Controversial products need to be marketed to consumers in order to generate interest and increase sales. However, the marketing of controversial products is challenging to marketers because such products are generally perceived negatively by consumers and often their promotion evokes negative feelings (Waller and Fam, 2000). As such this study seeks to make significant contribution to knowledge in this area by examining consumer attitudes towards promotion of controversial products in particular funeral products. This study was conducted in the context of a developing country and also seeks to examine how the promotion of controversial products is influenced by cultural aspects. Specifically, this study focuses on consumer attitudes towards promotion of funeral products and related services; and how the intensity of self-prescribed religiosity and cultural values affect such attitudes among urban consumers in Botswana.

The study gathered data through a structured questionnaire from a purposeful sample of 470 respondents. The respondents were targeted at one of the local private universities and local churches within the city Gaborone. The findings of the study indicated that consumers of funeral products have strong and positive attitudes towards the promotion of funeral products and related services. It was also revealed that consumers have a high intensity of self-prescribed religiosity which significantly influenced aspects of their attitudes such as evaluations, subjective norms and intentions regarding promotion of funeral products and related services.

The study further revealed that consumers perceived all the studied cultural values to be of great importance to them. In particular, conformity and security were considered to be the most important values while power emerged as the least important value. Consumers who valued achievement exhibited positive intentions and were highly motivated to comply with subjective norms regarding promotion of funeral products and related services. Consumers who valued self-direction held positive beliefs and evaluations about promotion of funeral products and related services. Additionally consumers who valued benevolence expressed negative evaluations towards promotion of funeral products and related services.

An investigation of the effect of demographic variables (ie. age, gender, household size, and education) revealed that age and level of education have significant influence on consumer beliefs, evaluations, subjective norms and motivation to comply. Gender also indicated significant effect on consumers’ motivation to comply. Generally, household size had no effect on the consumers’ attitudes towards promotion of funeral products and related services. Moreover, none of the demographic factors had any influence on the consumers’ intentions.

Overall, the results validate that the intensity of self- prescribed religiosity and cultural values affect consumers’ attitudes across different demographic profiles. These insights are loaded with implications for policy developers and marketing practitioners. The study implies that regulatory bodies can develop codes of conduct which can regulate the promotion of controversial products in order to protect the society and safe guard the morals by which the nation stands by. The study also provides four main implications for marketers. Firstly, Batswana have demonstrated to hold positive attitudes towards promotion of funeral products and related services, this implies that marketers can invest more into promotion of these products in order to draw attention to them. Secondly, the findings suggest that highly religious respondents would most likely display positive evaluations and subjective norms. This implies that marketers can segment the market into smaller niches with similar characteristics like targeting similar religious groupings. Thirdly, the importance of cultural values to consumers can be used by marketers to reinforce in their promotion those values that are important to Batswana in order to effectively appeal to them. Lastly, results indicate that opportunities exist for marketers to use demographic factors of age, gender and education to segment and target customers accurately.

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