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Chinese Journal of Management Science ›› 2025, Vol. 33 ›› Issue (11): 275-287.doi: 10.16381/j.cnki.issn1003-207x.2023.0323

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Research on Cause Marketing Decision Considering the Competition of Manufacturer and E-commerce Platform's Private Brand

Chuanliang Wu1,2, Zhongjun Tian2, Jing Chen3()   

  1. 1.College of Economics and Management,Huainan Normal University,Huainan 232038,China
    2.College of Business,Shanghai University of Finance and Economics,Shanghai 200433,China
    3.School of Economics and Management,Southeast University,Nanjing 211189,China
  • Received:2023-03-02 Revised:2023-06-16 Online:2025-11-25 Published:2025-11-28
  • Contact: Jing Chen E-mail:jeanxi43@163.com

Abstract:

Cause marketing (CM) is one of the important ways for enterprises to fulfil their social responsibilities.With the rapid development of e-commerce, more and more manufacturers have begun to develop their online sales channels and compete with private brand of e-commerce platforms. The implementation of CM by enterprises can increase brand competitiveness, so more enterprises are implementing CM. When competitive manufacturer's brand and the e-commerce platform's private brand sell in the market, should they implement CM, and how should they make pricing and donation decisions?The two-level supply chain composed of manufacturer and e-commerce platform is taken as the research object. It compares and studies the CM decision problems under the condition that the brands in the supply chain are competitive under different sales modes by constructing a game model for implementing CM between the manufacturer's brand and the e-commerce platform's private brand under the agency and reselling modes. It is found that under the agency mode, both the manufacturer's brand and the e-commerce platform's private brand implement CM, or only the manufacturer's brand implements CM, which may form a balanced strategy. Under reselling mode, implementing CM for both brands is the only balanced strategy. Under the agency mode, the manufacturer's brand unit donation amount is the smallest. Under the reselling mode, the unit donation amount of the manufacturer's and the e-commerce platform's private brands is the same. Implementing CM for both brands is more conducive to the e-commerce platform. When both brands implement cause marketing under different sales models with lower commission rates, the manufacturer's brand's implementation of cause marketing is more effective than the reselling model. Combining with numerical analysis, it is found that the private brand of e-commerce platform implements CM under the reselling mode is more effective than the agency mode. In addition, by comparing the total amount of donations and the size of social welfare under different sales modes, the relevant conclusions also provide a lot of theoretical bases for non-profit organizations to choose cooperative enterprises and for the government to formulate appropriate policies.

Key words: cause marketing, agency and reselling, warm glow effect, pricing, donation

CLC Number: