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Course MARK1022: The Scholarship of Marketing Course School/Level B/PG

Coursework Topic Review Assessment Weight 80.00%
Tutor KH Phairor Submission Deadline 09/03/2018

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Exploring the effect of emotion and
cognitive function in cause-related
marketing

Introduction to cause-related marketing, emotion and cognitive function

Corporate marketing activities encompass a diverse range of steps such as brand awareness,
Public relation, advertisement, events, sales and after-sales services. Besides, marketing could
be understood as vital set of actions taken by organisations to identify, anticipate and fulfill the
expectation and requirement of customers and after that providing goods and services in a way
that satisfy them. These days, thanks to the technology development and digitalization of
things, people can share their opinions with a wide range of audience in their network very
easily. This means higher and more complicated expectations from the customers are put onto
companies. Therefore, persuading and winning customers is becoming more and more
challenging. A number of ways have been implemented to better persuade and gain customers.
Among of the most popular ways is cause-related marketing, an approach that is designed to
link an organisation to a charity, not-for-profit or cause for mutual benefit. In order to success
in cause-related marketing campaigns, the science of using emotion and cognitive function in
consumer mind has been implemented.
In marketing endeavors, companies have been focusing on the science of emotion and
cognitive function to reach out and win their customers. Not only buying behaviors, according
to Watson and Spence (2006), satisfaction and post-purchase behavior have also been
reportedly to be strongly affected by emotions. Supporting this practice, in a research in 1998,
Hawkins et al. came to a conclusion that emotion is important factor in consumer response to
brands. Accordingly, emotion is reportedly effective in influencing customers’ decisions,
forming attitudes and remembering. In other researches, Foxall, Goldsmith and Brown (1998)
pointed out that brand loyalty could have its roots from the emotional impact that the brand has
created on the consumer or the way that the brand has created consumers’ feeling about
themselves.
With no less importance than emotion, cognitive function or cognition has been identified as
the area in which human’s mental phenomena (perception, memory, judging, thinking, etc.)
are grouped. According to Hoyer and Macinnis (2004), cognitive function influences behaviour
such as customers’ purchasing. This implies why marketers seek to change consumers’
attitudes so that they can influence consumers’ buying decision.
A question raised is how corporates have applied emotion and cognitive function in marketing
campaigns in general and cause-related marketing campaign in particular? This report will
focus on the effects of using emotion and cognitive function in cause-related marketing, taking
case studies of The Body Shop and Coca Cola with their cause-related marketing endeavors as
the illustration of this practice.
Literature available on the topic
As earlier as 1988, Varadarajan and Menon defined cause-related marketing to be inclusive of
“formulating and implementing marketing activities that are characterized by an offer from the
firm to contribute a specified amount to a designated cause when customers engage in revenue-
providing exchanges that satisfy organizational and individual objectives”. Similarly, Pringle
& Thompson (1999) described cause-related marketing as a strategy that allowed businesses
to form a partnership for mutual benefit with a charity organisation or a good cause. Besides,
as the global concerns of consumers over social and environment issues have increased over
the years, corporates have applied the strategy of affiliating their products with social and
environmental causes. In this scenario, cause-related marketing is the demonstration of a
corporation’s social commitment.
Based on available academic knowledge on cause-related marketing, it could be understood as
a form of marketing that comprises various actions, tools as well as incorporate traditional
marketing methods in order to impact customers’ perception and behaviors for good causes,
which many a time, is social or environmental causes.
With regards to the implementation of cause-related marketing campaign, Forbes (2012)
summarized characteristics of a successful cause-related marketing endeavor as follows: First
and foremost is Recognizable authenticity. Accordingly, companies should look for a cause
and associate the campaign with the cause that has personal relevance or a cause that exhibits
a suitability or alignment to the corporate brands. Secondly, the campaign should have a
specific allocation of percentage from product sales revenue to charity. This is a simple yet
effective way, and often called charity benefit.
The benefits of using cause-related marketing has been discussed by many scholars include
Nezra (1996), Murphy (1997) or Strahilevitz and Myers (1998). Researches by these scholars
pointed out benefits such as: enhancing the motivation of purchasing for customers, developing
a solid relation with customers and enhancing corporate image. There were some other
researches by Barone (2000) in Cause-Related Marketing identified the features of this
marketing tool that impact positive evaluations of consumers. This opinions was also raised by
Pracejus and Olsen in 2004; and earlier in 1998 by Strahilevitz and Myers. According to
Business in the Community (2003), in this research year, over £58 million was raised by over
60 businesses benefiting over 60 charities and good causes through more than 80 Cause-
Related Marketing programmes in the UK. To make that successful, Cause-Related Marketing
offers consumers opportunities to make purchase decisions for reasons other than personal
benefit. That is the aspect where emotion and cognitive function has been applied or taken
advantage of to create impact on customers’ mind.
Regarding the explanation of emotion, Simonov (2013) defined emotion as form of reflecting
reality, the essence of which consists in the self-regulation of the functions of the organism in
keeping with the requirements of the conditions of the external world. Besides emotion
definition, popular researches have shed light on emotion regulation. For instance, Jazaiere et
al., (2013) described emotion regulation as the process model of it which includes five
particular steps of emotion regulation processes includes pick out situation or situation
selection, situation modification, attentional deployment, change in cognition, and response
inflection. Understanding this process is very useful to apply into real life marketing campaign
in corporate marketing activities, especially in cause-related marketing campaign.
Di Muro and Murray (2012) contributed to the existing literature by demonstrating that in
addition to regulating mood valence that is, the extent to which an affective state is positive or
negative, consumers will also make choices that are consistent with regulating their level of
arousal. Specifically, consumers in a positive mood reportedly tend to prefer products that are
congruent with both the level of arousal and the valence of their current affective state. Some
