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, involves a great deal of trust and confidence elements on the consumers' part to work through the stages of decision making to finally decide to make a purchase. We can even go as far to say that the element of trust in donating is even more prominent than in other industries, since when consumers make a purchase decision, they are not receiving a ‘physical' product that they can feel post purchase satisfaction with, they are simply expected to believe the benefits of their purchase and that their money is being used well. It is often the case with most charities that a donation does not merit the information as to what activity or campaign it is being used for, limiting the knowledge even further, and thus possibly affecting trust.

A consumer study survey conducted by Read Data Asset Management Group in 2010 showed that 42% of consumers would trust charities with their personal data “which is in stark contrast to government who were least trusted by 36%” (Read Data Asset Management Group Plc, 2010, pg 3). This is an interesting find in terms of confidence since the security of personal data is such a hot topic these days, with the public being incredibly cautious. The same study also examined reasons consumers would stop supporting a charity, finding that the highest rated responses were wasting money on marketing efforts, over contacting consumers and overly emotional marketing communications. These results are quite contradictory to reality since these tend to be the actions taken by the well known large charities, which are also the charities that are most popular amongst donors. We can also consider consumer trust and confidence levels not to be standardised across the industry; it may be that distrust stems from certain charity types or causes. There are a great number of ‘pop up' charities, created for crisis appeals, which are not well known or established as an entity and as such may not be as trusted. There is also the concern that such charities are started purely to merit the trustees a high wage.

Consumer confidence can be greatly positively influenced by the presence of governmental regulatory bodies, rules and standards within industries. The past decade has seen a dramatic incline in the efforts to regulate and increase transparency, since the likes of the Enron scandal and other highly publicised fraudulent business operations, resulting in the development of the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 to secure the business environment for consumers, and many UK equivalent legal regulations to the same context. Charities, akin to all organisations are required by law to abide to certain legal provisions. The United Kingdom adopted the EU Transparency Directive in 2007, which serves to promote appropriate disclosure of information, with the main areas of focus being “periodic financial reporting and disclosure of major shareholdings” (Ashurst, 2007). Supplementary to the above mentioned regulations, charities are subject to the legal provisions put into place for all businesses, set by the Financial Reporting Council (FRP).

Additional to standardised systems in place for accounting security and transparency, there are some regulatory bodies specific to the non-profit industry; transparency is also aided through the work of the UK Charity Commission, an 本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。