Cause Related Marketing. A substitute for direct donations?

Masters Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: 1,4, Aston University (Aston Business School), course: Business & Management, language: English, abstract: Despite the vast research on Cause-Related Marketing, little is known about the instruments potential to substitute direct donations. A company engages in Cause-Related Marketing when it teams up with a cause supporting charity organisation. The similarity with direct donations suggests that cause-marketed products bear the potential to tap the donation market. The present investigation extends prior research by identifying key drivers for purchasing cause-marketed products and its potential to gain access to the market of direct donations (Hypothesis 1). Second, the work tries to assess the geographic implications of a Cause-Related Marketing campaign (Hypothesis 2). The results of Hypothesis 1 indicate that cause-marketed products bear a potential to substitute direct donations. Findings of Hypothesis 2 show that the geographical context of a CRM campaign has implications on the cause supported by a nongovernmental organisation.