IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jbuset/v109y2012i2p163-174.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Consumer Evaluations of Social Alliances: The Effects of Perceived Fit Between Companies and Non-Profit Organizations

Author

Listed:
  • Namin Kim
  • Youri Sung
  • Moonkyu Lee

Abstract

Company–cause fit has been one of the major issues in the domain of corporate social responsibility. This study tries to expand the perspective from company–cause to company–non-profit organization (NPO) fit, and it gives implications to firms looking for long-term collaboration with an NPO. Specifically, it suggests three types of fit, i.e., familiarity, business, and activity fit and investigates the potential effects of these fits in social alliances between companies and the partnering NPOs on consumer attributions of the firms’ motives for the alliances. An experiment that used scenarios revealed that consumers perceive high-fitted alliances on the dimensions of the familiarity and activity fit as being more public-serving than low-matched ones. However, the consumers’ attribution of the motive is not different between the high and low business fit. The implications of the research results are discussed from an academic and practical standpoint. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

Suggested Citation

  • Namin Kim & Youri Sung & Moonkyu Lee, 2012. "Consumer Evaluations of Social Alliances: The Effects of Perceived Fit Between Companies and Non-Profit Organizations," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 109(2), pages 163-174, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:109:y:2012:i:2:p:163-174
    DOI: 10.1007/s10551-011-1115-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10551-011-1115-3
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10551-011-1115-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Johar, Gita Venkataramani & Simmons, Carolyn J, 2000. "The Use of Concurrent Disclosures to Correct Invalid Inferences," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 26(4), pages 307-322, March.
    2. Enrique Alcañiz & Ruben Cáceres & Rafael Pérez, 2010. "Alliances Between Brands and Social Causes: The Influence of Company Credibility on Social Responsibility Image," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 96(2), pages 169-186, October.
    3. Boush, David M & Friestad, Marian & Rose, Gregory M, 1994. "Adolescent Skepticism toward TV Advertising and Knowledge of Advertiser Tactics," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 21(1), pages 165-175, June.
    4. Campbell, Margaret C & Kirmani, Amna, 2000. "Consumers' Use of Persuasion Knowledge: The Effects of Accessibility and Cognitive Capacity on Perceptions of an Influence Agent," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 27(1), pages 69-83, June.
    5. Friestad, Marian & Wright, Peter, 1994. "The Persuasion Knowledge Model: How People Cope with Persuasion Attempts," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 21(1), pages 1-31, June.
    6. McCracken, Grant, 1989. "Who Is the Celebrity Endorser? Cultural Foundations of the Endorsement Process," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 16(3), pages 310-321, December.
    7. Becker-Olsen, Karen L. & Cudmore, B. Andrew & Hill, Ronald Paul, 2006. "The impact of perceived corporate social responsibility on consumer behavior," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 46-53, January.
    8. Lafferty, Barbara A. & Goldsmith, Ronald E., 2005. "Cause-brand alliances: does the cause help the brand or does the brand help the cause?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 58(4), pages 423-429, April.
    9. Webb, Deborah J. & Mohr, Lois A. & Harris, Katherine E., 2008. "A re-examination of socially responsible consumption and its measurement," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 91-98, February.
    10. Meyers-Levy, Joan & Tybout, Alice M, 1989. "Schema Congruity as a Basis for Product Evaluation," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 16(1), pages 39-54, June.
    11. Park, C Whan & Milberg, Sandra & Lawson, Robert, 1991. "Evaluation of Brand Extensions: The Role of Product Feature Similarity and Brand Concept Consistency," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 18(2), pages 185-193, September.
    12. Lafferty, Barbara A., 2007. "The relevance of fit in a cause-brand alliance when consumers evaluate corporate credibility," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 60(5), pages 447-453, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rim, Hyejoon & Yang, Sung-Un & Lee, Jaejin, 2016. "Strategic partnerships with nonprofits in corporate social responsibility (CSR): The mediating role of perceived altruism and organizational identification," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(9), pages 3213-3219.
    2. Katharine M. Howie & Lifeng Yang & Scott J. Vitell & Victoria Bush & Doug Vorhies, 2018. "Consumer Participation in Cause-Related Marketing: An Examination of Effort Demands and Defensive Denial," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 147(3), pages 679-692, February.
    3. Menno D. T. Jong & Mark Meer, 2017. "How Does It Fit? Exploring the Congruence Between Organizations and Their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Activities," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 143(1), pages 71-83, June.
    4. Laura Therese Heinl & Anna Baatz & Markus Beckmann & Peter Wehnert, 2021. "Investigating Sustainable NGO–firm Partnerships: An Experimental Study of Consumer Perception of Co-Branded Products," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(22), pages 1-19, November.
    5. Sylvain Sénéchal & Laurent Georges & Jean Pernin, 2014. "Alliances Between Corporate and Fair Trade Brands: Examining the Antecedents of Overall Evaluation of the Co-branded Product," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 124(3), pages 365-381, October.
    6. Grzegorz Zasuwa, 2017. "The Role of Company-Cause Fit and Company Involvement in Consumer Responses to CSR Initiatives: A Meta-Analytic Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(6), pages 1-16, June.
