Brand, Social Cause Association: An In-Market Assessment of Promotion Effectiveness

In this paper we propose a quasi-experimental framework to uncover the in-market effect of a real-world brand-social cause association. Our interrupted time series nonequivalent control group quasi experiment integrates survey data, household behavior and in-store data to assess the effects of such a promotion on category purchase, brand choice and purchase quantity decisions. Propensity score matching is used to rule out any selection bias concerns in our quasi experiment. After accounting for differences between test and control groups, effects of changing market conditions and treatment response heterogeneity, our results show that a social cause association translates into a share gain for the brand. This promotion lift comes from a specific segment of the category buyers. We also assess relative effectiveness of a brand-social cause association vis-à-vis traditional promotions. We argue that the quasi-experimental approach provides a general framework that could be used to study the effectiveness of other types of promotion where the in-market outcomes of the treatment exposure are observed, and individual assignment to a test or a control group is not random.