As previously mentioned, CARE campaigns are often implemented at the product/brand-level and this approach therefore also features extensively in CARE research (Folse et al., 2010; Chang, 2008). Brand-related variables to consider when designing CARE campaigns include the credibility of the featured brands, brand-cause fit, the inclusion of visual brand elements (e.g. logo) and consumers’ prior experience with the brand (Christofi et al., 2015; Christofi et al., 2014). Product-related variables include the use of hedonic versus utilitarian products or high- versus low-priced products (Christofi et al., 2015; Christofi et al., 2014).
Products have traditionally been classified by marketers on the basis of durability, tangibility and use. The joint durability and tangibility taxonomy results in three product groups, namely non-durable goods, durable goods and services. Products that are classified according to use can be divided into two broad groups, namely consumer goods and industrial goods, each with their own sub-categories (Kotler & Keller, 2009).
In this study the focus will be on consumer goods (non-durable and durable) and two related classifications are particularly relevant, namely (1) hedonic versus utilitarian and (2) high
80
involvement versus low involvement products. Researchers (Chang, 2008; Polonsky & Speed, 2001; Strahilevitz, 1999; Strahilevitz & Myers, 1998; Babin, Darden, & Griffin, 1994; Smith & Alcorn, 1991; Ahtola, 1985) have found that consumer responses such as willingness to switch brands in favour of supporting a cause-linked product, attitudes and purchase intentions vary, based on product type (e.g. hedonic, utilitarian, etc.). Therefore the role of product type in CARE campaigns will be addressed by exploring both the hedonic- utilitarian and high involvement-low involvement classification.
4.4.1.1 Hedonic versus utilitarian products
Research has indicated that the hedonic versus utilitarian nature of a product exerts a differential impact on CARE effectiveness and consumer responses, possibly because these products activate different psychological processes when present in CARE (Chang, 2011; Chang, 2008; Strahilevitz & Myers, 1998).
Hedonic products are also referred to as frivolous or pleasure-oriented products and include examples such as ice cream, chocolate truffles, concert tickets, confectionary, etc. (Chang, 2008; Strahilevitz & Myers, 1998). The term hedonic was first used in correcting price indices for quality (Kaul, 2006; Cowling & Cubbin, 1972), but research about hedonism in marketing has since extended to topics such as shopping values, animation, online retailing, etc. (Chang & Cheng, 2015; Babin et al., 1994). Hedonic products are affect-driven (Chang, 2012). Hedonic value results from fun and playfulness (Hirschman & Holbrook, 1982) and is indicated by increased arousal, sensory gratification, heightened involvement, perceived freedom, fantasy fulfilment and escapism (Chang & Cheng, 2015; Chang, 2012; Babin et al., 1994; Hirschman, 1983). It seems that hedonism in marketing relates more to the prolonged act of shopping than to the act of buying (Babin et al., 1994) and that hedonic behaviour is motivated primarily by a desire for sensual pleasure (Strahilevitz & Myers, 1998).
Utilitarian products are also called practical or functional products and differ substantially from hedonic products (Strahilevitz & Myers, 1998). Utilitarian consumer behaviour is usually associated with terms such as task-related and rational (Chang & Cheng, 2015; Babin et al., 1994). Utilitarian products are goal-oriented (Chang, 2012). Utilitarian value is useful for explaining shopping trips that are about running errands and fulfilling necessary tasks. In other words, utilitarian consumption is motivated mainly by the aspiration to fulfil a basic need or to accomplish a functional task (Chang & Cheng, 2015; Strahilevitz & Myers, 1998). Examples of utilitarian products include dishwashing liquid, laundry detergent and garbage bags (Galan-Ladero et al., 2013; Strahilevitz & Myers, 1998).
81
Although Wymer and Samu (2009) found no difference between hedonic and practical cause-linked products in a CARE context, most other studies conducted in a Western context indicated a preference toward hedonic products – these products were thus considered to be more effective for campaigns featuring a cause-linked product (Boenigk & Schuchardt, 2015; Hammad, El-Bassiouny, Paul & Mukhopadhyay, 2014; Chang, 2008; Strahilevitz, 1999; Strahilevitz & Myers, 1998). Hedonic cause-related products were also found to trigger the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex resulting in increased emotional arousal (Guerreiro, Rita & Trigueiros, 2015).
