A strategy to communicate corporate social responsability: Cause related marketing and its dark side

Cause related marketing (CRM) is a strategy that aims to communicate a company’s strivingfor corporate social responsibility and to improve brand image. A strategy to increaseconsumers’ emotional involvement toward a product–cause association is to describe thecause in vivid terms. In two experiments we investigated how vivid messages mightincrease the effectiveness of CRM strategy. We sought to demonstrate that a vivid descriptionof the cause could infl uence consumers’ preferences and trust in the effective use ofmoney collected by selling the product. Experiment 1 results showed that individuals preferproducts associated with a vivid message of the social cause rather than products associatedwith a pallid message. Experiment 2 results suggested that vivid messages inducemore positive affective reactions and a higher trust in the effective use of money than pallidones. In the fi nal section, the implications of CRM for corporate social responsibility arediscussed.