Marketing Alliances

Between Non-Profits and Businesses:

Changing the Publics Attitudes
and Intentions Towards the Cause
Linda I. Nowak
Judith H. Washburn

ABSTRACT. The purpose of this study was to examine to what extent

corporate and non-profit alliances can impact the publics attitudes and
intentions to support a cause. Through the use of experimental design four
types of alliances were examined: (1) low affinity cause aligned with
company with strong reputation, (2) low affinity cause aligned with company with weak reputation, (3) high affinity cause aligned with company
with strong reputation, and (4) high affinity cause aligned with company
with weak reputation. Results of paired sample t-tests indicated significant
changes for only one type of alliance, that which is between a low affinity
cause and a corporate sponsor with a strong reputation. The low affinity
cause experienced increased: (a) customer trust in the non-profit, (b) intentions to support the cause, (c) evaluations of cause importance, (d) personal feelings of responsibility to help the cause, and (e) evaluations of
consequences for society through providing support. For the remaining
three types of alliances changes were not significant. [Article copies availLinda I. Nowak, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Marketing, Sonoma State University. Her research interests are in brand management, corporate citizenship, relationship management, and cause-related marketing. She has published articles in the
Journal of Services Marketing, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of
Education for Business, Health Marketing Quarterly, Journal of International Bank
Marketing, and the Journal of Small Business Strategy.
Judith H. Washburn, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Marketing, Bowling Green
State University. Her research interests focus on relationships, particularly between
nonprofits and businesses and between co-branding partners. She has published
articles in the Journal of Services Marketing, Journal of Education for Business, and
Health Marketing Quarterly.
Journal of Nonprofit & Public Sector Marketing, Vol. 7(4) 2000
E 2000 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

33

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JOURNAL OF NONPROFIT & PUBLIC SECTOR MARKETING

able for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-342-9678.
E-mail address: <getinfo@haworthpressinc.com> Website: <http://www.
HaworthPress.com>]

KEYWORDS. Cause marketing, alliances, non-profits, corporate sponsorships, donations, consumer support

Cause marketing alliances are collaborative marriages between corporations and non-profit groups to pursue mutually beneficial goals. A
properly planned and executed alliance has the potential to improve
the corporations image as a good citizen and increase the non-profits financial support. For example, Calphalon, a maker of gourmet
cookware, aligns itself with the antihunger organization Share Our
Strength (SOS). Consumers react positively to this alliance by rewarding Calphalon with increased sales and SOS receives millions of dollars to help feed the hungry (Lorge 1998).
Carefully researched, structured, and implemented cause marketing
alliances have the potential to allow non-profits to benefit by increasing awareness and support for the entire movement. According to
Stafford and Hartman (1996), when a popular corporate icon publicly
supports a social issue, its suppliers, customers, and competitors are
likely to follow. For example, shortly after the announcement of the
Starkist-Dolphin Coalition agreement, Bumble Bee and Chicken of
the Sea announced that they would also honor the fishing restriction.
It is imperative that non-profits identify key factors motivating the
publics behavior in successful cause marketing strategies. For a campaign to be successful, key constituents must have an affinity for the
cause (Drumwright 1996). Companies considering the sponsorship of
a social or environmental issue should select the cause only after
examining customer priorities and attitudes. For example, US consumers prefer local causes to national ones (Drumwright 1996; Lorge
1998). Too direct of an association, and the company sponsor may be
seen as having an ulterior motive (e.g., between an athletic equipment
manufacturer and its promotion of physical fitness).
For the non-profits, the major goals of these marketing alliances are
to increase awareness, educate, and gain support for a cause. The
value of a corporate sponsors overall positive image is seen in its
potential for assistance in these areas. Reputation is one facet of a
companys overall image. A corporate sponsor with a good overall

