Krishna, A. (2011). Can supporting a cause decrease donations and happiness? The cause marketing paradox. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 21(3), 338-345.
In two laboratory and one pilot field study, we demonstrate that cause marketing, whereby firms link products with a cause and share proceeds with it, reduces charitable giving by consumers, even when it is costless to the consumer to buy on CM (versus not); further, instead of increasing total contribution to the cause, it can decrease it. Consumers appear to realize that participating in cause ...