Research On Charity Marketing Decision-making From The Perspective Of Supply Chai

With the continuous attention of the public to environmental and social issues,more and more enterprises have begun to fulfil their corporate social responsibilities.Ernst&Young conducted a global survey on corporate social responsibility,and the data showed that 94% of the surveyed enterprises believed that fulfilling social responsibility could improve and reshape the public image of corporate brands and bring lasting commercial benefits to enterprises.As one of the important ways to fulfil social responsibility,cause marketing(CM)has been pursued by more and more enterprises in recent years.CM refers to developing and implementing marketing campaigns based on consumers’ purchase behavior and the income brought to the company to give specific donations to a cause,and ultimately meet the goals of both organizations and individuals.The earliest example of a company implementing CM campaigns dates back to 1981 when American Express achieved great success in a national marketing campaign combined with a public cause project to restore the Statue of Liberty.In recent years,with the rapid development of e-commerce,online e-commerce platforms such as Alibaba,JD and Amazon have also opened channels for e-commerce enterprises to implement CM campaigns.The main reason why enterprises are keen on CM is that it not only improve social welfare but also enhance the profitability of enterprises.Although the research on CM in the field of supply chain management has shown an increasing trend in recent years,the current research still has some limitations and ignores some research opportunities,which are specifically reflected in the following three aspects.First,the decision results of different enterprises in the upstream and downstream of the supply chain may differ.In addition,most of the literature ignores the research on enterprises implementing CM by donating a certain proportion of sales.Therefore,optimizing and selecting the mode of different enterprises in the supply chain implementing CM by donating a certain proportion of sales is particularly important.Secondly,few literatures focus on the research of CM decisions under the competitive environment of manufacturers and e-commerce platforms’ private brands in the supply chain.Manufacturers sell and compete with ecommerce platforms’ private brands through two modes of agency and resell on ecommerce platforms,so whether both brands should implement CM,and how to make product pricing and donation decisions.Finally,while current research has focused on the CM decisions of firms within the supply chain,and few researches have considered the problem of CM decisions in a situation where both firms and consumers are heterogeneous between the supply chain.Therefore,this study focuses on the decision problem of enterprises implementing CM within and between supply chains.By analyzing the characteristics of enterprises implementing CM from the perspective of supply chain and the impact of CM on supply chain pricing and profit distribution,and by constructing relevant models,it mainly solves the decision problem of different entities implementing CM in the supply chain,the CM decision problem considering the competition of manufacturer and e-commerce platform’s private brands in the supply chain and the CM decision problem considering double heterogeneity in the supply chain.This study fills up some theoretical research gaps in CM in supply chain management.It provides correct decision-making guidance for enterprises to implement CM strategies accurately.At the same time,the conclusions of this study can also provide a reference for the formulation of relevant policies of government departments and the reasonable selection of appropriate cooperative enterprises by non-profit organizations.This study’s core research contents and conclusions include the following three aspects.First,decision on different entities implementing CM in the supply chain.The research takes the two-level supply chain composed of a single supplier and a single retailer dominated by a supplier in the supply chain as the research object.It divides the CM modes into four situations according to the different implementation subjects of CM and the endogenous or exogenous wholesale price.On the one hand,the research explores the inherent attribute characteristics of the CM mode by constructing a model of the warm glow effect based on the proportion of donations.On the other hand,by constructing the supply chain CM Stackelberg game model to maximize profits,we seek CM’s optimal pricing and donation decisions under different conditions and select the optimal CM mode under different conditions.The study found that the supplier or retailer can implement CM only when the revenue generated by the increase in sales and price caused by the warm glow effect compensates for the donation cost.Because of the different donation costs,the supplier is more likely to implement CM than the retailer.In the case of exogenous wholesale prices,when the sensitivity coefficient of warm glow effect is relatively low,the supplier should implement CM.When the sensitivity coefficient of warm glow effect is relatively high,the retailer should implement CM.When the sensitivity coefficient of the warm glow effect is moderate,the supplier can share the donation cost with the retailer to restrain the retailer’s free-riding behavior in implementing CM to achieve a win-win situation.In the case of endogenous wholesale prices,the supplier should implement CM,and compared with other CM modes,this mode has the largest proportion of donations.In addition,government subsidies are conducive to the implementation of CM by upstream and downstream enterprises in the supply chain,and when donated materials are of great importance to society,government subsidies are also conducive to the improvement of social welfare.Second,CM decision considering the competition of manufacturer and ecommerce platform’s private brands in the supply chain.The research mainly focuses on the two-level supply chain consisting of manufacturers and e-commerce