other researchers found that people use their current positive or negative emotions as a basis
for judgments of target items such as products, advertisements, and brand extensions. For
example, participants’ positive emotions lead to positive evaluation of a target product (Gorn
et al. 1993) and in 2008 Baker and Okazaki described emotion plays a key role in consumer’s
positive response to brands and provides an effective method of shaping customers’ attitudes,
forming decisions and improving brand recall. To cement the effect of emotion, Kim and
Johnson (2012) proposed their conclusion that moral emotion significantly impact and
contributed to the purchase intention for a social-cause product.
With regards to cognitive function, Neisser (1967) in his book Cognitive Psychology stated
cognition as "those processes by which the sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated,
stored, recovered, and used."
In 2006 Homburg, Koschate and Hoyer examined the duties of cognitive function and the way
that it can affect and driving customer satisfaction judgment processes. Their conclusion
suggested that the impact of cognition is one of the most key factors in the early stages of the
judgment formation process in the customers who are not familiar or have no experiences
related to the products. In another recent study, Gueiro, Rita and Trigueiros (2015) pointed out
that shopping behavior is facilitated by internal cognition perceptions such as those captured
by visual attention during the period of information searching. The researchers also suggested
that under complex environment, emotions and cognition are expected to guide responses
towards approach or avoidance behaviors.
Case studies
There are a number of real-life case studies that demonstrate the effect of emotion and cognitive
function that have been used in their Cause-Related Marketing campaigns. For example, Body
shop with the campaign “Forever Against Animal Testing” which is being activated in 66
countries where this company operates. Another successful example is Coca Cola Cause
Marketing campaign named “Hello happiness”, which was launched in 2014. This campaign
helped thousand of worker in Dubai to call their family in South Asia using the Coca Cola
bottle caps.
Before focusing on this campaign, following are some initial background information about
these companies.
Coca-Cola history started in 1886 when Atlanta pharmacist, Dr. John S. Pemberton created a
distinctive tasting soft drink that could be sold at soda fountains (World of Coca Cola, 2018).
The company states their believes that the success depends its ability to connect with
consumers by providing them with a diverse variety of beverage choices to meet their desires,
needs and lifestyles. (Branding Strategy Insider, 2014). However, it is understood that the
secret to the “giant” in beverage industry is that they have trained customers’ brain to associate
Coca Cola brand comes up with the positive emotion, for example happiness, love, friendship,
family..., not just a drink.
In 2014, Coca Cola launched a cause-marketing campaign entitled “Hello happiness” in Dubai.
The campaign has successfully created an experience that people want to be a part of all over
the world. This special phone booth accepts Coke’s bottle caps instead of coins and in return it
provides a 3 minutes international phone call that helps workers to connect with their families
more often.
Coca Cola designed this campaign to establish a good image for themselves by associating the
idea of ‘happiness’ with Coca Cola, and to expand its consumer base to developing regions
where the market for Coca Cola is small. In this campaign, Coca Cola accurately met its
consumers’ needs by looking at what the migrant workers in Dubai really needed most. By
highlighting the plight of this marginalized group of workers, Coca Cola was able to generate
interest and support for their campaign, as well as establish a more positive brand image for
themselves. In this context, Coca Cola has successfully applied the science of emotion and
cognitive function in their marketing campaign. With regards to emotion, Coca Cola focused
on the feeling of workers who have to live and work far away for their homes and touched on
the home-sick and the feeling of love between them and their families. Touching on this aspect,
Coca Cola also demonstrated the sympathy for the workers in Dubai and consequently,
intrigued the global audiences’ concern on human rights and working conditions of workers
coming from developing or underdeveloped countries. This has consequently, gained the
interests of global audience on this campaign. Besides, aspect of cognitive function in
customers’ mind has been also effectively researched and applied in this case study. Capture
of real images and working life of laborers were chosen. The joy of international laborers who
could call home thanks to Coca Cola were uploaded on video channels. These evidences were
used to show audiences worldwide about the meaningful causes of the campaign.
Consequently, the joy and happiness of laborers during their international call to home and
Coca Cola’s positive brand image are things that stay in customers mind.
Another company launched a model Cause-related marketing activity is The Body Shop with
their 29-years campaign “Forever against animal testing”. Since 1989, The Body Shop was the
first global beauty brand to fight against animal testing in cosmetics. Over the last three
decades, they have worked with the campaign partner, Cruelty Free International and the
collective efforts helped lead to a European Union ban in 2013. However, 80% of countries
still allow animal testing for cosmetic products and ingredients and their target is stop using
animals for testing in global as soon as they can. Belong to the campaign is the very impressive
figures. In 2013, The Body Shop collected 1 million signatures for their petition, influencing
significant progress across the world as South Korea, New Zealand and India now have a
variety of bans in place. Australia is set to follow with a ban promised by July 2017 as is
Taiwan in 2019. Cruelty Free International have trained scientists in Vietnam and are now
discussing with Thailand and other governments the possibility of a ban across ASEAN.
Marketing professionals highly appreciate this initiative of The Body Shop and the success of
this campaign is thanks to its focus on social good message and corporate social responsibility
(The Body Shop,2018).
To analyse this case study, the process model of emotion regulation (Jazaieri et al, 2015)
could be used as a framework. At the first step, The Body Shop realized a situation that
animal has been using for product testing for a long time. It is the problem that has been
concerned by many people around the world. By using this situation and creating the
campaign to ban animals testing, they did avoid the negative context to their customers.
After launching the Cause Marketing activity, the consumers were paying attention to this
immediate environment which is social in this case. Understand the process of thinking
within customer’s mind which involve the Cognitive function to evaluate the situation, The
Body Shop worked and partnered with influencers, celebrities such as Ariel Winter, Jhene
Aiko, Masie William… in this effort to drive their participant to join the petition. Finally,
after an emotion occurs, they are achieving the very impressive responses that have been
mentioned by the figures above.

