Study on The Effect of Cause-Related Marketing Perception on

Customers' Out-of-Role Behavior Based on A Moderated Mediation

Model

Qing Zhou

School of Economics and Management, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, China

Keywords: Cause-Related Marketing Perception, Customers’ Out-of-Role Behavior, Brand Trust, Moral Identity.

Abstract:

Cause-related marketing, as a new marketing method, has attracted wide attention of scholars. A total of 156

Chinese adults were recruited in this study, and multiple regression equations were used to test the model.

Results suggested that cause-related marketing perception were related to customers’ out-of-role behavior.

Results also supported the mediating role of brand trust and the moderating role of moral identity. This study

reveals the significance of cause-related marketing for corporate.

1 INTRODUCTION

Cause-related marketing refers to the process in

which enterprises donate a certain amount of their

product sales revenue to specific nonprofit

organizations and use it to support related public

welfare undertakings. (Wang, 2019) Cause-related

marketing, as a type of corporate social responsibility,

has been widely concerned by the academic

community and the Chinese business community.

The customer's out-of-role behavior refers to the

enhancement behavior that is positive and beneficial

to the organization's role, and the behavior that is not

within the scope of responsibility but outside the

scope of work that is conducive to the development

of the organization, but it has a significant positive

impact on the organization. Customers’ out-of-role

behavior is of great significance to enterprises.

Previous studies (Zhao, 2007) have shown that

consumers, as the main body of modern marketing

concepts, influence how enterprises implement

cause-cause marketing and its effect. However, there

are few studies on how cause-related marketing

perception affects consumer behavior, especially

customer's out-of-role behavior. Therefore, we study

the relationship between enterprises’ perception of

good cause marketing and customers’ out-of-role

behavior, and clarify the relationship between the

two.

2 HYPOTHESIS

2.1 Cause-Related Marketing

Perception and Customers'

Out-of-Role Behavior

In the practice of cause-cause marketing, enterprises

can choose to donate a specific amount or a certain

proportion of their product sales revenue to public

welfare undertakings. Cause marketing in the form of

a percentage donation produces better results than in

the absolute form, because the abstract amount of

giving leads consumers to overestimate the level of

corporate giving. This study speculates that cause-

cause marketing can lead to a series of positive out-of-

role behaviors of customers.

Hypothesis 1: Cause-related marketing perception

has a significant positive impact on customers' out-of-

role behaviors.

2.2 Mediating Role of Brand Trust

Brand trust reveals consumers' evaluation of the

products provided by the enterprise. It is believed that

customers' trust in brands and enterprises promotes the

formation of value perception. Another view holds

that the higher consumers' perception of brand value,

the higher their trust in the brand will be. Brand trust

reflects a kind of reliability, which means that a brand

should have enough strength to influence consumer

demand. When analyzing the influence of customer's

Zhou, Q.

Study on The Effect of Cause-Related Marketing Perception on Customers’ Out-of-Role Behavior Based on A Moderated Mediation Model.

DOI: 10.5220/0011734200003607

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Public Management, Digital Economy and Internet Technology (ICPDI 2022), pages 251-256

ISBN: 978-989-758-620-0

 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

251

perception of cause marketing on customer's out-of-

role behavior, taking brand trust as a mediating

variable can help us reveal the influence of cause

marketing on customer's out-of-role behavior more

accurately.

Hypothesis 2: Brand trust plays a mediating role

between cause-related marketing perception and

customer's out-of-role behavior.

2.3 The Moderating Effect of Moral

Identity

Moral identity refers to customers' perception of the

relationship between an enterprise and the public

welfare it supports in cause-cause marketing. Moral

identity is through a series of individual moral

qualities associated with moral behavior combining

self-concept, and under the constant collaboration

between social norms, and own a stable moral

qualities, its essence is a kind of self adjusting

mechanism, request individual behavior consistent

with the social moral quality, thus enabling individual

prosocial behavior. According to social cognitive

theory, moral identity is a key psychological

mechanism for transforming moral cognition into

moral behavior, which is activated by external

situational factors. Individuals with different moral

identities will have different degrees of activation,

which will affect other psychological factors of

individuals and show different individual behavioral

intentions. In conclusion, we predict that moral

identity positively moderates the relationship between

customer perception of cause-related marketing and

brand trust, and further influences customer's out-of-

role behavior through the mediating role of brand

trust.

