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Abstract
Although much research attention has been afforded to the reasons and motives underpinning why people donate money to charity, little is known about how the choice between organizations within the sector is made. In order to further research in this area, a model of new donor decision is developed and tested. Following an extensive study of relevant literature, brand salience and brand attitude are proposed as significant antecedents of brand choice intention, moderated by donor decision involvement. Hence, both memory-based and evaluative aspects are included within the choice model.
A mixed-method approach within the context of charitable donation following a natural disaster is used in order to purify the measures. Constituent elements include semi-structured interviews with practitioners and new donors, two cross-sectional surveys and testing of the full model using the Partial Least Squares approach to Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). Particular attention is paid to the development and testing of contextual measures for brand salience, conceptualized as a formative measurement model with two indicators, given the paucity of published scales for the measurement of the construct within the marketing literature.
Testing of the model, replicated across four leading international charities, reveals that both brand salience and brand attitude have a significant influence on brand choice intention. Although donor decision involvement is found to exert a positive moderating effect on the relationship between brand attitude and brand choice intention only, there is an indication of a consistent, negative effect on the relationship between brand salience and brand attitude. The income level of donors is also shown to function as a moderator, exerting a positive effect on the relationship between brand attitude and brand choice intention, while demonstrating a negative effect on the relationship between brand salience and brand choice intention.
This thesis provides particular support for the significance of brand salience as a factor in charity brand choice, in contrast to the brand values-dominated nature of a large proportion of charity communications. The significance of situational moderating effects suggests managers should consider varied communication and advertising strategies across different potential donor groups.