From brand equity to cause-related marketing: a case study on Coop Alleanza 3.0 The development of a new kind of cause-related marketing: CRM Mecenate

The notion of brand equity became a key marketing concept among business literature in the 1980s. Aaker, one of the main scholars on brand equity, defines it as “a set of brand assets and liabilities linked to a brand, its name and symbol, that add or subtract from the value provided by a product or a service to a firm and/or to that firm’s customers”. Brand equity has been studied under two main models: the market share model and the consumer-based brand equity model. Cause-related marketing plays a significant role in the building of brand equity, as it increases the knowledge of brand in consumers and spreads the associations with it. CRM can be viewed as a manifestation of the alignment of corporate philanthropy and enlightened business interest and a marketing program that aims at achieving two objectives: improving corporate performance and help worthy causes by linking fundraising for the benefit of a cause to the purchase of the firm's products. There are several ways of how cause-related marketing can be implemented in the marketing strategies: a portion of purchase/percentage of sales, action-driven and cause products. The first example of cause-related marketing dates to 1983, when American Express Company launched a CRM program for the renovation of the Statue of Liberty. Its aim was to donate a penny to the renovation for each use of its charge card and a dollar for each new card issued. Coop has been developing a cause-related marketing project involved in the origination of an arts-based brand loyalty building programme. A detailed analysis of the project and the insights that it has generated has been developed, as well as a qualitative research on consumers’ behaviour towards the project.