Figure: The process model of emotion regulation (Jazaieri et al, 2015)

Findings and conclusion

It could be said that cause-related marketing is a spectacular way for corporates to promote
their brands, especially with the context of growing concern on social responsibility across the
globe. Since its early days, cause-related marketing has evolved and become more and more
sophisticated. Cause-related marketing encompasses one-off cause sale promotional activities
to broader, longer term marketing endeavors where companies exhibit their commitment to
social causes or even, incorporate social responsibility into their business mission, culture and
daily business activities. In terms of activities, cause-related marketing includes product sales,
promotions, and program driven collaborations between companies and non-profit
organisations. With appropriate and effective implementation, cause-related marketing can
support the companies effectively in reaching targeted mission, raising substantial revenue,
achieve mission, conveying their messages to customers, change behaviors of customers as
well as increase awareness of morality topics.
Based on available academic knowledge mentioned above, emotion and cognitive function are
very important in every marketing campaigns. They are even more important in cause-related
marketing because emotion and cognitive function are the key process in almost of decisions.
Additionally, they can help to reach and drive the behaviors or consuming decision of targeted
customers easier. By using the theories of those 2 elements, the marketers and businesses will
know how to guide responses towards approach or avoidance behaviors of their customers in
their campaigns.
According to the 2 case studies which were analysed in the report, companies could refer to
the campaigns of Body Shop or Coca Cola and their initiatives as reference points on how to
manipulating the impact of emotion and cognitive function and implement cause-related
marketing campaigns successfully. Consequently, corporates could gain more customers,
achieve brand awareness, as well as brand reputation.
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