Cause-related marketing model in the dairy food industry based on the grounded theory

Ahangar Selehbani, Razieh; Nourbakhsh, Seyed Kamran; Mirabi, Vahidreza; Khonsari, Yahya

doi:10.22075/ijnaa.2023.30237.4374

Cause-related marketing model in the dairy food industry based on the grounded theory

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Razieh Ahangar Selehbani ¹

Seyed Kamran Nourbakhsh ²

Vahidreza Mirabi ²

Yahya Khonsari ³

¹ Department of Business Management, North Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

² Department of Business Management, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

³ Department of Business Management, West Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

10.22075/ijnaa.2023.30237.4374

Abstract

Cause-related marketing is a new marketing strategy for fulfilling the social responsibility of companies, which pays attention to the social needs of altruism and personal needs. This marketing model can be used well in markets with intense competition and towards saturation, such as the food industry, which leads to competitive advantages in the non-price competition of companies, brand differentiation, and obtaining a suitable competitive position for the companies' products. Therefore, this study aimed to design a cause-related marketing model in the dairy food industry and identify parameters and components by interviewing academic and industry experts using the qualitative analysis method. The study population included academic experts and senior managers of the dairy food industry in 12 people until theoretical saturation. A semi-structured interview and the Delphi method were used to collect data, which were analyzed in MAXQDA software. Accordingly, 16 components were extracted from four main components of dimensions. Dimensions related to the company (with dimensions; company’s marketing mix; company’s resources and capabilities; campaign execution, the perspective of the company’s managers and stakeholders), dimensions related to customers (with dimensions; people’s beliefs, people’s attitudes; people’s values, demographic factors, motivation social factors and the individual’s experience and awareness), dimensions related to the campaign (with dimensions; method of aid or cause-related activity, place of support or cause-related activity, validity and importance and urgency of the cause-related campaign) and cause-related marketing results (with components of financial and non-financial results) were classified. In the end, a conceptual model was presented.

Keywords

cause-related marketing

people’s attitude

marketing mix

benevolent campaign

the dairy industry

[1] S. Akhtar and M. Bhattacharjee, The marketing mix elements for social cause: A rational approach to derive the new 4Ps, Int. Conf. Res. Market. (A Refereed International Conference), New Delhi, India, 2013.

[2] S. Bahrami, M. Soltani and H. Yazdani, Identifying factors affecting the success of charitable marketing and prioritizing scenarios, Master’s thesis of University of Tehran, 2015.

[3] I.S. Coffie and R.E. Hinson, Types of corporate social responsibility initiatives as response to COVID-19 pandemic in emerging economies, Market. Commun. Emerg. Econ. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. 1 (2021), 161–192.

[4] A. Hamidizadeh, M.R. Esfidani, N. Salta Ninejad and A.A. Rashid, Consumer behavioral response to Cause-related marketing strategies in the framework of SOR, Perspect. Bus. Manag. 29 (2017), 142–125.

[5] A. Hadinia, K. Dezfulian and T. Ghobadi, Cause-related marketing relationship with customer attraction in Sahar company by explaining the role of attention variables to customer attitude, satisfaction, purchase intention, and customer loyalty (Case study: Sahar Food Industry Company, Hamedan), Master’s thesis of Shahid Beheshti University, 2019.

[6] K.T. Hong, S.I. Ng, R.N.R. Yusof and S.R. Kaliappan, Increasing consumers’ hypermarket visit intention through cause-related marketing: a perspective from the theory of planned behaviour, Rev. Brasil. Gestao Negoc. 21 (2019), no. 3, 435–463.

[7] T.E. Iscioglu, To what extent does company image improves through cause-related marketing? an evidence from food industry, Bus. Econ. Res. J. 10 (2019), no. 4, 973–990.

[8] R. Ismailpour, M. Doustar and Sh. Soltani, The role of corporate social responsibility in the purchasing decision of consumers in a saturated market of food companies, Bus. Manag. 6 (2014), no. 4, 687–708.

[9] H. Karimi, M. Bakhsham, M. Almasi Fard and M. Yarahamdi, Presenting the model of cause-related marketing success factors in Iran, Modern Market. Res. 11 (2021), no. 4, 177–190.

[10] B.A. Lafferty and D.R. Edmondson, Portraying the cause instead of the brand in cause-related marketing ads: Does it really matter?, J. Market. Theory Practice 17 (2009), 129–141.

[11] S. Molinillo, P. Mercade-Mele and T. De Noronha, Cause-related marketing influence on consumer loyalty in a medium-sized city, Sustainability 12 (2020), no. 9, 3632–3632.

[12] E. Mora, N. Vila-Lopez and I. Kuster-Boluda, Segmenting the audience of a cause-related marketing viral campaign, Int. J. Inf. Manag. 59 (2021), 102296.