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As the demand for affordable legal services grows, law schools and the legal profession struggle to respond. By examining lessons from successful social movements in the last century, Cause Lawyering and Social Movements: Can Solo and Small Firm Practitioners anchor Social Movements looks at the Law School Consortium Project and its potential to participate in and anchor the social movements of our time. The collaboration of the law schools, networks of solo and small firm attorneys and activists at the local, regional and national level provide key elements for powerful change given the technological developments of the 21st century.

The purposes of this study are to demonstrate the conditional effect of functional fit and image fit on consumer brand attitude through the altruistic attributions and identify the criteria for choosing a perfect social cause for managers.

Based on the existing research, a conceptual model is proposed, explained the moderating effect of social cause affinity on the indirect influence of functional fit and image fit on consumer brand attitude via altruistic attributions; these relationships were assessed through a bootstrap procedure. The model was estimated with a sample of 240 subjects. Two newly created, printed corporate social responsibility (CSR) information served as the basic stimulus of this article.

The main conclusions are as follows: first, social cause affinity moderates the effect of functional fit and image fit on altruistic attributions, and the combination of image fit and social cause affinity both on high levels can more easily lead to the emergence of suspicion of company's altruistic motives, contrary to functional fit. Second, contingent on social cause affinity, CSR fit has an indirect relationship with consumer brand attitude mediated by altruistic attribution. More specifically, the indirect effect will be more positive for functional fit with higher levels of social cause affinity, but for image fit with low levels of affinity.

The experiment relied on fictitious corporate name. Most of the responders were students from Changchun. This may reduce the generalizability of the results.

Besides functional fit and image fit, social cause affinity should be treated as a key criterion to choose social cause.

This work analyses and compares the indirect effect of functional fit and image fit on consumer brand attitude through altruistic attributions. The findings give some enlightenment on solutions to contradictions in existing research.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of corporate social responsibility on customer satisfaction, loyalty and repurchase with or without cause-related marketing or cause marketing across Islamic companies.

An experimental survey of Iranian university students was conducted to investigate the customer satisfaction, loyalty and purchase intention with companies using social marketing methods such as corporate social responsibility along with cause marketing and cause-related marketing. A total of 400 usable surveys were obtained in SRBIA University of Tehran, while possessing the greatest ability to consume more hoteling services companies and mobile producers beyond Iranian students.

The results indicated that through an experimental research by including social marketing in products or service companies such as mobile producers and hotel services companies in Iran (as an Islamic country), there are same levels of loyalty and repurchase intentions, but different levels of customer’s satisfaction. Furthermore, the authors found out there is no significant difference regarding the effect of cause marketing and cause-related marketing on loyalty and repurchase intentions. Also, it is different on customer’s satisfaction given the company type.

The sampling frame for this research was limited to students in one of Iran capital city universities. The results are not exactly generalized to all the populations for Iranian product or service consumers. Also, the sampling methods used in this research might have generated bias due to time and resources constraints. So, it is recommended for future studies to consider broader samplings more than university students and beyond only the consumers of international product or service companies.

No study has used corporate social responsibilities to explain customer satisfaction while providing cause marketing and cause-related marketing as corporate social marketing in service companies influencing the customer loyalty and repurchase intentions.

This paper aims to examine the structural relationships among the variables of social cause involvement, attitudes toward the endorser, attitudes toward advertising, attitudes toward the brand and social cause behavioral intentions. Additionally, by using the persuasion knowledge model (PKM) as the guiding framework, the moderating effects of ad perception on the proposed relationship were investigated.

By using Amazon Mechanical Turk, a total of 291 usable surveys were retained for analysis. Following the participants' exposure to the Nike commercial, they completed a survey containing questions about advertising perception and their consequent responses to the advertisement. Structural equation modeling was used to test the conceptual model. Multigroup analysis was also performed to discover any moderating effects of consumers' advertising perception in endorsement effectiveness.

This study highlights the extensive impact of social cause involvement in the domain of celebrity endorsements, while attitudes toward the endorser are not a significant antecedent of celebrity endorsement effectiveness in the sport contexts. Additionally, this study demonstrates and confirms the presence of the moderating effects of advertisement perception on the proposed relationship. This supports the general premise of the PKM that consumers' attitudes and thoughts are influenced based on consumers' judgment of persuasion attempts.

