”Ett beslut taget med hjärtat eller hjärnan?”  : En beskrivande studie om donationsbeslut och processen bakom.

Sammanfattning: Throughout the years more and more charitable organisations have appeared and the competition between them has increased. This has forced the charities to use more marketing strategies in their work in order to strengthen their competitiveness.  Research in philanthropy in terms of economy and marketing has been neglected in Sweden and the research that is done today is mainly focused on why individuals donate to charity. A donation, according to the writers of this thesis, has been seen as an economical activity and can therefore be explained and understood through economical models and theories. This thesis aims to see how a contributor to charity makes the decision to donate money, consequently see how the donation decision process actually works from a theoretical model of a buying decision process from marketing literature.  The purpose of this thesis is therefore to from a buying decision process concerning products describe the donation decision process for contributors to charity. By achieving this purpose the writers aim to compare if a donation decision process go through certain steps similar to a buying decision process. This is expected to give a theory-testing contribution to science where the chosen theoretical model for a buying decision process is strengthened.  The thesis is based on a qualitative method of research to achieve this purpose where the main information comes from semi-structured interviews with three charities and ten individuals who all contribute to charity. From the gathered empirical data and the following analysis, several conclusions are presented in the thesis based on earlier research questions. The purpose of the thesis is considered to have been fulfilled, the chosen theory of buying decision process is considered to be fully proficient to explain a donation decision process. A donation to charity is, according to the thesis, considered as an impulse decision with low involvement that has strong emotional factors, such as motivation, which influences the decision. The writers believe that this thesis could be useful to other researchers within this field of science, or charities searching for insight into individual’s donation decision process.