Skepticism towards cause related claims: A comparison between Norway and Spain

Antecedents -The Norwegian School of Management BI is a leading institution in research in marketing so an ideal place to advance research in a variety of topics. -The host researcher has expertise in consumer behavior, specifically in performing experime nts -methodology used for the current project. -The visiting researcher expertise is in services marketing applied to nonprofit and public organizations. The research project combines the expertise of both researches by extending one of the host research er's topic to perceptions coming from different sources and that are influenced by culture. Project Description Organizations are implementing cause-related marketing (CRM) programs for enhancing the organization's image, gaining differentiation from com petitors, developing favorable attitudes towards the sponsoring company, positive publicity, and employee pride (Lachowetz, Clark, Irwin and Cornwell 2002). However, the CRM programs may yield different outcomes depending on the duration of the campaign, focus of the campaign, the sponsor, the consumer perceptions and elaboration of the campaign, and the predisposition of the consumer (Menon and Kahn 2003). The last category encompasses the skepticism towards the campaign and the national culture. In a p revious study, conducted in Norway, Singh, Kristensen and Villaseñor (forthcoming) found that skepticism towards CRM claims may be reduced by repeating claims and getting the consumer familiarized with the campaign. While this finding is important to unde rstand the impact of advertising on CRM communications, the study has some limitations that can be overcome by the development of this project. Specifically, we intent to measure the kind of thoughts that result from the repetitions conditioned by the sou rce of the ad (public/nonprofit or private sector) and account for the effect of culture on the assessment of claim repetitions by comparing the proposed model in two different countries: Norway and Spain.