Framing the donation: purchase intent and cause marketing campaigns

Takeaway: Adjust the framing of your cause commitments to maximize consumer goodwill.

Suggested Audience: Top leaders, corporate citizenship professionals, marketing professionals

To examine the role of donation frames in causing marketing initiatives, researchers surveyed 1,820 research participants in four different purchase environments. Researchers investigated the role of two distinct donation frames—minimum donation frames (e.g. “at least $X will be donated this year”) and maximum donation frames (e.g. “the company will donate up to $X by the end of the year”) across high and low donation amounts to understand how these features influenced consumers intent to purchase. Researchers surveyed consumers in simulated and real-world purchase environments, analyzing the relationship between intent to purchase and donation in the context of the donation frame.

Key Findings:

• For minimum-frame cause marketing campaigns, consumers’ intent to purchase is higher when campaigns utilize a relatively low donation amount (e.g., at least $100,000 will be donated) rather than a with a high donation amount (e.g., at least $10 million will be donated)
• For maximum-frame cause-marketing campaigns, higher donation amounts result in greater consumer intent to purchase (e.g. at least $10 million will be donated).

If citing, please refer to original article: Tsiros, M., & Irmak, C. (2020). Lowering the Minimum Donation Amount Increases Consumer Purchase Likelihood of Products Associated with Cause-Related Marketing Campaigns. Journal of Marketing Research. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0022243720916463