---

Despite the vast research on Cause-Related Marketing, little is known about the instrument s potential to substitute direct donations. A company engages in Cause-Related Marketing when it teams up with a cause supporting charity organisation. The similarity with direct donations suggests that cause-marketed products bear the potential to tap the donation market. The present investigation extends prior research by identifying key drivers for purchasing cause-marketed products and its potential to gain access to the market of direct donations (Hypothesis 1). Second, the work tries to assess the geographic implications of a Cause-Related Marketing campaign (Hypothesis 2).The results of Hypothesis 1 indicate that cause-marketed products bear a potential to substitute direct donations. Findings of Hypothesis 2 show that the geographical context of a CRM campaign has implications on the cause supported by a nongovernmental organisation.

---

Johannes Sebastian Siebert was born in Penzberg, Germany in 1984. After his apprentice ship as a sales man he started to study Business and Management at the University of Applied Science in Kufstein, Austria in 2010. He obtained his masters degree 2010 in the field of Business and Management with the grade Merit at the Aston Business School in Birmingham, United Kingdom. After his intense travels throughout South America, Central- and South East Asia he discovered that many European brands support causes in the developing countries he has visited.This triggered his interest in the potential of Cause Related Marketing as a tool of to improve the customer s perception of a corporate brand.Finally, the lack of literature and studies in this new and partially unexplored niche of marketing triggered his wish to contribute to the topic.His study got awarded with the grade Distinction .

---