In line with perception theory Strahilevitz and Myers (1998) conducted a study in North America where they focused on the impact of the nature of the product as a stimulus in CARE campaigns. It was found that CARE is more effective as a promotional tool for hedonic products than for practical products (Polonsky & Speed, 2001; Strahilevitz & Myers, 1998) – CARE programmes involving a hedonic product was better at generating purchase willingness and actual purchases than programmes with a utilitarian product (Nan & Heo, 2007; Strahilevitz & Myers, 1998). Strahilevitz (1999) inferred that charitable incentives would probably work better with hedonic products, because, in contrast to utilitarian products, hedonic products tend to evoke emotions such as pleasure and guilt that complement the feelings arising from charitable contributions. Strahilevitz and Myers (1998) called this phenomenon affect-based complementarity: “emotions evoked by hedonic consumption are countered or complemented by the positive feelings inspired by charitable giving” (Chang & Cheng, 2015:339). The guilt often experienced during hedonic consumption is thus countered by the warm glow resulting from a strategy such as CARE and consequently the potential scepticism related to such campaigns is decreased (Chang & Cheng, 2015; Galan- Ladero et al., 2013; Hibbert, Smith, Davies & Ireland, 2007).
Subrahmanyan (2004) conducted a study pertaining to the influence of hedonic and utilitarian products among young Chinese Singaporeans. The relationship between product type (utilitarian and hedonic) and consumer likelihood of choosing a brand linked to a cause was explored. In contrast to previous research conducted in Western countries (Strahilevitz, 1999), the respondents were more likely to purchase cause-linked brands for utilitarian than for hedonic products and they were also more likely to pay a price premium for cause-linked utilitarian products (Subrahmanyan, 2004:116). According to Subrahmanyan (2004) the difference between the responses of Western consumers and the Chinese Singaporeans can be attributed to Confucian values such as thrift and shame avoidance that are generally adopted by Chinese people. Similar results were obtained in a study conducted in Egypt where consumers also preferred practical rather than hedonic products for CARE campaigns
82
(Hammad et al., 2014) and in Spain, where practical products exerted a more positive influence on consumer attitudes and intentions than hedonic products (Galan-Ladero et al., 2013).
These findings highlight that culture and context play a role in CARE effectiveness (Galan- Ladero et al., 2013; Chang, 2008; Subrahmanyan, 2004). Research suggests that, in addition to being moderated by culture, the influence of product type (i.e. whether a product is hedonic or practical) in CARE might also be impacted by other CSEs such as donation magnitude (Strahilevitz, 1999), donation expression format (Chang, 2008), and the donation recipient (Chang, 2012). These types of interactions will be addressed throughout the chapter when the respective CSEs are discussed.
Despite research most often viewing hedonic and utilitarian products as opposite ends of a one-dimensional scale, Chang (2008) has suggested that this might not be the case and that some products might be low or high in both utilitarian and hedonic qualities. This contention by Chang (2008) highlights that other product classifications might be worth considering in CARE research, despite the hedonic/utilitarian classification to date being the most widely used.
4.4.1.2 High and low involvement products
As mentioned before, it has been suggested that additional product classifications be considered for inclusion in CARE research about CSEs (Chang, 2008). Therefore, in this study a classification based on involvement with the product will be included. In previous CARE research, cause involvement has been addressed, but studies including product involvement are scant (Bester & Jere, 2012). Also, an involvement classification has frequently been employed in alliance-based studies in other fields, such as co-branding, but has rarely been considered in CARE research.
Rodgers and Schneider (1993) identify the origins of involvement research as the early work of Sherif and Cantril (1947). Since then, involvement has been “subjected to extensive definitional, conceptual, theoretical, and empirical examination” (Rodgers & Schneider, 1993:333). Involvement research has also received widespread attention in the marketing field over the last few decades, especially in the areas of advertising and consumer behaviour (Schiffman & Kanuk, 2015; Warrington & Shim, 2000). Traylor (1981) confirms prior views (Warrington & Shim, 2000:761) as he refers to the importance of Krugman’s
83
(1977; 1971; 1965) research on television advertising and low-involvement learning in stimulating marketers’ initial interest in involvement and in the development of the concept.
Through the years little agreement seemed to exist about the most appropriate definition for the construct of involvement (Cohen, 1983). Traylor (1981:51) described involvement as “a recognition that certain product classes may be more or less central to an individual’s life, his attitudes about himself, his sense of identity, and his relationship to the rest of the world”. Dholakia (2001:1341) agreed with the motivational perspective definition of product involvement as used by involvement researchers such as Bloch (1981), Mittal and Lee (1989) and Laaksonen (1994): involvement is “an internal state variable that indicates the amount of arousal, interest or drive evoked by a product class”. Involvement has further been described as a “cognitive state of activation” (Gainer, 1993:267; Cohen, 1983) or a “strong motivation, as reflected in high perceived personal relevance of a stimulus in a particular context” (Engel, Blackwell & Miniard, 1995:G-8).
