Research On The Mechanism Of The Role Orientation In The Cause-related Marketing Results Disclosure Influencing Consumer Word-of-mouth Intention

Nowadays,it has become mainstream for companies to integrate social responsibility into their daily business activities,and consumers are increasingly willing to participate in corporate social responsibility activities to contribute to the social welfare.Against this background,cause-related marketing,which links charitable donations with consumers' product purchases,is increasingly valued and favored by companies around the world.Cause-related marketing not only enables companies to realize the dual benefits of undertaking social responsibility and promoting product sales,but also satisfies consumers' willingness of helping others while purchasing products.Meanwhile,the social causes are improved and developed with the help of companies and consumers.In the past,managers and scholars mainly focused on the design and communication of cause-related marketing so as to achieve the desired results,but little attention was paied to the results disclosure of cause-related marketing.Among the few studies about cause-related marketing's results disclosure,scholars only analyzed and described what should be disclosed briefly and the importance of transparenct in disclosure,lacking in-depth and detailed research on a specific aspect of the results disclosure.In practice,the effectiveness of cause-related marketing's results disclosure is also uneven,which is related to the lack of relevant theoretical guidance.Donating to help social causes is one of the most important purposes of cause-related marketing,so it is also one of the essential contents in the disclosure of the results of causerelated marketing.For the social cause in cause-related marketing,companies are the direct donors,but consumers' purchasing behavior is the fundamental prerequisite for companies' donations.Thus,both companies and consumers play an important and integral role in donating and helping the social causes.In this case,whose role should be highlighted for donating and helping the social cause in the cause-related marketing's results disclosure? Empirical observation shows that there are two kinds of practice: highlighting the role of companies and highlighting the role of consumers or customers,and the latter triggers more positive word-of mouth among consumers than the former.However,what is the mechanism or pathway underlying this relationship? Are there any boundary conditions? These has not been explored by scholars.Based on the above issues,this paper firstly reviewed the literature about different types of orientation in various contexts and then proposed the concept of role orientation in causerelated marketing's results disclosure to illustrate the highlighted role regarding donations to help social causes in the cause-related marketing's results disclosre.We classified the role orientation into two types,corporate orientation and customer orientation,and explored the mechanism of their effects on consumer word-of-mouth intention.More specifically,firstly this paper explored the direct main effect of role orientation in the disclosure of cause-related marketing results on consumer word-of-mouth intention,i.e.,the differential effect of corporate orientation and customer orientation on consumer word-of-mouth intention(Experimental study 1).Secondly,based on the social identity theory,this paper explored the pathway of role orientation in the disclosure of cause-related marketing results on consumer word-of-mouth intention,i.e.,the mediation effect of consumer-company identification(Experimental study2).Finally,based on the information integration theory and accessibility-diagnosability theory,this paper explored the boundary conditions of the customer orientation's positive effect on consumer word-of-mouth intention in the disclosure of cause-related marketing results,i.e.,the moderation effect of company-cause fit(Experimental study 3)and corporate reputation(Experimental study 4).Based on the selected appropriate experimental matrials such as corporate products and social causes through pretest,this paper conducted 4 formal experimental studies and analyzed the data with the SPSS 23.0 and AMOS 23.0 to examine the proposed hypotheses so as to clarify the mechanism of role orientation in the disclosure of cause-related marketing's results on consumer word-of-mouth intention.The main findings are as follows:Firstly,the role orientation in cause-related marketing's results disclosure has significant main effect on consumer word-of-mouth intention.More specifically,the experimental study1 found that customer orientation elicits higher consumer word-of-mouth intention than corporate orientation in the cause-related marketing's results disclosure.Besides,the results of study 1 also revealed that both the corporate orientation and customer orientation in the causerelated marketing's results disclosure had higher consumer word-of-mouth intention than that in the no-results disclosure scenario.Second,the consumer-company identification fully mediates the relationship between role orientation in the cause-related marketing's results disclosure and consumer word-of-mouth intention.With different corporate products as experimental matrials and the more general consumers as subjects,study 2 proved the main effect of orientation on consumer word-ofmouth intention