    7. Rob Tulder & Nienke Keen, 2018. "Capturing Collaborative Challenges: Designing Complexity-Sensitive Theories of Change for Cross-Sector Partnerships," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 150(2), pages 315-332, June.
    8. Coleman Joshua T. & Peasley Michael C., 2015. "Demonstrating a lack of brand/cause effects on point of sale donations," Management & Marketing, Sciendo, vol. 10(3), pages 226-243, October.
    9. Bram Roosens & Nathalie Dens, 2019. "When do social alliances pay off? How the effect on corporate image depends on consumers’ prosocial attitudes," Journal of Brand Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 26(2), pages 195-208, March.
    10. Tommaso Minola & Nadine Kammerlander & Franz W. Kellermanns & Frank Hoy, 2021. "Corporate Entrepreneurship and Family Business: Learning Across Domains," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(1), pages 1-26, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Skarmeas, Dionysis & Leonidou, Constantinos N., 2013. "When consumers doubt, Watch out! The role of CSR skepticism," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 66(10), pages 1831-1838.
    2. Tessitore, Tina & Geuens, Maggie, 2019. "Arming consumers against product placement: A comparison of factual and evaluative educational interventions," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 38-48.
    3. Becker-Olsen, Karen L. & Cudmore, B. Andrew & Hill, Ronald Paul, 2006. "The impact of perceived corporate social responsibility on consumer behavior," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 46-53, January.
    4. Tejaswi Patil & Zillur Rahman, 2023. "Mapping the Cause-Related Marketing (CRM) field: document co-citation and bibliographic coupling approach," International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing, Springer;International Association of Public and Non-Profit Marketing, vol. 20(2), pages 491-520, June.
    5. Chang-Dae Ham & Jeesun Kim, 2019. "The Role of CSR in Crises: Integration of Situational Crisis Communication Theory and the Persuasion Knowledge Model," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 158(2), pages 353-372, August.
    6. Jochen Theis & Marvin Nipper & Marco Meier, 2024. "The influence of corporate philanthropic donations on private investors' valuation judgments: Experimental evidence," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 31(1), pages 540-554, January.
    7. Namin Kim & EuiSik Cho & Youngchan Kim & Moonkyu Lee, 2009. "Developing an effective strategic mix of corporate philanthropy," The Service Industries Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(7), pages 1049-1062, May.
    8. Rachel Esther Lim & Wei‐Na Lee, 2023. "Communicating corporate social responsibility: How fit, specificity, and cognitive fluency drive consumer skepticism and response," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 30(2), pages 955-967, March.
    9. Matthew Walker & Aubrey Kent, 2013. "The Roles of Credibility and Social Consciousness in the Corporate Philanthropy-Consumer Behavior Relationship," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 116(2), pages 341-353, August.
    10. Waßmann, Jan, 2011. "Corporate Social Responsibility in der Marketing- und Markenforschung: Ein systematischer Überblick zum aktuellen Stand der empirischen Forschung," Research Papers on Marketing Strategy 5/2011, Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg, Lehrstuhl für BWL und Marketing.
    11. Andrew E. Wilson & Peter R. Darke & Jaideep Sengupta, 2022. "Winning the Battle but Losing the War: Ironic Effects of Training Consumers to Detect Deceptive Advertising Tactics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 181(4), pages 997-1013, December.
    12. María del Mar García‐De los Salmones & Andrea Perez, 2018. "Effectiveness of CSR Advertising: The Role of Reputation, Consumer Attributions, and Emotions," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 25(2), pages 194-208, March.
    13. Mendini, Monica & Peter, Paula C. & Gibbert, Michael, 2018. "The dual-process model of similarity in cause-related marketing: How taxonomic versus thematic partnerships reduce skepticism and increase purchase willingness," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 195-204.
    14. Lee, Jaedeock & Ferreira, Mauricio, 2013. "A role of team and organizational identification in the success of cause-related sport marketing," Sport Management Review, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 161-172.
    15. Golovacheva, E., 2016. "When consumers activate persuasion knowledge: Review of antecedents and consequences," Working Papers 6440, Graduate School of Management, St. Petersburg State University.
    16. Yann Verhellen & Caroline Oates & Patrick Pelsmacker & Nathalie Dens, 2014. "Children’s Responses to Traditional Versus Hybrid Advertising Formats: The Moderating Role of Persuasion Knowledge," Journal of Consumer Policy, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 235-255, June.
    17. Wallach, Karen Anne & Popovich, Deidre, 2023. "When Big Is Less than Small: Why dominant brands lack authenticity in their sustainability initiatives," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    18. Sah, Sunita & Malaviya, Prashant & Thompson, Debora, 2018. "Conflict of interest disclosure as an expertise cue: Differential effects due to automatic versus deliberative processing," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 127-146.
    19. Tuk, M.A. & Verlegh, P.W.J. & Smidts, A. & Wigboldus, D.H.J., 2008. "Sales and Sincerity: The Role of Relational Framing in Word-of-Mouth Marketing," ERIM Report Series Research in Management ERS-2008-056-MKT, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
    20. Riley Debra & Charlton Nathalie & Wason Hillary, 2015. "The impact of brand image fit on attitude towards a brand alliance," Management & Marketing, Sciendo, vol. 10(4), pages 270-283, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:109:y:2012:i:2:p:163-174. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.