Hypothesis 3: Moral identity plays a moderating

role between Cause-related marketing perception and

brand trust. The higher the moral identity is, the higher

the level of brand trust will be triggered by the

perceived cause-related marketing, which will have a

positive impact on the customers’ out-of-role

behavior.

Figure 1:Research Model.

3 METHOD

3.1 Participants

Based on the form of online questionnaires, 156

questionnaires were collected, and 140 valid

questionnaires were left after eliminating invalid

samples with many missing values and obvious

regularity, with an effective rate of 89.74%.

According to the characteristics of the sample, males

accounted for 28.6%, and the sample age was

concentrated between 18 and 29 years old, accounting

for 87.1%. In terms of education level, only 0.7% had

a junior high school degree or below, 2.9% had a

senior high school degree, 3.6% had a junior college

degree, 4.3% had a graduate degree or above, and

88.6% had a undergraduate degree. In terms of

monthly consumption expenditure, the proportion of

less than 1000 yuan is 8.6%, the proportion of 1000-

2000 yuan is 57.9%, the proportion of 2000-3000

yuan is 15.7%, the proportion of 3000-4000 yuan is

5.7%, and the proportion of above 4000 yuan is

12.1%.

3.2 Measures

The measurement of cause-related marketing

perception is measured by the scale developed in this

study, which is divided into two dimensions, namely,

self-interested perception and altruistic perception.

Each dimension has three items, and the total score is

obtained by the reverse scoring of self-interested

motivation and the average of altruistic motivation.

On a five-point Likert scale, "1" means "strongly

disagree" and "5" means "strongly agree." For the

self-interested subscale, items such as "I think the

enterprise carries out this activity solely for the

purpose of enhancing its brand image", and for the

altruistic subscale, items such as "I think the

enterprise carries out this activity for the sincere

purpose of promoting the development of social

public welfare undertakings". In this study, the

internal consistency coefficients of the egoistic and

altruistic subscales were 0.824 and 0.872,

respectively.

Brand trust is measured directly by the phrase

"more trust in the brand". The 5-point Likert scoring

method was used.

Customer's out-of-role behavior scale (Lv, 2012)

compiled by Lv Ying and Wei Haiying is used to

measure the customer's out-of-role behavior, which

contains 14 questions and is divided into three

dimensions: "customer voice behavior", "customer

recommendation" and "customer help". Items on the

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customer behavior subscale are as follows: "I will

remind relevant personnel of some inappropriate

things in the store, such as out of stock"; items on the

customer recommendation subscale are as follows: "I

will recommend the store to my relatives and

friends"; and items on customer help are as follows:

"I will help customers in difficulty". In this study, the

internal consistency coefficients of the three

subscales were 0.858, 0.780 and 0.880, respectively,

indicating that the internal consistency of the

measurement tool was high.

The measurement of moral identity was adjusted

on the existing moral identity scale and reduced to 5

items. Some qualities is listed, items such as “it is

important to me to have these qualities”. The

reliability analysis shows that the internal consistency

coefficient of moral identity is 0.725, and the

reliability is good.

3.3 Data Collection and Processing

Data was collected online. The study followed the

principle of informed consent, and the concept and

explanation of "cause-related marketing" were given

at the top of the questionnaire. In this paper, SPSS

software was used to analyze the data characteristics,

multiple regression analysis method was used to

verify the relationship between variables proposed by

the hypothesis.

4 RESULTS

4.1 Common Method Deviation Test

The results may be affected by the common method

bias because the study variables were all self-reported

and filled out in a fixed period of time. Harman single

factor test is used to judge the common method bias

problem. The variance interpretation percentage of

the first common factor is 39.91%, less than 40%,

which can be considered that there is no serious

common method bias.

4.2 Correlation Analysis

The table shows the mean (M), standard deviation

(SD) and correlation coefficient of each variable.

According to the results in the table, cause-related

marketing perception is significantly positively

correlated with brand trust (r=0.262, p <0.01), but has

no significant correlation with customer voice (R

=0.125, p >0.05), while customer recommendation

and customer help are significantly positively

correlated (R =0.206, p <0.05; R =0.232, p <0.01);

Brand trust was positively correlated with customer

voice behavior, customer recommendation and

customer help (r=0.498, p <0.01; R = 0.602, p < 0.01;

R =0.596, p <0.01).