The current study extends the line of research on the role of advertising perception in the domain of celebrity endorsement. In particular, this study found that the PKM is a theoretically sound model that can be used to predict sports fans' attitudinal and behavioral responses.

Limited research has explored why and how cause-related marketing on social media influences consumers' responses. Drawing upon balance theory and consistency theory, this study aims to identify the mechanism of cause-related marketing on social media.

Data were collected from a sample of 360 users of cause-related marketing campaigns on social media and analyzed using structural equation modeling in Mplus 8.0.

The three types of congruence – self-image congruence, brand-image congruence and value congruence – can serve as sub-dimensions of perceived fit between a consumer, brand and cause of a cause-related marketing campaign on social media. Importantly, these perceived fit sub-dimensions positively influence community identification and, therefore, influence consumer citizenship behaviors.

The findings provide theoretical and practical contributions for a brand to undertake cause-related marketing on social media.

This study clarifies the myth of the perceived fit of cause-related marketing on social media and examines the perceived fit sub-dimensions’ mechanism of consumers' responses through community identification.

This study examines the collaborative value practices of cause-based social entrepreneurship alliances. We investigate key drivers of value creation in such alliances.

The study utilizes a longitudinal case study design approach involving four northern Italian businesses for investigating the cause-based social alliances.

The study findings suggest that cause-based alliance differ from other business relationships due to social mission of the alliance and orientation of partners to a specific social cause. However, over time involved firm may pursue commercial interests.

The study utilizes a qualitative case study approach to examine the issues. This may have implications on generalizability of study findings. Further, the sample is limited to small firms, which limit its relevance for large firms.

Managers can utilize the study findings to guide the organizing process of a successful cause-based alliance and can implement it with positive outcomes for their firm.

This is one of the first study on the emerging phenomenon of cause-based social alliance. It contributes to the literature on social entrepreneurship. It informs and guides practitioners about motivations and drivers of such alliances.

This paper explores the role of Zakah in social cause marketing. Academic literature on Islamic economics, finance and management mostly deals with the links that exists between Zakah and consumption, neglecting important and strategic links with social cause marketing. This paper emanated from need to outline social cause and the charitable role of Zakah in promoting Halal businesses, poverty alleviation and sustainable development. Most works in the field of Zakah did not foresee the role of marketing. This is a misjudgement, as this work showed that Zakah yields large and measurable social gains to help the society and a firm.

Secondary sources were used in writing this paper. Available literature in the form of journals, books, manuals and reports was referred to. As a conceptual work, the paper does not test hypothesis or pretends to provide empirical evidences. It uses mathematical economics in arriving at some of the conclusions. Findings were derived through deductions and critical discourses, not through crunching of primary data.

The paper shows how Zakah, Halal consumption and corporate social responsibility are connected and highlights the role of Zakah as a social marketing tool. It shows how Zakah affects consumption through marginal propensity of Zakah recipients who spend Zakah money on basic needs.

The paper looks at the broad aspects of Zakah and social marketing. How to make Zakah a pillar of Islamic firms’ social cause programs shall be the focus of future academic works in this area.

The paper is unique in drawing attention of Islamic firms to the effectiveness of Zakah in building a corporate image. It draws the attention of firms, activists, academics and governments to functions of Zakah that have not been studied in depth.

Cause-related marketing (CRM) is an increasing popular marketing strategy in which a firm donates a specific amount to a designed cause when customers engage in revenue-providing exchanges. Based on balance and attribution theory, this paper aims to explore the interaction effect of donation amount and ad orientation, two important factors of formulation and communication of CRM, respectively, on consumer response and the mediating effect of consumers’ perceived company motives.

Two 2 (donation amount: small vs large) × 2 (ad orientation: product- vs cause-oriented) between-subjects experimental studies were conducted in marketing course with 284 and 157 Chinese undergraduate students participating in Studies 1 and 2, respectively. ANOVA and regression were used to test the hypotheses.

