The effect of cause and brand fit on purchase intention in cause related marketing campaigns

In today's competitive environment, brands are increasingly turning to corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices to differentiate themselves and demonstrate good corporate citizenship. These practices can be grouped under the umbrella term of corporate social initiatives. One such initiative is cause related marketing (CRM). CRM involves a collaboration between a corporation/brand and a non-profit organization to support a social issue, resulting in mutual benefits. The aim of this study is to reveal the impact of cause and brand fit on purchase intention in cause related marketing campaigns in the context of the theory of planned behavior. The research question posed by this study is: "How do CRM campaigns with functional and image fit influence purchase intention in terms of attitudes, social norms (injunctive norms, descriptive norms and moral norms) and perceived consumer effectiveness?" In the study, participants were randomly divided into two groups according to two levels of cause-brand fit (functional fit-image fit). Each participant was presented with one of two scenarios which were created according to functional fit and image fit, subsequently asked to complete a survey. Hypotheses were formulated within the scope of the purpose of the study and multiple linear regression analysis was performed to determine these effects. As a result of the analysis, it was found that all variables except the injunctive norm variable, had a significant and positive effect on purchase intention in both research groups. In terms of the level of effect; for the functional fit group, perceived consumer effectiveness was the most influential variable, followed by moral norms, attitudes, and descriptive norms respectively. For image fit group, the most influential variable was moral norm, followed by perceived consumer effectiveness, descriptive norm and attitude.