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Pricing Cause-Related Marketing Products

Authors: Paola Mallucci; George John; Tony Haitao Cui;

Pricing Cause-Related Marketing Products

Abstract

The broad takeaway from the literature on cause-related marketing products, where firms donate to charities when consumers make a purchase, is that "warm glow" can increase demand. However, recent field results show that embedding donations increases demand only if the price of the product is high enough. Otherwise, demand can diminish in the donation amount, implicating mechanisms beyond warm glow, specifically reputation for generosity. However, there is no extant work informing firms' cause-marketing choices given these non-monotonic demand effects. We seek to close this gap. Drawing from identity theory models, we write a consumer model that incorporates reputation concerns in addition to warm glow. We solve analytically for optimal product prices and donation amounts under a differentiated duopoly as well as a monopoly setting. Our results are surprising. First, equilibrium profits can increase despite reputation concerns reducing consumers' utility. Second, warm glow and reputation concerns play complementary roles: warm glow drives the firm's choice to participate in cause marketing (i.e., embed a positive donation amount), while reputation concerns drive the profitability of the campaign. Third, firms may find it optimal to endogenously design cause marketing campaigns that induce negative reputation effects. Finally, surprisingly, it is in competition, not monopoly, that producers reap the most benefits from reputation concerns.

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Powered by OpenAIRE graph
Found an issue? Give us feedback
selected citations
These citations are derived from selected sources.
This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Citations provided by BIP!
popularity
This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Popularity provided by BIP!
influence
This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Influence provided by BIP!
impulse
This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Impulse provided by BIP!
4
Top 10%
Average
Average
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