Linda I. Nowak and Judith H. Washburn

35

reputation owns valuable assets such as goodwill, customer loyalty

(Herbig, Milewicz, and Golden 1994), and increased advertising credibility (Goldberg and Hartwick 1990). Through public association,
this positive corporate image may potentially be transferred to the
cause.
The purpose of this research is to examine to what extent corporate
and non-profit alliances can impact the publics perceptions and intentions to support a cause. In other words, what happens if a corporation
which possesses a strong reputation aligns itself with an important but
not so popular cause? Will this increase the popularity of the social
issue? What happens when a company with a weak reputation associates itself with a highly visible and very popular cause? Does this hurt
the publics trust and support for the cause?
BACKGROUND
Trust
Trust affects relationships with volunteers, employees, donors, clients, and the general public. The topic has received much attention in
several areas of the marketing literature, including buyer-seller bargaining relationships (Dwyer, Schurr, and Oh 1987; Schurr and
Ozanne 1985), commitment formation (Achrol 1991; Morgan and
Hunt 1994), services marketing (Berry and Parasuraman 1991), and
intraorganizational relationships (Moorman, Zaltman, and Deshpande
1992).
Trust is a component of overall image; an important aspect of any
organizations reputation. Trust affects the publics intentions to support an environmental or social issue (Osterhus 1997). According to
Osterhus (1997), trust in the marketing source, in this case both the
non-profit and the corporate sponsor, interacts with consumer responsibility attributions and personal norms to influence consumer choice
behavior.
Consumers may become skeptical of pro-social claims when advertising and source credibility are questioned (Thorson, Page, and
Moore 1995). For example, business and industry, usually because of
their conflicts of interest, are considered the least believable sources of
information on environmental issues (Ottman 1992; Stisser 1994). In
fact, some corporations have chosen to keep a low profile regarding

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their pro-social or environmental programs because they do not want

to be perceived as abusers of cause-exploitative marketing (Garrett
1987).
Behavioral Intentions, Personal Norms, and Responsibility
Social and personal norms have an important influence on preference (Fishbein and Azjen 1975; Miniard and Cohen 1983). Social and
personal norms have been specifically addressed in Schwartzs (1977)
model of altruistic behavior and has been applied successfully to market helping behavior (Price, Feick, and Guskey 1995). When a social
norm becomes internalized, it becomes a personal norm. In the case of
social responsibility, a personal norm could be characterized by notions of I feel I should do something to help future generations.
Osterhus (1997) found that an important moderator of personal
norms, attributions of consumer responsibility, must be activated for
pro-social positioning strategies to be effective. An attribution of personal responsibility could be I am responsible, in part, to contributing to this problem. High responsibility attributions increase the
chance that personal norms will influence behavior and low responsibility attributions decrease the translation of personal norms into behavior.
Societal Consequences
The translation of personal norms into behavior is strengthened
through an awareness of the consequences of action or inaction regarding the behavior (Osterhus 1997). Consumers targeted with prosocial marketing strategies may feel that the costs of changing their
consumption behaviors exceed the benefits either to themselves or to
society as a whole (Rangan, Karim, and Sandberg 1996). Consumers
are sophisticated enough to realize that benefits accrue for a social
cause when a large segment of the population supports it through their
behaviors. A study conducted by Roberts (1996), indicated that perceived consumer effectiveness (the ability of individual consumers to
affect environmental resource problems) explained 33% of the variation in ecologically conscious consumer behavior. Consumers perceive more benefit to the cause when corporate donations are larger
(Dahl and Lavak 1995).

Linda I. Nowak and Judith H. Washburn

37

Cause Affinity
Affinity for a cause increases the probability of a successful campaign (Drumwright 1996). In a Cone/Roper study on cause marketing,
78% of the adults surveyed said they would be more likely to buy a
product associated with a cause that they cared about (Carringer
1994). Consumers appear to prefer local causes to national ones
(Lorge 1998; Ross, Stutts, and Patterson 1991; Smith and Alcorn
1991), disaster relief or curing diseases (Ross, Stutts, and Patterson
1991), and issues that involve kids and the environment (Lorge 1998).
Associations
Most research on cause marketing alliances has related to the potential benefits for corporate sponsors or specific brands associated with a
popular cause. Shimp, Stuart, and Engle (1991) noted that associative
learning is the mechanism that generates consumer thoughts and feelings towards brands. Grossman (1997) established a connection between associative learning concepts and co-branding. Brown and Dacin (1997) found that corporate social responsibility associations (e.g.,
corporate giving and community involvement) influence the overall
evaluation of the company, which in turn can affect how consumers
evaluate products from the company.
Associative learning has been described as the way that consumers
learn about the relationships among events in the environment (Shimp,
Stuart and Engle 1991) that is brought about through the linkage or
fusion of two concepts (Murdock 1985). These linkages can be established via classical or operant conditioning, two well known associative learning concepts. Aaker (1991) established that brand associations are anything linked in memory to a brand, and that brands with a
high number of positive associations have high levels of brand equity.
He also cautioned that ill-conceived pairings can potentially damage a
positive image.
Classical conditioning is frequently studied as a mechanism to establish favorable consumer attitudes towards advertising. Through
advertising, a consumer learns of an association between a conditioned stimulus (such as a brand), and an unconditioned stimulus
(celebrity endorser or music). The conditioned stimulus can later elicit
a conditioned response (consumer likes the brand) that may be similar

