Customer Clustering Analysis in Cause-Related Marketing Based on Product Type

Linking a brand with a cause, known as cause related marketing, is one the methods of handling corporate social responsibility. It has attracted the attention of many companies due to its positive impact on customers’ behavior. In this method, charitable payments of the corporation are linked to the profitable financial transactions of customers as in donating money per purchase. Many different factors affect the formation of the cause related marketing campaign including the size of donation, charity type, product type, social reputation of the corporation, cause importance, geographical proximity of the cause, and etc. This Applied Development study is a descriptive survey research in terms of methodology, focusing on the product type, and aims to classify (group, sort) the existing products and to present a clustering format for customers in cause related marketing. In this regard, data from a 27 question (product) questionnaire which was distributed between 524 students of some of Tehran’s universities were scrutinized. The products are classified into 5 general groups of hedonic; essential; sanitary-therapeutic (health-care) products; housing and amenities; and digital products based on the exploratory factor analysis and a varimax orthogonal rotation of 27 factors of the study. Also, based on the presented K-means clustering, customers are clustered and labeled (Taxonomy) into 3 groups of altruists, product-based (including those focused on essential products-housing and amenities; and those focused on hedonic sanitary-therapeutic, and digital products), and distant customers.