www.ccsenet.org/ijms International Journal of Marketing Studies Vol. 3, No. 3; August 2011 ISSN 1918-719X E-ISSN 1918-7203 174 Examining the Effects of Cause-Proximity and Gender on Consumers’ Response to Cause-Related Marketing: Evidence from Malaysia Marhana Mohamed Anuar (Corresponding author) Faculty of Management and Economics, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu 21030, K.Terengganu, Malaysia Tel: 60-9-668-3290 E-mail: marhana@umt.edu.my Osman Mohamad Graduate School of Business, Universiti Sains Malaysia 11800, Penang, Malaysia Tel: 60-1-3423-6298 E-mail: osman@usm.my Received: December 17, 2009 Accepted: March 26, 2011 doi:10.5539/ijms.v3n3p174 Abstract Over the last decade, cause-related marketing (CRM) has become a popular marketing strategy for companies. Academic research suggests outcomes of CRM campaigns are generally positive for companies as well as for causes. For companies, CRM has been noted to increase sales and enhance companies’ image. As for causes, they received greater funding and publicity. Cause-proximity which is one of the important elements of CRM’s structure has been suggested to significantly influence consumers’ response towards CRM. However, the impacts of cause-proximity on consumers’ response are inconsistent. In this light, this paper investigates (1) the effect of cause-proximity on consumers’ response to CRM. (2) the moderating role of gender on the relationship between cause-proximity and consumers’ response to CRM. The results indicate that the effect of cause-proximity is insignificant while gender does influence consumers’ response to CRM. Based on these results, implications for CRM campaign managers and research limitations are highlighted. Keywords: Cause-related marketing, Cause-proximity, Gender, Consumers’ response, Malaysia 1. Introduction The number of businesses that support causes has grown substantially. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives have become increasingly popular among companies in many parts of the world. Cause-related marketing (CRM) is a common and popular form of CSR; CRM links a purchase of products or services to donation to cause. According to Varadarajan and Menon (1988), CRM is a program designed to create a partnership between a company and a cause in order to raise money through product sales. Since CRM’s inception 25 years ago, CRM is now flourished. The budget spent on cause-partnership was expected to reach USD1.55 billion in 2009 (IEG, 2011). The growth of CRM has been an international phenomenon (Wymer and Samu, 2009). North America and European countries have shown the most rapid growth of CRM. However, CRM has also been noted to emerge and gaining popularity in countries outside North America and Europe such as China, Malaysia, Thailand and many more. As CRM becomes more widespread, companies must be critical in designing their CRM campaigns. This is very important as to ensure the success of CRM campaigns. CRM structural elements refer to messages that explain the CRM campaign presented to the consumer (Grau and Folse, 2007). Several CRM’s structural elements such as product type (Subrahmanyan, 2003; Strahilevitz and Myers, 1998), cause-type (Cui et al. 2003; Ellen at al. 2002), cause-proximity (Grau and Folse, 2007; Ross et al. 1991) and fit between sponsoring company and the cause supported (Hou, Du and Li, 2008) have been postulated in the literature to influence consumers’ response to CRM. Their findings suggest that these structural elements do influence consumers’ response to the CRM campaigns. Of these elements, the effect of cause-proximity on consumer response warrants further exploration as studies that examined the effect of CRM supporting an international cause on consumer response still rather limited. Controversy exists regarding supports of local, national or international cause. Although, the survey conducted by