的潜在机制。实验 1 的结果表明，当接触以产品为中心的视觉效果时，PIOC 消息会产生更积极的 CRM 结果（与 PSC 消息相比）。然而，当受试者接触以原因为中心的视觉时，PIOC 和 PSC 消息之间的 CRM 结果没有差异。实验 2 和实验 3 通过串行中介分析研究了潜在机制。调查结果表明，从 PIOC 消息（与 PSC 消息相比）获得的积极 CRM 结果主要来自消费者对 CRM 的看法。相反，当接触到以原因为中心的视觉效果时，消费者对 CRM 的看法不受消息类型的影响。当前的研究通过在 CRM 消息中应用公司动机的消费者属性，为现有的 CRM 文献做出了贡献。

本文已更正，稍作更改。这些变化不会影响文章的学术内容。