The study finds placing informational message first generates increased brand attitude for female consumers, while males prefer informational message placed last. High construal level leads to increased brand attitude for both males and females, low construal level consumers do not differ significantly in brand attitude across information order or gender.

Cause-related marketing is a pervasive, global marketing tactic, and the practice grew by 18.5 percent between 2011 to 2016 (IEG 2017). While considerable academic research has been directed to understanding this practice and its impact on consumers, one aspect has received little attention. Almost nothing is known about the impact on consumer perceptions when a firm withdraws from a partnership. Firms withdraw their support of a charity for many reasons (i.e., the charity no longer resonates with major stakeholders, the sponsorship fails to produce the projected results for the charity or the firm, or the firm faces financial constraints). We conducted three on-line experiments with samples of North American adult consumers to address this knowledge gap. We examined the impact of three types of withdrawal on consumer perceptions: withdrawal from a partnership, replacement of one non-profit partner with another partner, withdrawal from a partnership and a price decrease offered based on the savings resulting from terminating the sponsorship. Given that the extant research established that the alignment of the cause with the core business of the firm is an important factor in the success of CRM strategies, we manipulated this variable along with the various withdrawal scenarios. Our findings reveal that consumers view a divorce negatively despite actions taken by firms to offset consumers’ negative views.

Negative publicity is widespread in the current marketplace, and may be of different forms ranging from sourcing garment products from sweatshops to recent Volkswagen emission crisis. Negative publicity may cause weak customer satisfaction, drop in sales, increased vulnerability to competitors’ marketing mix actions, and spill over effects on other brands (Pullig, Netemeyer, & Biswas, 2006; Van Heerde, Helsen, & Dekimpe, 2007). Existing research has focused on different response strategies for dealing with such crises. For example, Coombs (1995) listed five alternative strategies available to handle such a crisis situation: denial, distance, ingratiation, mortification, and suffering. Xi and Peng (2009) examined the effectiveness of affective, functional and informational repair strategies in restoring consumer trust after a negative publicity. However, no prior research thus far explored the role of cause related marketing in dealing with a negative publicity.

This study explores the role of corporate involvement and brand perception in moderating the Cause Related Marketing on consumer purchase intention in the luxury product category among Japanese consumers. This research examines three core cause attributes - cause scope, cause type and cause acuteness developed by Vanhamme, Lindgree, Reast and van Popering (2012) as well as an additional component of duration – with corporate involvement and brand perception moderating the effect on purchase intention. The general public places judgment on a corporation based on how much of positive or negative impacts its business has on environment or society (Sheikh & Beise-Zee, 2011). In fact, more corporations have been developing corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs, no matter how big their business sizes, big or small, are (Brinkvan, Odekerken-Schroder, & Pauwels, 2006). The general public loses its faith in corporations, especially after a financial crisis or malfeasances of big corporations and as a result, corporations are under stronger pressure to contribute to environmental or societal causes in order to reclaim lost faith from the general public (Sheikh & Beise-Zee, 2011; Berglind & Nakata, 2005). One way corporations contribute to society has been to employ marketing strategies that link product sales to the support of specific charities to create and maintain favorable brand images known as cause related marketing or CRM. CRM has been growing faster as a type of marketing that allow corporations to contribute to environment or society (Brinkvan et al., 2006). Various factors have been extensively researched on and identified as pertinent in the success of cause-related marketing campaigns such as brand-cause fit (Bigne-Alcanniz, Currase-Perez, Ruiz-Mafe and Sanz-Blas, 2011; Nan and Heo, 2007; Samu and Wymer, 2009), donation size (Dahl and Labvack, 1995; Pracejus, Olsen and Brown, 2003), types of causes (local causes are preferred to national ones) (Ellen, Mohr, and Webb, 1996; Smith and Alcorn, 1991) and product type with luxury products found to be more effective (Strahilevitz and Myers, 1995).

