The present study is designed to understand the circumstances under which a cause-related marketing (CRM) ad would be most effective for skeptical consumers and how advertisers can avoid unnecessarily undermining the credibility of their CRM claims. To answer these questions, this study looks at two situational factors that might affect the outcome of a CRM ad: statements about a sponsoring company’s reason for supporting a social cause and types of appeals (emotional or informational). Moreover, this study explores how consumers with high and low levels of skepticism differ in their responses to CRM ads. While existing CRM research has been conducted in traditional media settings, the present study examines whether certain contextual factors or type of communication strategy of CRM on social network sites (SNSs) such as Facebook increase consumer perceptions of sponsoring company’s credibility, thus encouraging consumers to become members of brand pages on SNSs.The present study, 409 college students were assigned to one of four experimental conditions: (1) an emotional appeal CRM with statements of firm and public-serving benefit motivation; (2) an emotional appeal CRM with statements of public-serving benefit motivation; (3) an informational appeal CRM with statements of firm- and public-serving benefit motivation; and (4) an informational appeal CRM with statements of public-serving benefit motivation. Participants were then asked why they believed the company chose to sponsors such a social cause and the extent to which they perceived the company as credible. This study also measured consumers’ intentions to join a brand page on Facebook.The results show that an acknowledgement of the presence of firm-serving motivation can be an effective societal marketing strategy to reduce consumer skepticism of firm’s motives. The procedure by which a consumer evaluates the motives of a company, together with the consumer’s perceptions of those motives, determines the effectiveness of the company’s CRM ads. A highly skeptical consumer is less doubting of a company’s intention behind its support of social causes when the company honestly states firm-serving benefit as well as public-serving benefits in its CRM ads. Finally, a consumer’s perception of a company’s credibility has a great impact on the consumer’s intention to join that company’s brand page. The findings from this study are meaningful, as they show situational skepticism produced by message features such as acknowledgement of firm-serving benefits in CRM significantly influence whether a consumer’s interpretation of a company’s motive is positive or skeptical. In addition to the situational skepticism, whether the consumers personally tends to be highly skeptical in general predicts the degree to which the consumer is likely to generate positive versus negative attributions of the company’s support of a social cause. The study provides insight on how selecting better contextual factors such as acknowledgement of firm-serving benefits can be an effective strategy to capture consumer’s trust and to build a strong and positive CRM ad that holds the consumer’s attention.
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