Co-Created Social Responsibility: How Letting the Consumer Choose the Brand's Donation Recipient Strengthens Consumer-Brand Relationships

摘要

This research explores the branding implications of an emerging form of co-created social responsibility, cause-related marketing (CM) with choice, in which the consumer chooses the cause to which the brand will donate for each consumer purchase (Robinson, Irmak, and Jayachandran 2012). Because shared consumer control can range from restricted (select a cause from a list whose length may vary) to unrestricted (choose any cause), CM with choice poses important theoretical and managerial questions. Specifically, it is unknown (1) to what extent consumer perceptions of empowerment depend on the type and degree of control shared by the brand and (2) how perceived empowerment impacts consumer-brand relationships.