The effect of cause related marketing of female personal hygiene products on young females

Abstract

Cause related marketing (CRM) can be described as marketing that involves an organization’s contribution to a specific cause with the aim to affect their consumers' purchase decisions positively (Pracejus and Olsen, 2004). The purpose of the study is to contribute to the growing body of knowledge in the area of CRM. This study will investigate whether product type and perceived fit affect consumer responses to a CRM campaign. This research will focus on the effect CRM has on consumer behaviour. It will try to determine If CRM is best suited for utilitarian products (UP) or luxury products (LP), and will also explore whether there should be a link between the cause of an organization’s CRM and the products to affect consumer attitudes and purchase behaviour positively. The research will focus on personal hygiene products within the young female market in Gauteng. The study uses a positivist paradigm, and the research questions/hypotheses were developed within this paradigm. Electronically distributed structured questionnaires was used as a collection tool. The analysis of the data was done using descriptive statistics to “organize and summarise [the] data in a meaningful way” (Maree, 2020). The findings of the study indicate that CRM always has a positive effect on young females’ attitude and purchase intent, regardless of product type (distinguishing between utilitarian and luxury products), regardless of the link of the product to the CRM cause and regardless of the consumers’ initial attitude towards the cause of the CRM. This indicated that CRM can be regarded as an effective marketing tool to use in the young female market in Gauteng, South Africa. However, the results also indicate that a CRM campaign will be more effective when consumers’ attitude towards the cause of the campaign is more positive and when the campaign has a stronger link to the product. It is therefore also important to consider the choice of CRM campaign strategically.