Charity Donors’ Response to Cause-Related Marketing: The Role of Attachment Styles

Cause-related marketing (CM) is a type of sponsoring activity whereby firms, for a limited period of time, donate a certain amount of the sales price of the firm’s product or revenue to a specific cause. While literature is prolific on how the firm (Mende, Bolton and Bitner 2013), the consumer (e.g., Krishna 2011), or, more marginally, the cause (e.g., Lafferty and Golsmith 2005) benefit from CM, charity donors responses are a neglected area. This topic is however important because the increased need for charitable giving necessitates a large, strong, and stable portfolio of loyal donors who adhere to the charity’s strategy. Consequently, the present research focuses on the charity donors and not on consumers who buy CM offers. The research question is thus the following: How do charity donors’ respond to CM implemented by their charity? As the literature is silent on the issue of donors’ response to CM, we resort to an exploratory qualitative approach in Study 1 (22 semi-directed interviews). With no surprise, donors’ response to CM implementation seemed to be influenced by their history with CM (i.e., general attitude, familiarity). More importantly, the analysis revealed that the style of informant relationship with the charity, called attachment style (AS), seemed to affect their response. Some respondents talked about their charity in a very consistent and emotionally positive way and seemed to have a good level of involvement and commitment toward it. They seemed to consider CM as a possible funding source and even willing to propose adjustments to optimize its implementation for the charity. Another group of respondents seemed to have an unemotional speech. They analyzed the CM with a certain distance, and expressed doubts about the reason that drives charities to participate to CM. Their reactions ranged from indifferent to negative. Finally, some respondents seemed to have high levels of expectations and recognition needs toward the charity. Their speech appeared as very emotional but instable and paradoxical. On the one hand, they seemed highly involved in the charity and desired an exclusive relationship with it. On the other hand, they seemed to feel insecure and unable to explore new ideas of fundraising opportunities by fear of losing or damaging the relationship they entertain with the charity. These respondents expressed rather negative emotions and reactions (e.g., sadness, anger).