Help Me, Help You: The Consumer’s Perceptions of “Green” Credit Cards: An Abstract

Abstract

As an apparent trend, more and more firms are adopting cause-related marketing to promote a green corporate image (Leonidou et al. 2011) in an effort to improve market share and performance. Although consumers consider a product’s environmental attributes as “structurally important features” (Gershoff and Frels 2015, p. 101), this study provides additional evidence that marketing efforts in the financial industry can also target peripheral rather than central attributes to maximize greenness perceptions by establishing the connection between consumer values and the choice of environmental cause. The existing literature highlights the importance of brand-cause fit by arguing that “a perceived match between the product’s brand and the cause it supported” could greatly improve consumer perceptions toward cause-marketing campaigns and brand image (e.g., Chéron et al. 2012, p. 362). In our research, however, the brand-cause fit is moderated by the individuals’ previous philanthropic experiences and biospheric values. Therefore, marketers should understand the environmental concerns of targeted audiences to effectively communicate with consumers. More importantly, marketers should clearly indicate the benefits of environmental consumption if they hope to convince ambivalent consumers (Burke et al. 2014).

Consistent with the existing literature, individuals in the present study are more likely to have positive attitudes toward the brand and purchase intentions when they are presented with 1% cash and annual percentage rate (APR) donation compared to 0.5 and 1.5% donations. Thus, marketers should promise a sufficiently large donation when targeted consumers have positive attitudes toward helping behaviors (e.g., Koschate-Fischer et al. 2012). Companies may choose to donate a medium amount when brand-cause fit is low, and this donation amount matters if “the product is utilitarian or consumed privately” (Koschate-Fischer et al. 2012, p. 923), such as a credit card in this study.

Finally, the overall results suggest what mattered in our research was the donation framing in selecting “green” credit cards. Generally speaking, when the donation is framed as cash rewards, it has stronger effects on a consumer’s perception and consequent reactions to the “green” credit cards than when the donation is framed as APR. When people believe that expenses “will recur infrequently, they may fail to book the item in their budget, encoding the infrequent expense as trivial or irrelevant to their budgets at large” (Sussman et al. 2015, p. 131). As a result, cash reward donation framing has stronger effects on an individual’s perception of “green” credit cards than APR. These findings provide financial institutions with an inexpensive and easy-to-implement method to encourage more generous donations to existing green causes.

As an apparent trend, more and more firms are adopting cause-related marketing to promote a green corporate image (Leonidou et al. 2011) in an effort to improve market share and performance. Although consumers consider a product’s environmental attributes as “structurally important features” (Gershoff and Frels 2015, p. 101), this study provides additional evidence that marketing efforts in the financial industry can also target peripheral rather than central attributes to maximize greenness perceptions by establishing the connection between consumer values and the choice of environmental cause. The existing literature highlights the importance of brand-cause fit by arguing that “a perceived match between the product’s brand and the cause it supported” could greatly improve consumer perceptions toward cause-marketing campaigns and brand image (e.g., Chéron et al. 2012, p. 362). In our research, however, the brand-cause fit is moderated by the individuals’ previous philanthropic experiences and biospheric values. Therefore, marketers should understand the environmental concerns of targeted audiences to effectively communicate with consumers. More importantly, marketers should clearly indicate the benefits of environmental consumption if they hope to convince ambivalent consumers (Burke et al. 2014).