Cause-Related Marketing and Purchase Intention toward Team-Licensed Products: Moderating Effects of Sport Consumers’ Altruism

Cause-related marketing (CRM) has been a crucial concept of sport marketing literature in the professional sport context. However, there is little evidence available to address the effectiveness of CRM when the levels of sport fans’ embedded psychological characteristics helping others are considered. The present study aimed to investigate the influence of sport fans’ perceived CRM motive of a sport team on fan attitude and purchase intention for the team-licensed products, and the moderating effects of sport fans’ altruism on the relationships among these variables in the context of the Korean professional baseball league. A total of 164 Korean baseball fans participated in the present study. Results revealed that sport fans’ perceived CRM motive significantly affected fan attitude and purchase intention for the team-licensed products, and fan attitude also had a significant impact on purchase intention. Moreover, sport fans’ altruism had significant moderating effects on the relationships between perceived CRM motive and purchase intention, as well as team attitude and purchase intention for the team-licensed products. Consequently, the present study might demonstrate that professional sport fans with high altruism are more likely than fans with low altruism to evaluate the motive of a team’s CRM campaign as cause-oriented and show their support for the campaign.