Fit in cause-related marketing: An integrative retrospective

Thirteen years ago, "The role of brand-cause fit in the effectiveness of cause-related marketing campaigns" was published in the Journal of Business Research. Since then it has been cited over 400 times according to Google Scholar, making it among the top 100 most cited articles published by that journal. The paper's contribution and impact may be explained by the fact that it demonstrated for the first time that fit in cause-related marketing can impact choice. In addition, the paper used a methodology (choice conjoint) that was, at the time, somewhat novel in the consumer research context. As a result, the paper not only demonstrated the importance of brand-cause fit in CRM, it also demonstrated how choice conjoint could be used to estimate dollar metric values for cause marketing and fit using the stated preferences of individuals making multiple hypothetical choices. Interestingly, these estimates of the dollar value of CRM were lower than the (somewhat high) donation amounts used. This essay attempts to (1) provide background into how the studies came about, (2) give insight into what the paper accomplished (i.e. why it achieved such high impact), (3) describe the subsequent developments in the field of fit in cause marketing by exploring a subset of the 400+ papers which have cited the original work, (4) discuss the managerial implications, and (5) discuss open research questions in this interesting area.