Effects of Cause Marketing by the Tourism Industry on Consumer Willingness to Recommend

Abstract

The tourism industry has become one of the world’s biggest industries and countries are sparing no effort in developing it by leveraging their natural and cultural resources. Future development of tourist travels still has considerable room for growth in terms of number of tourists, revenue from tourism and all social classes. In recent years, companies have been increasingly soliciting nonprofit organizations (NPOs) to collaborate on because marketing activities. However, a retrospective review of recent studies reveals that there has been little research on the combination of the tourism industry and philanthropic activities. This led to the author’s selection of this industry as the research topic. For this study, questionnaires were distributed to and collected from visitors in the Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village on-site. Of the 500 questionnaires distributed, 322 were collected, constituting a response rate of 64%. The findings include: (1) a significant positive correlation between cause marketing and the ‘philanthropy factor’ in willingness to recommend (WTR); (2) a significant positive correlation between cause marketing and the ‘efficacy factor’ in WTR; and (3) significant differences in the correlation between cause marketing and WTR due to ‘dissimilarities in demographic variables’. It is hoped that the suggestions given in this study can to some extent contribute to the development of cause marketing by the tourism industry. Keywords—tourism industry, cause marketing, willingness to recommend