TY  - JOUR
AB  - Purpose Cause-related marketing (CRM) is a sales strategy that is used to improve the success of a product by including a donation to a charitable cause in its price. While marketers can present CRM donations to consumers as either absolute amounts or percentages, the predominant practice in marketing is to use the latter. As the influence of such presentation formats is not well understood, the purpose of this paper is to systematically examine their effects while taking into account the numerical ability (numeracy) of the consumers.Design/methodology/approach In two experiments, the presentation format of the donation amounts (absolute vs percentage) were manipulated and individual differences in numeracy were measured. The product type (hedonic vs utilitarian) and sales price were varied. We found this effect for high and low price levels and for hedonic and utilitarian products.Findings The results of both experiments consistently supported the hypothesis presented in this paper that for people with lower numeracy, their purchase intentions were higher when absolute donation amounts were presented. We found this effect for high and low price levels and for hedonic and utilitarian products.Originality/value The present paper shows that the current practice of presenting donations in percentages is inferior to presenting donations in absolute amounts because a large number of consumers have trouble interpreting percentages appropriately. Therefore, it indicates that the default option for marketing managers should be to present donations in absolute amounts for hedonic and utilitarian products with low and high prices.
VL  - 33
IS  - 3
SN  - 0736-3761
DO  - 10.1108/JCM-12-2014-1240
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1108/JCM-12-2014-1240
AU  - Kleber Janet
AU  - Florack Arnd
AU  - Chladek Anja
PY  - 2016
Y1  - 2016/01/01
TI  - How to present donations: the moderating role of numeracy in cause-related marketing
T2  - Journal of Consumer Marketing
PB  - Emerald Group Publishing Limited
SP  - 153
EP  - 161
Y2  - 2024/04/25
ER  -