4.3 Hierarchical Regression Analysis

In this paper, hierarchical regression model is used to

test assumptions. Firstly, the mediating role of brand

trust is tested. M2 and M5 shows that cause-related

marketing perception had a significant impact on

brand trust (β=0.204, p <0.05) and customer voice

(β=0.137, p <0.05), while M6 showed that after brand

trust was included in M6, cause-related marketing

perception had a small impact on customer voice (β=-

0.0001, p >0.05), and the influence of brand trust on

customer voice was particularly significant (β=0.484,

p <0.01). Therefore, brand trust plays a full mediating

role between cause-related marketing perception and

customer voice. In addition, with the Bootstrap,

consistent results were obtained (95% confidence

interval [0.095, 0.401] of the mediating effect did not

include 0). Similarly, brand trust plays a full

Table 1: Mean, Standard Deviation and Correlation Coefficient of Variables.

Study on The Effect of Cause-Related Marketing Perception on Customers’ Out-of-Role Behavior Based on A Moderated Mediation Model

253

Table 2: Results of Regression Analysis 1.

Table 3: Results of Mediating Effect Analysis 1.

Table 4: Results of Regression Analysis 2.

mediating role between cause-related marketing

perception and customer recommendation, customer

help.

Secondly, the moderating effect of moral identity

is examined. As shown in Table 2, the product

coefficient (β=0.25, p <0.05) of cause-related

marketing perception and moral identity in M3 was

significant. In addition, as shown in Table 8, the

moderating effect was significant at both high and

low levels of moral identity (95% confidence interval

excluding 0).

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Table 5: Results of Mediating Effect Analysis 2.

Table 6: Results of Regression Analysis 3.

Table 7: Results of Mediating Effect Analysis 3.

Table 8: Results of Regulatory Effect Analysis.

5 CONCLUSION AND

DISCUSSION

Based on the above data analysis, we find that cause-

related marketing perception can fully mediate the

role of brand trust in influencing customers' out-of-

role behaviors. Meanwhile, the impact of cause-

related marketing perception on brand trust is

moderated by customers' moral identity. In other

words, Moral identity moderates the first half of the

path of "cause-related marketing perception - brand

trust - customer's out-of-role behavior". Our

hypothesis test was validated.

5.1 Theoretical Significance

Cause-related marketing perception has a significant

positive impact on customers' out-of-role behaviors

through brand trust. As a new marketing method, the

Study on The Effect of Cause-Related Marketing Perception on Customers’ Out-of-Role Behavior Based on A Moderated Mediation Model

255

relationship between corporate cause-induced

marketing perception and customers' out-of-role

behaviors has not been paid much attention by

scholars. This study responds to the call to strengthen

the research on cause-related marketing perception

and customers' out-of-role behavior in the future.

5.2 Practical Significance

Study found that cause-related marketing perception

has a positive effect on customers’ out-of-role

behavior, so the enterprise should pay attention to

launch the marketing of the good karma, cooperate

with public welfare institutions to take more social

responsibility. It will not only improve the customers’

perception of enterprise, enhance the customers’ trust

and loyalty, it will also encourage the growth of

customers’ out-of role behavior, including customer

help to create a good marketing environment for

enterprises, customer voice for enterprises to provide

more constructive suggestions, customer

recommendation for enterprises to bring more

customers and thus bring higher profits. By revealing

the positive impact of cause-related marketing

perception on brand trust and customers’ out-of-role

behavior, this paper calls on enterprises to carry out

cause-related marketing, encourage more enterprises

to take social responsibility, and realize the

coordination and consistency of corporate goals and

social goals.

5.3 Limitations

Firstly, the number of questionnaires collected in this

study is small, the results are prone to deviation, and

the data is not representative. More samples can be

collected in future studies to continue to verify the

correctness of the conclusions in this paper. Secondly,

the research method adopted in this survey is

questionnaire, and the source of the survey design is

all self-assessment results, and it has strong relevance

to the context of the questionnaire items, which is

highly subjective. In addition, all the data are self-

reported and collected at the same time. Therefore,

common method differences may be a problem, and

causal inference is not guaranteed. In order to avoid

common method bias, future research should

consider using other people's data (e.g., family and

friends' evaluation of their customers' external

behavior, i.e. whether or not they recommend

companies that implement cause-cause marketing to

them) as external validation, rather than relying solely

on the sample's own self-assessment.

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