Current Issue Summary
Sept 2021 (Vol. 61, Issue 3)

Cause-Related Marketing Advertising Formats on Nonprofit Websites: Does a Company’s Donation-Amount Offer in Nonprofit Display Ads Drive Purchase Intention?
Companies increasingly target nonprofit website and social media followers by using cause-related marketing display ads of charity and other nonprofit organizations. Cause-related marketing includes two approaches: transactional (representing an explicit donation amount that a consumer can make to the nonprofit) and non-transactional (representing online cause sponsorship). A U.K. research team—Wilson Ndasi (Oxford Brookes University), and Elvira Bolat and Gelareh Roushan (Bournemouth University)—noticed that very little research examining how these formats influence consumers exists, and sought to fill that knowledge gap.

In the first experiment, the authors examined the impact on consumer purchase intent from either ad formats for online cause-sponsorship display or digital, cause-related marketing, extolling explicit donation amounts. Drawing from earlier models, they manipulated the donation amounts: zero percent for online cause sponsorship, and for the explicit donation format—one percent and 10 percent. They used British Airways as the brand marketing on the Save the Children charity website. Survey results of 538 U.K. consumers indicated that people like knowing how their shopping through the ad link benefits a charity cause, by seeing a specific donation amount. “Overall purchase intention toward explicit donation amount ad formats is stronger than toward the online cause-sponsorship format, regardless of whether the perceived donation amounts are low or high.”

The researchers also tested for gender effect, comparing purchase intention for men and women across the same three digital, cause-related, marketing display ad formats. But there was not a significant gender difference in the scores.

The upshot:

• An explicit donation amount is critical in ensuring the effectiveness of digital, cause-related, marketing display ads.
• Gendered segmentation is not required when it comes to digital, cause-related, marketing display advertising.

Read the full article here.