Fighting For a Cause or Against It: A Longitudinal Perspective

How do companies persuade consumers to buy their products? They have many ways such as advertising, sales promotion, free product trials, etc. However, non-profit organizations face a unique challenge. While their mission is also in persuading consumers to contribute, many times they cannot use the usual means such as advertisements and sales promotion tools available to for-profit organizations (Dixon, 1997). Given that approximately two of every three households donate an annual average of over $2,000 to charities of their choice (Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, 2007), the competition for charity dollars is quite stiff for a bulk of charitable organizations with unfortunately few or no conventional marketing tools from which to avail. Hence, the unique challenge faced by non-profits is that they need to persuade people to donate without many of the tried and tested methods of persuasion at their disposal. Many times, the only method that non-profits can use to communicate their aims and persuade consumers to contribute is in their name. Unlike for-profit entities that try to come up with memorable or catchy names, we see non-profits coming up with longer but more descriptive names that try to communicate the aims of the causes in the best possible manner. For instance, “Mothers Against Drunk Driving” captures all the emotions of the cause and hence, the name itself acts as a critical (and at times the only) persuasion tool. We see mainly three types of names for charities—positive, negative or neutral frames.