Laurent and Kapferer (1985:49), who were important role players in the development of involvement theory, supported the definition provided by Rothschild (1984) and suggested that this definition could perhaps be adopted as a generic description of involvement: "Involvement is an unobservable state of motivation, arousal or interest. It is evoked by a particular stimulus or situation and has drive properties. Its consequences are types of searching, information-processing and decision-making".
Some marketing researchers (Lastovicka & Bonfield, 1982; Traylor, 1981) have compared involvement with perceived product importance and it has been proclaimed that involvement is merely a case of consumer interest for a product category (Kapferer & Laurent, 1993; Laurent & Kapferer, 1985). Sherif and Cantril (1947) and Sherif and Hovland (1961) used the term ego involvement and inferred that involvement only occurs when a person identifies with a decision or a brand choice (Kapferer & Laurent, 1993; Laurent & Kapferer, 1985).
Past literature suggests that a person can be involved with marketing-related variables such as advertisements (Krugman 1962, 1965, 1966-67, 1977), purchase decisions or products (Hupfer & Gardner, 1971; Howard & Sheth, 1969) of which some are by nature more involving than others (Gainer, 1993:267; Zaichkowsky, 1985:341; Rothschild, 1979). Involvement with different objects results in different responses (Zaichkowsky, 1985). Researchers in the consumer behaviour field agree that involvement plays an important role in explaining behaviour and that the study of low versus high involvement states is interesting and important (Schiffman & Kanuk, 2015; Gainer, 1993; Cohen, 1983).
84
Despite the importance of involvement, some problems related to the construct have been identified. There seems to be a lack of consensus about what the involvement construct entails (Beresford, 2012; Gainer, 1993; Cohen, 1983). Already in the early 1980s Traylor (1981) agreed that a major problem regarding the concept of product involvement, is defining the relevant dimensions and how they interact. Another dilemma seems to be the disagreement of researchers about how to measure involvement (Beresford, 2012; Gainer, 1993; Cohen, 1983). These issues could be due to an array of different applications of the concept. Rothschild (1984) further emphasised that a major problem relevant to involvement research is that although extensive theorising about the construct has taken place, research has been deficient in data collection.
Several researchers have attempted to categorise involvement into different involvement types. In the late 1970s an involvement framework was suggested that includes three involvement types: “situational involvement (which is related to perceived purchase risk); enduring involvement (what consumers bring into a situation); and response involvement (how consumers make decisions)” (Gainer, 1993:267). The framework was refined by Bloch and Richins (1983) who viewed responses as a consequence of involvement rather than as a type of involvement, and also incorporated three involvement antecedents: the situation; product characteristics; and personal characteristics (Gainer, 1993).
Researchers (Bloch & Richins, 1983) have suggested three categories of characteristics that influence a person’s involvement level, namely (1) personal, (2) physical and (3) situational (Zaichkowsky, 1985). Personal involvement refers to a person’s inherent interests, values, or needs that trigger motivation toward a particular object or goal (Zaichkowsky, 1985). Physical involvement is described as features of an object that cause differentiation and increased interest (Zaichkowsky, 1985). Situational involvement is something that momentarily increases the relevance of or interest in a specific object (Zaichkowsky, 1985).
Park and Young (1984) distinguish between cognitive involvement (based on utilitarian motives) and affective involvement (based on emotional involvement). Traylor’s (1981) research has indicated two components of consumer involvement in products, namely normative importance (“how connected or engaged a product class is to an individual’s values”) and commitment to a brand (“the pledging or binding or an individual to his brand choice”) (Traylor, 1981:51; Lastovicka & Gardner, 1977). Normative importance is sometimes referred to as ego involvement or then simply involvement, whereas brand commitment is
85
often called brand loyalty or attitudinal loyalty (Park, 1996; Quester, Karunaratna & Lim, 2001).
