Cause related marketing in the online space

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to explore corporations' online cause-related marketing efforts and to develop a typology of industry sector cause-related marketing. Originality: The research will aim to create a typology of industry sectors supporting causes. Based on that typology it will be possible to assess the level of fit between different industries and causes that they support. Key literature / theoretical perspective: Suter (1995) has suggested that the reason why corporations choose to support cause related marketing is to differentiate their brands by giving a message of social responsibility. The focus of much of later research was on the fit with Lafferty (2004) proposing that fit between corporate brand and the cause will benefit both organizations while Samu (2009) contending that the fit will be more important for the brand rather than the non-for-profit organization. Design/methodology/approach: Using the S&P Global 100 market index, corporations from the Energy, Financial, Technology, Consumer Goods and Pharmaceutical sectors were selected . Websites of the corporations were examined to identify the causes and charitable organizations supported. he findings were then mapped in a matrix causes versus corporations and industry sectors to determine if there was a fit between the two categories. Findings: There appears to be a lack of strategic fit between corporations and the causes they support in the online. Instead the corporations tend to promote a variety of causes regardless of their industry sector. Research limitations/implications: The current research focussed on a limited number of multinational corporations, the majority of which were US based. Further research that includes corporations based outside of US is required. Practical and social implications: Corporations need to pay attention to the fit between their industry / image and the causes that they support.