The Effect And Impact Mechanism Of Participation Effort And Donation Amount On Cause Related Marketing

In recent years, different types of cause related marketing are more and more prevalent among Chinese enterprises.Such as WaHaha company adds participation effort into "the happiness school bus" activity of nutrition Express for the interactivity with the consumer. Compared to no participation action, consumer’s participation action associate with a higher donation amount in the every purchase of nutrition Express.But how different combination matrixes of participation effort and donation amount will affect the effectiveness of cause related marketing is unknown.This article will study how participation efforts and donations amount affect cause related marketing from psychological reactance perspective on the basis of persuasion knowledge theory. Through2(participation efforts:high, low)*2(donation amount:high, low) experimental design, to explore the following questions:1) how consumer participation efforts and donations amount impact effectiveness of cause related marketing;2) what is the interaction effect of consumer participation efforts and donations amount to cause related marketing;3) whether psychological reactance will mediate participate efforts and donation amount in the cause related marketing.The results show that participation effort and low donation amount will make a negative impact to consumer attitude and purchase intention. The negative effects mainly mediated by the psychological reactance, though participation effort and low donation amount will affect attitude directly. In addition, there is a significant interaction effects between participation effort and donation amount. High donation amount will reduce or even eliminate the psychological reactance triggered by participation effort, and negative impact on corporate attitude.The main contribution of this paper is (1) to introduce participation effort as an important factor in the cause related marketing, and explore its impact.(2) to figure out the effect of donation amount, and how matrixes of donation amount and participation effort affect the effectiveness.(3) to study mechanism of participation efforts and donation amount from psychological reactance perspective.