The role of visual presentation in cause-related marketing message processing in social network sites: a case for sports brands

Cause-related marketing (CRM) advertisements focus on promotional social cause (PSC) messages for a brand; however, recent social media-based CRM ads rely on partake-in-our-cause (PIOC) messages, which encourage consumer participation. This three-part study examined the identification of a boundary condition in message type effects and the underlying mechanisms of such effects in social network sites (SNS). The findings of Experiment 1 indicate that when exposed to a product-focussed visual, PIOC messages yield more positive CRM outcomes (vs. PSC messages). However, when subjects were exposed to a cause-focussed visual, there were no differences in CRM outcomes between PIOC and PSC messages. Experiment 2 and Experiment 3 investigated the underlying mechanism via serial mediation analyses. The findings show that positive CRM outcomes derived from PIOC messages (vs. PSC messages) arose mainly through consumers’ perception of CRM. Conversely, when exposed to the cause-focussed visual, consumers’ perception of CRM was not influenced by the message type. The current study contributes to the existing CRM literature by applying consumer attributions of a company’s motive in CRM messages.This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.