JOURNAL OF NONPROFIT & PUBLIC SECTOR MARKETING

38

to the unconditioned response (consumer likes the celebrity) (e.g.,

Shimp, Stuart and Engle 1991).
As indicated in the preceding discussion, there appears to be a
relationship between the consumers:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.

trust in the marketing source,

evaluations of the importance of the cause,
feelings of responsibility to help,
ability to make a difference (consequences), and
behavioral intentions toward the cause.

The premise being explored in this study is that associative learning

can be used in cause marketing to negatively or positively affect these
five dimensions through the appropriate or inappropriate selection of a
corporate sponsor. On the basis of this reasoning, the following hypotheses are proposed:
H1: A high affinity cause adopting a corporate sponsor with a
strong reputation will receive larger improvements in consumer: trust in the non-profit, evaluations of the importance of the
cause, feelings of responsibility to help, feelings of ability to
make a difference, and behavioral intentions than it will if
adopting a corporate sponsor with a weak reputation.
H2: A low affinity cause adopting a corporate sponsor with a
strong reputation will receive larger improvements in consumer: trust in the non-profit, evaluations of the importance of the
cause, feelings of responsibility to help, feelings of ability to
make a difference, and behavioral intentions than it will if
adopting a corporate sponsor with a weak reputation.
METHODOLOGY
The hypotheses were tested using before-after experimental design.
A convenience sample of 240 business students was recruited for the
study. The 240 students were divided into eight sets of 30 each. Each
group was matched by age, gender, business concentration, ethnicity,
and grade point average.
The study included a pre-test, which measured perceptions of product quality, trust in the company, and consumer behavioral intentions

Linda I. Nowak and Judith H. Washburn

39

for four national pizza brands. The pre-test also measured cause importance, feelings of responsibility, trust in the non-profit, behavioral
intentions towards the cause, and feelings of ability to make a difference (societal consequences) for four non-profit organizations (see
Table 1). The pizza brand with the strongest ratings in quality, trust,
and consumer behavioral intentions and the brand with the weakest
ratings in these three areas were selected for use in the next phase of
the research. The non-profit organizations with the highest and lowest
TABLE 1. Scale Items
Changes Measured in Pre and PostTests Relating to the Cause:
Trust in the NonProfit
I trust this nonprofit organization to do all that it can to support this cause.
I trust the people managing this nonprofit organization.
Behavioral Intentions
I will donate time/money to this cause within the next year.
I tell friends to donate time/money to this cause.
Importance of Cause
This cause is important to future generations.
This cause is important to society.
Feelings of Responsibility Towards the Cause
I feel a personal responsibility to support this cause.
It is my personal responsibility to help this cause.
Societal Consequences
Supporting this cause will make a difference.
Supporting this cause will save more lives.
Measured in PreTest to Select Companies with Strong and Weak Reputations:
Trust in the Company
I trust this company to do what it says it will do.
I trust this company to act in the best interest of society.
Behavioral Intentions Towards the Brand
I will buy this company's products within the next month.
I tell friends to buy this company's products.
Product Quality
This company makes a quality product.
This company stands behind its products.

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importance ratings and behavioral intentions were selected as the high

and low affinity causes.
Once the two brands with strong and weak reputations and the two
non-profits with high and low affinity ratings were selected, four short
scenarios using all possible combinations were developed describing
corporate sponsorship. For example:
Effective July 4, Little Caesars Pizza will be the official corporate sponsor of the Muscular Dystrophy Foundation. They will
be donating $1.00 for each large pizza sold between now and the
end of 1998. This is only the first of several campaigns they have
planned to raise awareness and generate money for this very
important cause.
One month after the pre-test, the post-test was administered. Before
the post-test each of the four experimental groups was asked to read
one type of press release: strong reputation sponsor with high affinity
cause, strong reputation sponsor with low affinity cause, weak reputation sponsor with high-affinity cause, or weak reputation sponsor with
low-affinity cause. They were then asked to evaluate the high and low
affinity causes on the five dimensions listed in Table 2. The four
control groups received no press releases but were asked to evaluate
one of the two non-profits on the same five dimensions.
TABLE 2. Respondent Ratings for Non-Profits Before and After Announcements of Corporate Sponsorships
Cause Affinity
Company Reputation
Trust
Intentions
Importance
Responsibility
Consequences

