Small but Sincere: The Impact of Firm Size and Gratitude on the Effectiveness of Cause-Marketing Campaigns

Companies are increasingly forced to respond to various morality concerns of consumers and stakeholders to “do good” and behave ethically. Our study focuses on a specific strategy to do good, known as Cause-Marketing (CM). CM consists of “marketing activities that are characterized by an offer from the firm to contribute a specified amount to a designated philanthropic cause” (Varadarajan and Menon 1988, p. 60). CM enables consumers to contribute to a cause while the firm acts morally and gains profit (Pracejus and Olsen 2004). CM seems a promising marketing strategy (Nielsen 2015). But is it effective irrespective of firm size? And what roles do perceived sincerity and feelings of gratitude play? The great majority of CM research has focused on big firms (File and Prince 1998; Lepoutre and Heene 2006), producing little insight into the effectiveness of CM campaigns for smaller firms. This gap in knowledge is particularly relevant as the proportion of firms that is small lies around 99% across Europe and the United States (European Commission, 2015; Grover and Suominen 2014). And even more important, research into the affective response of consumers to CM campaigns is lacking. The current research addresses both issues.