Study 1 shows the significant interaction effects of donation amount and ad orientation on consumers’ response. When CRM has a large donation amount, cause-oriented (vs product-oriented) ad leads to consumers’ more positive company attitude and higher purchase intention. The opposite is true for the small donation amount condition. Study 2 shows that the above interaction effect is mediated by consumer-attributed company motives. The attributed motive of sincerely caring about social cause has significant positive effect on consumer response, whereas the attributed motive of increasing sales or improving corporate image does not.

This paper contributes to the literature by empirically examining the interaction effect of donation amount and ad orientation on consumer-inferred motives and behavioral response. The findings are valuable because they indicate the importance of matching between factors at formulation and communication stage. In addition, this paper found that consumers are “tolerant” of companies using CRM to promote product sales and improve brand image.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how organizations create focal engagement objects through posts to their social media community members and how the members engage with these posts in ways that potentially co-create value. Of additional interest is the use of platform, tone and language to determine how they potentially influence value co-creation.

The research method is netnography. Two Australian-based cause organizations were selected for the study, and posts were collected from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube platforms used by the communities, as well as likes, clicks, shares and retweets. Data was examined using content and thematic analyses.

Findings for the characteristics of the posts indicate how platforms need to be member-centric and that post tone and language can be used for engaging members effectively. Three consumer engagement objects were thematically derived from the posts: events, donations and fundraising, and social justice that includes shout-outs and thunderclaps. In turn, consumer responses evidenced engagement sub-processes of co-developing, acknowledging, rewarding, sharing, advocating, adding momentum and learning. The likes, clicks, shares and retweets assisted in determining the amount of community interactions with posts in the cause brands’ communities.

This research is limited to the extent it involved two cases. As with any cross-sectional research, the findings are snapshots of interactions on the two sites over the two-week data collection periods. Theoretical implications provide a deeper insights into value co-creation by empirically examining how organizations and their supporters employ and use post resources to co-create value collectively, and how the characteristics of the posts and behavioral interactions potentially facilitates this.

Managerially, this investigation will assist both commercial brand and cause brand organizations to plan and adapt their social media strategies to enhance supporters’ engagement with posts in this digital environment.

The social implications of this study are that it provides an understanding of how cause organizations can harness online communities for value co-creation to generate social good.

The study is both original and adds value to the research community. The findings presented provide an insightful conceptual framework to guide future research into this important area of consumer engagement with resources in social media communities leading to potential co-creation of value.

Cause-related marketing (CrM) through social campaigns is becoming one of the main strategic marketing tools for large businesses. The purpose of this study is to find out the significance of CrM for start-ups and to evaluate the moderating role of cause involvement of consumer on the impact of CrM campaigns on purchase intention of consumers.

Both structural equation modelling and hierarchical analysis were used to evaluate the responses of 1,425 male and female consumers in India towards CrM campaign.

The results revealed that the effect of CrM campaigns on purchase intention of consumers is significantly moderated by consumers’ cause involvement. Thus, companies must extend support to causes having high consumer involvement.

Based on their findings, the authors suggest finding out the effects of CrM on the long-term sustainability of the start-ups in more detail, especially in developing countries like India. The scope of this study is one country-based; thus, research findings may not be generalised.

Small businesses that are able to understand the needs of their own communities and recognise that through their efforts they can bring large impact on social issues and will see success through their socially responsible mindset. Society today needs businesses to support good causes. The best model of CrM, especially for start-ups, is the one in which while making a payment for a service or purchasing a product, the consumer is asked to make an additional payment for the social cause.

Society today needs businesses to support good causes. CrM campaigns provide consumers a chance to help the less fortunate and do so in regular and convenient ways. The study indicates the importance of both corporate citizenship and social responsibility among small businesses.

While the current results show that the majority of studies were based on large business, this paper shows that the CrM can be useful for start-ups, medium and small businesses also. The suggested model can be an innovative way to implement CrM without incurring any additional cost. The conclusions confirm within a wider context the role of cause involvement as a moderator of the purchase intention and can further assist start-ups and small-scale companies in designing better targeted CrM campaigns benefiting the society at large.