Strong

High

Weak

High

Strong

Pre

Post

Pre

Post

Pre

3.6
3.4
4.3
3.6
4.3

3.8
3.4
4.4
3.6
4.3

3.9
3.3
4.5
3.3
4.3

4.1
3.3
4.5
3.5
4.3

3.4
2.3
4.1
3.0
3.9

Low
Post
3.7*
2.6**
4.3**
3.4*
4.2**

Weak

Low

Pre

Post

3.5
1.8
4.0
2.8
3.9

3.5
2.0
4.1
2.6
3.9

Note: Control group changes between pre and post surveys were not significant in any category.
Based on 5point scale, 1 ``strongly disagree,'' 5 ``strongly agree.''
** p < .05
* p < .10

Linda I. Nowak and Judith H. Washburn

41

In both the pre-test and post-test participants were asked to respond

to questions using a 5-point Likert scale with 1 indicating strongly
disagree and 5 indicating strongly agree. The measures developed
for trust, behavioral intentions, attributions of personal responsibility,
societal consequences, and cause importance closely follow measures
used in the literature (Osterhus 1997; Schwartz 1977; Smith and Cooper-Martin 1997). Items used for measuring each dimension are described in Table 1. Reliability of the measurements was determined
using Cronbachs coefficient alpha. Each dimension was measured
with two items and had a coefficient alpha of at least .8000, indicating
acceptable reliability.
RESULTS
Hypotheses 1 and 2 were tested using paired sample t-tests in order
to look for any significant changes occurring for each dimension between the pre- and post-tests (see Table 2). Hypothesis 1 could not be
supported. Contrary to expectations, there were not larger increases in
trust for the non-profit, intentions to support the cause, cause importance ratings, feelings of responsibility, or feelings of ability to make a
difference for society (consequences) if a high affinity cause aligned
itself with the company with the strongest reputation.
H2 was supported. A low affinity cause adopting a corporate sponsor with a strong reputation received larger improvements in the publics evaluations of its societal importance, ability to make a difference, feelings of responsibility, trust in the non-profit, and intentions
to support the cause than it would if adopting a corporate sponsor with
a weak reputation.
DISCUSSION
The results of the study indicate that a high affinity cause, one
which the public already intends to support either with volunteerism
or money, does not appear to benefit significantly from forming a
public alliance with a corporate sponsor, whether the sponsor has a
strong or weak reputation.
In contrast, a low affinity cause may have more to gain or lose
through its affiliations with strong or weak corporate sponsors. More

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specifically, the publics attitudes and intentions to support a low

affinity cause appear to be significantly increased by association with
a sponsor with a strong reputation and are not significantly effected by
sponsorship from a company with a weak reputation. Trust for the
non-profit organization, intentions to support through volunteerism or
donations, perceptions of importance to society, feelings of responsibility to help, and feelings that personal support can make an overall
difference for society, were all significantly increased through associations with a strong corporate sponsor. These results suggest that notso-popular causes should pick their corporate sponsors wisely.
This study can only be considered exploratory in nature and should
not be the sole basis for a non-profits cause marketing strategy until.
This research was conducted at a west coast public university. The
sample was predominantly caucasian business students in their early
twenties. To be generalizable this research should be replicated with
larger sample sizes, employing different ethnic, income, and age
groups from various regions of the country.
It would also be valuable to examine the implications for corporate
sponsors adopting popular and not-so-popular causes. Is it an unacceptable risk for a company to support, perhaps out of conscience, a
cause that has important implications for society but is not a popular
environmental or social issue?
CONCLUSION
A successful cause marketing strategy will be predicated on an
increased understanding of what motivates the behavior of the socially
conscious consumer. It appears as though low affinity causes may
benefit the most from carefully selected corporate alliances. A cause
which is not a priority in the minds of the public could increase its
credibility and public support through a carefully orchestrated alliance
with a strong corporate sponsor.
Before forming a cause marketing alliance, careful research should
be conducted by the non-profit organization. It is important to ascertain the publics attitudes and perceptions about the non-profits cause.
It is also important to research any potential corporate sponsors. A
non-profit should look for corporate sponsors whom the public trusts
and respects so that the publics perceptions about the corporate sponsor will carry over in a halo effect toward the non-profit.

Linda I. Nowak and Judith H. Washburn

43

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