In the fashion industry, designers and researchers have proposed various sustainable fashion products (i.e., sustainability in product development), and retailers have also created many sustainable business practices (i.e., sustainability in distribution). However, according to the previous researches, even though the industry have offered a variety of sustainable designs and retail offers, consumers did not show a positive purchase behavior on the sustainable products. Currently, the gap exists between industry offers for sustainability and consumers’ expectation/acceptance of those offers. This result supports that there are other aspects than environmental protection aspect of the sustainable fashion products that need to be improved and/or be emphasized on to make consumers feel confident in purchasing. To examine consumers’ purchase behavior changes on sustainable fashion products, this study will measure consumers’ equity of sustainability on existing sustainable fashion products with three criteria of sustainable designs proposed by Day and Townsend (1993), which are socially equitable, economically viable, and environmentally benign. Then, consumers’ purchase intention for sustainable fashion products will be measured. The result will show the sustainable fashion product types that currently satisfy consumers so that the industry can concentrate on and develop the types further. In addition, this study will explore the impact of well-known brand names and cause-related marketing whether they would improve consumers’ purchase intention towards sustainable fashion products. No research has studied these two variables for sustainable fashion products as well as the equity of sustainability. Finally, different benefit sought groups will be tested whether they show different acceptance/preference and impact of brand names and cause-related marketing on the sustainable fashion products so that companies can set the appropriate strategies based on their target market’s benefit sought. PROPOSED MODEL AND HYPOTHESES Based on previous researches, the authors propose a new model shown in the figure 1, and the hypotheses are developed based on the model. H1. Significant differences in equity of sustainability, purchase intention before and after cause-related marketing and the relationships in the model. H1-1. Consumers will differently evaluate equity of sustainability of each sustainable fashion product type. H1-2. Consumers will have different purchase intention on each sustainable fashion product type. H1-3. Consumers will have different purchase intention on each sustainable fashion product type after cause-related marketing. H1-4. Equity of sustainability will significantly influence on purchase intention in all sustainable fashion product types. H1-5. Cause-related marketing will significantly improve purchase intention in all sustainable fashion product types. H2. Significantly different results in H1 between benefit sought groups. H2-1. Benefit sought groups will have significantly different equity of sustainability on all sustainable fashion product types. H2-2. Benefit sought groups will have significantly different purchase intention on all sustainable fashion product types. H2-3. Benefit sought groups will have significantly different purchase intention on all sustainable fashion product types after cause-related marketing. H2-4. Benefit sought groups will show a different relationship between equity of sustainability and purchase intention in all sustainable fashion product types. H2-5. Benefit sought groups will show a different influence of cause-related marketing on purchase intention in all sustainable fashion product types. H3. Significantly different results in H1 after adding well-known brand names on sustainable fashion product types. H3-1. Equity of sustainability will be significantly different for all sustainable fashion product types after adding well-known brand names. H3-2. Purchase intention will be significantly different for all sustainable fashion product types after adding well-known brand names. H3-3. Purchase intention after cause-related marketing will be significantly different for all sustainable fashion product types after adding well-known brand names. H3-4. The relationship between equity of sustainability and purchase intention will be different after adding well-known brand names in all sustainable fashion product types. H3-5. The influence of cause-related marketing on purchase intention will be different after adding well-known brand names in all sustainable fashion product types. H4. Different results from H2 after adding well-known brand names. H4-1. The significant difference of equity of sustainability between benefit sought groups will be different after adding well-known brand names in all sustainable fashion product types. H4-2. The significant difference of purchase intention between benefit sought groups will be different after adding well-known brand names in all sustainable fashion product types. H4-3. The significant difference of purchase intention after cause-related marketing between benefit sought groups will be different after adding well-known brand names in all sustainable fashion product types. H4-4. After adding well-known brand names, the result of the relationship between equity of sustainability and purchase intention in each benefit group will be different in all sustainable fashion product types. H4-5. After adding well-known brand names, the result of the relationship between cause-related marketing and purchase intention in each benefit sought group will be different in all sustainable fashion product types. RESEARCH METHOD A simple black dress which is the product silhouette consistently shown through all sustainable fashion product types and relatively low involved when purchasing was selected to minimize the cognitive effort to process/judge the product attributes (Tucker, Rifon, Lee & Reece, 2012). The equity of sustainability is determined as an average score of economic viability, social equity, and environmental responsibility of each sustainable fashion product type. Benefit segments most commonly studied in the previous researches are selected for this study which are price-conscious, fashion-conscious, brand-conscious, convenience-conscious, quality-conscious, self-express, and self-confidence groups. Brand name is a moderator