Laaksonen (1994) preferred a classification that focused on two of the involvement types that were suggested earlier, namely enduring and situational involvement. According to Laaksonen (1994) these involvement types are both contained within the concept of product involvement, but each with a different role to play in influencing risk perceptions and ensuing consumer responses. Firstly, stable, enduring involvement is described as “an ongoing concern for a product class that is dependent on specific purchase situations, and essentially arises as a result of ongoing interest with the product class, and its association with the individual’s self-concept, values and ego” (Dholakia, 2000:1341; Richins & Bloch, 1986). According to Dholakia (2000) enduring involvements are the result of the ability of a product to satisfy the enduring and self-identity-related needs of consumers. Secondly, there is transient, situational involvement that is defined by Bloch and Richins (1983:72) as “a temporary perception of product importance based on the consumer’s desire to obtain particular extrinsic goals that may derive from the purchase and/or usage of the product”. Situational involvement relates to a “raised level of interest arising from a specific situation, typically a purchase occasion” (Dholakia, 2000:1341). According to Dholakia (2000) there is significant conceptual and empirical support for the distinction made between enduring and situational involvement.
Similarly to past researchers, a further distinction has been made by Thomas, Cunningham and Williams (2002) between purchase involvement (high and low) and product involvement (high and low). For instance, “high purchase involvement describes consumers who are concerned with reducing the risk related to a particular purchase”, while “high product involvement is used to describe opinion leaders, those who are quite knowledgeable, ego- involved and socially involved in a particular product category” (Mittal 1995; Petty, Cacioppo & Schumann, 1983). Researchers have viewed product involvement as an important construct due to its ability to influence consumers’ cognitive and behavioural responses to marketing stimuli (Schiffman & Kanuk, 2015; Dholakia, 2000; Laaksonen, 1994). However, according to Traylor (1981:1951) referring to products as either high or low involvement is imprecise, because “strictly speaking, no product is inherently ego involving or uninvolving” and only consumers can hold these characteristics. The findings of Quester et al. (2001:6) were consistent with those of Kapferer and Laurent (1993) who argued that “some consumers may attribute high scores to some facets and low to others depending on the product” and therefore, consistent with the premise of Traylor (1981), product involvement can be viewed as a consumer defined construct. Traylor (1983) believed that involvement
86
and commitment (or brand loyalty) “can each be thought of as a continuum along which consumers are distributed” (Quester et al., 2001:2).
Traylor (1981:51) explained that the low involvement consumer “has little bond to his brand choice” (little brand loyalty), “thinks of the product class as trivial”, seeks high variety and is in a less stable position than when preferred by high involved buyers (Traylor, 1981; Tyebjee, 1979; Lastovicka & Gardner, 1977). At the other extreme, “high-involvement consumers are believed to be more motivated to search for and actively process product- and store-related information” (Warrington & Shim, 2000:761-2).
LeClerc and Little (1997) once declared that repeat purchases of a high involvement product indicated brand loyalty, while repeat purchases for a low involvement product was simply habitual in nature (Quester et al., 2001). This seems to be the reason why the academic community has often focused on high involvement, but has thus far failed to “offer a developed, tested and actionable model” of low involvement consumer decision making (Hamlin & Wilson, 2004:677).
Grau and Folse (2007) introduced the importance of involvement in CARE by finding the potential positive impact of CARE on the behavior of low involvement consumers. They referred to involvement as a consumer trait, similar to the views of Laurent and Kapferer (1985) that developed the Consumer Involvement Profile and Zaichkowsky (1985) who created the Personal Involvement Inventory for measuring consumer involvement. Although these measurement instruments are not directly applicable to this research, the aspects included in them do provide more insights into the involvement construct.
The Consumer Involvement Profile (CIP) scale mainly focuses on various antecedents of a consumer’s involvement with a specific product (Quester et al., 2001; Rodgers & Schneider, 1993; Laurent & Kapferer, 1985). The underlying assumption of the CIP is that involvement level can be deduced from five variables/antecedents: (1) interest; (2) pleasure value (“rewarding nature of the product”); (3) perceived risk probability; (4) perceived risk importance; and (5) sign value (“the perceived ability of brand choice to express one's status, one's personality, or identity”) (Quester et al., 2001:3; Rodgers & Schneider, 1993; Laurent & Kapferer, 1985:49). These variables are acknowledged within the Lamb et al. (2010) involvement conceptualisation that will be discussed later in the chapter.
The Personal Involvement Inventory (PII) has been described as a “more global measure of involvement” (Thomas et al., 2002:99). It is based on the assumption that involvement is
87
primarily concerned with the personal relevance of a specific product, advertisement, or situation to a consumer (Rodgers & Schneider, 1993; Zaichkowsky, 1985).
According to (Rodgers & Schneider, 1993) the CIP differs from the PII in that the latter is meant for measuring involvement, whilst the purpose of the CIP is to measure the five antecedents of involvement. The elements contained within both the CIP and the PII were considered during the conceptualisation of this research.