Abstract:
Cause-related marketing has been described as a versatile marketing tool capable of accomplishing a wide
range of marketing objectives. The fact that each year thousands of marketers use charitable donations to
promote their products demonstrates that many companies consider cause-related marketing to be a valuable
marketing tool. Yet, the benefits of such campaigns are not always obvious and many critics claim that
CRM reduces traditional philanthropy. As far as Sri Lankan milk powder industry is concerned, CRM is one
of the strategies, applied by the marketers. In this study, the attention has been paid to analyze the Ethical
Issues of Melborn’s CRM strategy, because Melborn Milk was highly controversed recently as a product
which contain DCD. Primary data were collected from Colombo and Matara districts by using a survey based
questionnaire and 100 Housewives were selected randomly as the sample. Basically, it was attempted to
analyze the Ethical Issues of Melborn’s Life saving program by using four variables. Based on the analyzed
results, it was revealed that consumers believe the company’s CRM strategy as an unethical strategy. Further,
customers expressed their negative views towards all the 15 issues related to the four variables and the
mean values closer to 2 for all the statements proved this idea.