variable to test the brand name effect on participants’ response. Two different versions of questionnaires were distributed. One version shows brand names on the product types, which are selected as reliable brand names from a pretest in terms of quality and credibility, and the other version does not show any brand names on the product types. The reliable brand names are luxury brands such as Ralph Lauren rather than middle to low-priced brands. Both versions include the question for purchase intention before and after cause-related marketing (e.g., “If 10% of this sales is donated to a non-profit organization to preserve our environment, I would buy this item.”). Only female consumers are allowed to participate in the survey because the stimuli are dresses. Surveys were distributed by a commercial survey data collection company. Total 399 surveys were usable (non-brand version, n=190; brand name version, n= 209). The majority of participants are between 25 to 44 years old (22-34 years 49.1%, 35-44 years 16.8%) and has a college degree (college degree 52.6%, graduate school degree 25.8%). RESULTS & CONCLUSIONS From the data analysis (see table 1), non-brand companies would have a benefit by offering transformable products in which consumers feel more value than other sustainable fashion product types. When showing luxury brand names, participants evaluated upcycling products as the highest equity of sustainability and purchase intention after cause-related marketing. The zero waste luxury brand product received the highest purchase intention before cause-related marketing and also received a significantly higher equity of sustainability than the non-brand zero waste product. Therefore, it is recommended for luxury brands to show their sustainability practice on the product through labels, especially showing a zero waste production label. The result in all sustainable fashion product types regardless of brand names showed that the higher sustainability, the higher purchase intention. Thus, again, it is important for companies to educate their sustainability practices (e.g., economic, social and environmental values) to consumers through either promotions or labels on the products. For both non-brand and luxury brand products, promoting a donation or support for community/society (i.e., cause-related marketing) on the product would influence consumers' purchase decision when selling the upcycling, recycling and promotion on fashion products. For example, companies could create/include a symbol of their cause-related marketing or include a symbol of a non-profit organization on the sustainable fashion products. Considering different benefit sought groups, the high fashion involved group scored the variables higher in most sustainable fashion product types in the model than the low fashion involved group did. When companies plan to offer sustainable fashion products, they need to target the high fashion involved group for a better sales outcome. Even though participants perceived that the upcycled product was highly sustainable, they purchased different product types. The high fashion involved group highly intended to purchase the transformable product in the non-brand product types and the animal-free product in luxury brand product types in both before and after cause-related marketing. Luxury brands are the ones typically consume most real animal furs and skins, and this might influenced the participants’ purchase intention. The low fashion involved group were willing to purchase the product with organic materials in both non-brand and luxury brands, but cause-related marketing increased the purchase intention on the most of product types. Companies targeting a low fashion conscious group are suggested developing/promoting organic fashion products and actively promote their community/society involvement. Regardless of benefit sought groups, higher equity of sustainability generated higher purchase intention. Again, companies need to inform/promote their sustainability practices to consumers through products or media to improve sales. The impact of cause-related marketing on the purchase intention was significant for the low fashion involved group in the upcycling, recycling, promotion on the product, zero waste and transformable products regardless of brand names. Therefore, when companies cannot appeal consumers with their brand names, the cause-related marketing plays an important role. The low fashion involved consumers seem to consider the after-purchase impact on the society than product itself when purchasing sustainable fashion products. The cause-related marketing had less impact for the high fashion involved group on their purchase intention than the low fashion involved group; however, the purchase intention of non-brand upcycling and the upcycling, recycling and promotion on the product for luxury brands have significantly improved after cause-related marketing. Companies, especially luxury brand names, need to include cause-related marketing when selling those product targeting the high fashion involved group.

As cause-related marketing (CRM) is becoming an increasingly integral part of corporate social responsibility activities and promotion plans, many researchers have studied what determines the effectiveness of cause-related marketing activities. One of the factors past research paid much attention to in this regard is the fit between the brand and cause. Previous studies have demonstrated that a high brand-cause fit generally improves consumer attitude toward company, increases purchase intent and brand loyalty. However, few recent studies show that a high brand-cause fit may backfire in some circumstances. This research aims to investigate when and why a high brand-cause fit backfires. In this regard, this research focuses on the role of important but understudied concept of consumer-cause fit. Based on a multi-dimensional perspective of self-concept (Sirgy,1982), this research defines and measures consumer-cause fit with respect to multiple dimensions of a consumer’s self-concept. Then, a series of experiments shows how the congruence between images of a cause, a consumer’s ideal and actual self-concept, and images of a brand will interact to moderate, in some cases even reverse, the relationship between brand-cause fit and consumer responses to a cause-related marketing campaign.