A recent feature & culture in The Postech Times covered “cause marketing,” or “doing business concerning humankind.” It explained the concept of cause marketing by providing readers a few successful and unsuccessful examples. It concluded that there were three things to be aware of when designing cause marketing. Firstly, as shown from the failure of Domino’s, people still wish to get a similar product while helping others. They do not want to get half of their pizza chopped off even for the sake of donation. Secondly, there should be a relationship between the product the consumers buy and the things the company promotes as their acts of charity. Lastly, the purpose of cause marketing must be an issue that consumers can deeply sympathize with. I personally both agree and disagree with the points made.
First of all, the first point seems very well made. People do seem to seek a certain amount of profit while helping others, and it seems that people are more than willing to buy decent products when they know that buying them will help others. However, whether or not they will buy a product purely out of benevolence is questionable. Therefore, it is essential that companies carefully decide the proportion of the price to donation.
I sort of agree with the second point. In the column that originally covered this matter, the writer derived this point by comparing the successful and unsuccessful case of Tom’s, a shoe store, and KFC. While people clearly understood the relationship between buying shoes and a pair of shoes being delivered to the poor, they could not see the correlation between breast cancer and chicken. Though this notion is agreeable, it does not seem like it was a major reason why one succeeded and the other failed. I think the major reason why KFC failed was that, unlike TOMS shoes, there was no reason for people to give money to KFC instead of some other charity organization. In the case of Tom’s, they are a legitimate shoe makers, so them delivering a pair of shoes for every pair of shoes customers buy, just makes sense. While in the case of KFC, it’s a chicken frying company funding breast cancer.
I completely agree with the third point. One cannot overlook the importance of marketing and advertisement when it comes to selling products. So it is really important that companies make people talk and have interest in their products. Hence, it is crucial for a company to select an issue of keen interest among consumers when choosing what approach they will take in cause marketing.