again and improved the genereality of this conclusion.Furthermore,experimental study 2 revealed the mediating effect of consumer-company identification between the role orientation in the cause-related marketing's results disclosure and consumer word-of-mouth intention.That is,in the disclosure of cause-related marketing results,customer orientation elicited higher consumer identification with the company than the corporate orientation,which in ture lead to higher consumer word-or-mouth intention.Thirdly,the company-cause fit moderates the relationship between role orientation in the cause-related marketing's results disclosure and consumer word-of-mouth intention,and the moderation effect is mediated by consumer-company identification.The results of the experimental study 3 found that when the cause-related marketing has a low company-cause fit,customer orientation in the campaign's results disclosure would induce consumer higher word-of-mouth intention than corporate orientation.However,when the cause-related marketing has a high company-cause fit,the role orientation in the results disclosure would not affect consumer word-of-mouth intention significantly.That is,there is no significantly different word-of-mouth intention between customer orientation and corporate orientation.In other words,the positive effect of customer orientation(vs.corporate orientation)on consumer word-of-mouth intention is restrained.Besides,the moderating effect of company-cause fit on the effect of role orientation on consumer word-of-mouth intention is mediated through identification with the company.Fourthly,the corporate reputation has moderating effect on the effect of role orientation in the cause-related marketing's results disclosure on the consumer word-of-mouth intention,which is also medirated by consumer-company identification.The results of experimental study4 revealed that for the companies had high or neutral reputation,in the results disclosure of their cause-related marketing campaign,customer orientation could induce higher consumer word-of-mouth intention than corporate orientation.However,the opposite is true when corporate reputation is low.That is,for the companies with low or bad repuatation,in the results disclosure of their cause-related marketing campaign,corporate orientation induces higher consumer word-of-mouth intention than customer orientation.In other words,the positive effect of customer orientation on consumer word-of-mouth intention is reversed when the corporate reputation is low.Moreover,the moderation effect of corporate reputation on the effect of role orientation on consumer word-of-mouth intention is medisted by consumer identification with company.In summary,with four experimental studies,this paper confirmed the positive effect of customer orientation,which emphasizes the role of consumers or customers in helping social causes in cause-related marketing,on consumer word-of-mouth intention than corporate orientation,which emphasizes the role of companies in helping social causes in cause-related marketing.Then,this paper showed that the consumer-company identification mediates the observed effect.In addition,this paper found two boundary conditions of the positive effect of customer orientation(vs.corporate orientation): company-cause fit,the key characteristics of cause-related marketing,and corporate reputation,one attribute of the company itself.More specifically,the positive effect of customer orientation(vs.corporate orientation)on consumer word-of-mouth intention is suppressed when the company-cause fit is high and is reversed for the company with low or bad reputation.Focusing on the question of which role should be maily emphasized about the donating and helping social cause in cause-related marketing's results disclosure,this paper proposed and defined the concept of role orientation in cause-related marketing's results disclosure,exploring the field of cause-related marketing,more specifically the cause-related marketing's results disclosure,in a new way.What's more,this paper empirically investigated the main effect,pathway,and boundary conditions of the effect that role orientation on consumer wordof-mouth intention,which not only reveals the mechanism of cause-related marketing's results disclosure influencing consumer reactions,but also fills the gap of lacking research on consumers' extra-role behavior in the field of cause-related marketing and enrichs the research on cause-related marketing as a whole.In terms of practically managerial implications,this paper not only provides new ideas and theoretical guidance on how to improve the relationship with consumers and better achieve long-term benefits through cause-related marketing,but also provides insights on how to implement cause-related marketing's results disclosure.First,not only should the companies make disclosure about the results of cause-related marketing,but also should pay attention to the presentation of the role of company or consumer/customer about helping social cause in cause-related marketing.Second,companies can compensate for the low company-cause fit of cause-related marketing by adopting customer orientation in the results disclosure.Third,there is not a general conclusion about adopting which kind of role orientation to describe heping social cause in the cause-related marketing's results disclosure.Companies should make a decision according to their own reputation.