THINKing

More Cause

We talked about cause marketing recently, and I wanted to delve deeper into some of the findings of the Cone study we discussed.

Cone’s study not only shows that people say they will do more business with companies involved in a cause, but that they actually do more business with cause marketers.

Substantial cause-related sales lift for two of the four consumer packaged goods categories tested:

- 74% increase in actual purchase for a shampoo brand when associated with a cause (47% of participants who saw the cause-related message chose the brand while only 27% of those who saw the generic corporate advertisement chose the brand)

- 28% increase in actual purchase for a toothpaste brand when associated with a cause (64% of participants who saw the cause message chose the target brand vs. 50% who viewed the generic corporate advertisement)

- Modest increases in the other two product categories tested (chips and light bulbs) – Qualitative consumer responses showed that the issue, the nonprofit and the inherent nature of products were key factors in making cause-related purchasing decisions and helped explain why movement in these categories was not significant.

Top causes Americans want companies to be involved in include:

- Education – 80%

- Economic development (i.e.: job creation, income generation, wealth accumulation) 80%

- Health and disease – 79%

- Access to clean water – 79%

- Environment – 77%

- Disaster relief – 77%

- Hunger – 77%

Other Posts Of Interest

• Mashable! – Get More Blog Readers
• Content Curation Update
• Bad News, Katie
• Links – 9/19/2008
• Web 2.0 Reading Lists