Factors That Trigger Consumer Cause-Empathy: A Conceptual Model
Keywords:
cause-related marketing, consumer cause-empathy, social identity theory, empathy altruism hypothesis, message framing, customer cause-identification, purchase guilt, customer altruism opportunity, egoistic helping theoryAbstract
This study is an attempt to develop a conceptual model to gauge the impact of moral emotions in a cause-related marketing (CRM) setting. It specifically considers the factors that can trigger empathy in a CRM campaign. It is assumed that for cause-related marketing (CRM) campaigns to be successful, a key ingredient is consumer empathy towards the cause that the campaign intends to support. The phrase consumer-cause empathy (CCE) is coined together to address this specific emotion. CCE is thus, an element that must work within the customers-end towards achieving CRM success and not at the business-end or the Non-Profit Organization’s-end. This paper produces a conceptual model as a product of the premise that if there is CCE, consumers are moved to the degree that there will be purchase intent for the product in a CRM campaign. Hence, what are the factors in a CRM campaign that can trigger CCE? This is what the paper strives to explain.
