THE IMPACT OF EXISTENTIAL GUILT APPEAL ON CONSUMER INTENTION TO PURCHASE CAUSE-RELATED PRODUCT OR TO DONATE TO CHARITY

Charity support behavior increasingly attracts more and more debates of researchers in the scientific literature. The interest in this topic is also encouraged by charity organizations which are constantly looking for ways of attracting more support for their sponsored charity types and projects. An advertising campaign is one of the most important elements for the existence of charitable organization (Burt, 2012). In order to make it more effective different appeals are used. Guilt appeals are commonly used by charity organizations to evoke donation to charities (Huhmann and Brotherton, 1997). Moreover, a huge number of research had examined the impact of guilt appeals on charitable donations (Lwin and Phau, 2014; Hibbert et al., 2007; Basil et al., 2006; Bozinoff and Ghingold, 1983). The critical question is whether the existential guilt appeal differently impacts the most analysed types of charity related behaviour: direct donation to charity and purchase of cause related product. Previous studies did not analyse this relationship. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of existential guilt appeal on consumer intention to donate or to buy cause-related product. The study included two steps: a pilot study in order to find the suitable form of an advertisement to be used as a stimulus for inducing existential guilt, and the main quantitative study. Online survey and non-probability (convenience) sampling were used for the main study. This study is based on a survey of 374 respondents from Lithuania. Respondents received an advertising message designed to induce existential guilt and reported their behavioural intentions provoked by this manipulation. Results confirmed that existential guilt had direct positive impact on both charity related consumer behaviour forms: purchase of cause-related product and donation to charity. However, this relationship was stronger in the case of direct donation to charity.