Abstract: When the performance of a subsidiary company in a corporate group is below the expected level, whether it chooses to actively develop cause marketing toward its head office to gain resource support or chooses the performance improvement strategy within the range of its own power performance is a problem worth a profound discussion. Through studying the behaviors of enterprises and the theories of performance feedback, this paper explores the willingness of the managers to carry out cause marketing, especially the cause marketing for innovations, when there are performance expectation gaps in the subsidiary. It also makes an analysis of the moderating effect of the influence of the subsidiary on the above-mentioned relationship. Through investigations and surveys of the senior managers of the parent-subsidiary corporations at different regions in China, we have collected 138 valid questionnaires which are filled out by the matched senior managers in both the headquarters and subsidiaries. The results of the empirical analysis reveal that along with the increasing gap of performance expectations, the willingness of the subsidiary managers for the cause marketing will be strengthened. However, the willingness to perform the cause marketing for innovation will be increased at first and then decreased. In addition, the influence of the subsidiaries can have positive moderating effects in the above-mentioned relationships.

Key words: performance expectation gap; problemistic search; cause marketing will; influence of subsidiary corporation