platforms in the supply chain.Manufacturers choose the agency selling or reselling mode to sell their products through e-commerce platforms.The e-commerce platform’s brand compete with manufacturer’s brand in the downstream market.By constructing a game model of CM between the e-commerce platform’s private brand and manufacturer’s brand under the mode of agency selling and reselling,our paper studies the CM decision problem under the condition of brand competition in the supply chain.The research found that under the agency selling mode,the manufacturer’s brand and the e-commerce platform’s private brand both implement CM,or only the manufacturer’s brand implements CM may form a balanced strategy.Under the reselling mode,the only balanced strategy is implementing CM for both the manufacturer’s and the e-commerce platform’s private brands.At the same time,the research found that the manufacturer’s brand unit donation amount is the smallest under the agency selling mode.Under the reselling mode,the manufacturer’s and the e-commerce platform’s private brands have the same donation amount.The commission rate affects the effect of the manufacturer’s brand in implementing CM.Combined with the numerical analysis,it is found that the effect of the private brand of the e-commerce platform in implementing CM under the reselling mode is always better than the agency selling mode.We extend the model to the three-level supply chain and find that under the agency selling mode,the manufacturer’s CM on the manufacturer’s brand is beneficial to the profits of the upstream and downstream enterprises in the supply chain.In addition,the implementation of CM by enterprises has narrowed the "win-win" regional boundary where manufacturers and e-commerce platforms prefer the agency selling mode.For non-profit organizations to obtain a larger total donation amount,they should try to choose enterprises implementing CM under both manufacturer’s brand and the e-commerce platform’s brand to cooperate.Third,CM decision considering double heterogeneity in the supply chain.The research comprehensively considers the prosocial nature of consumers and the power asymmetry of enterprises,and studies the CM decision problem considering double heterogeneity in the supply chain by constructing a two-stage game model of simultaneous action.The research found that: firstly,the implementation of CM by heterogeneous enterprises between the supply chain can make prosocial consumers produce warm glow effect,which affects product pricing,and enterprises can change the size of the warm glow effect by deciding the unit donation amount.Secondly,when the warm glow effect is relatively small,heterogeneous enterprises should consider prosocial and non prosocial consumers to make pricing and donation decisions.When the warm glow effect is large,heterogeneous enterprises can use CM to only serve prosocial consumers by setting a high price,and the increase of marginal income generated by the high price is enough to compensate for the loss of profits caused by abandoning non prosocial consumers.When the sensitivity coefficient of warm glow effect is low,heterogeneous enterprises will have multiple CM equilibrium strategies according to the different fixed costs of implementing CM.Finally,combined with the case practice of e-commerce enterprises implementing CM,the only balanced strategy for heterogeneous e-commerce enterprises between the supply chain is both of them implement CM.The implementation of CM by disadvantaged enterprises will help narrow the scale gap with advantaged enterprises,and the implementation of CM is more beneficial to enterprises with relatively low product competition.The innovations of this study are mainly reflected in:Firstly,it explores the relevant issues of CM implemented by different entities in the supply chain in the form of donation of a certain proportion of sales.Different from the existing research on the form of enterprises using a certain amount of donation to implement CM,the CM mode of donating a certain proportion of sales is affected by the donation cost,which affects the donation proportion,and in turn affects the product pricing,thus affecting the decision-making of CM in the supply chain.Meanwhile,this study compares and studies the conditions for different entities in the supply chain to implement CM and the optimal donation and pricing decisions.We give the optimal decision for enterprises to implement CM when the wholesale price is endogenous or exogenous and discusses the new mode of CM by designing the donation cost-sharing contract.Secondly,this study combines CM and the competition between brands within the supply chain for the first time and studies their strategic interaction.The introduction of the e-commerce platform’s brand and CM makes the problem of profit distribution between the e-commerce platform and manufacturers more complex.The research gives the balanced strategy of CM for the two brands by constructing a CM decision-making game model under the two sales modes of agency and resale.In addition,this study compares and analyzes the effect,donation amount and social welfare of manufacturers and e-commerce platforms implementing CM under the two sales models.The relevant research conclusions provide a lot of theoretical bases for enterprises to implement CM.Finally,this paper elaborates on the CM decision problem considering the double heterogeneity of enterprises and consumers in the supply chain.Different from the previous literature,our study also considers how enterprises in the supply chain make CM decisions on the premise that enterprises have heterogeneity in product quality,brand,and other aspects and consumers have prosocial and non prosocial attributes.The research gives the optimal product pricing and the optimal unit donation amount of heterogeneous enterprises in the supply chain under different CM strategies by constructing a two-stage game model of simultaneous action.It gives the final decision result of the implementation of CM in combination with the fixed cost of the implementation of CM.In addition,this study verified relevant conclusions through case analysis.