Hands-On Social Marketing

A Step-by-Step Guide to Designing Change for Good

Nedra Kline Weinreich

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781452237060
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Marketing

This book shows students and practitioners how to develop social marketing programs through a simple, six-step process of strategic planning and design. Nedra Kline Weinreich starts by introducing the concept of social marketing and then walks the reader through each of the six steps of the process: analysis, strategy development, program and communication design, pretesting, implementation, and evaluation and feedback.

The Second Edition incorporates developments in marketing practice over the last 10 years and focuses on how to apply the design approach to campaigns to effect behavior change. All organizations can do social marketing, Weinreich insists, if they follow the steps and start to think from a social marketing perspective.

Section II

Step 1

Analysis

SECTION OVERVIEW

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Before you jump into designing your social marketing program, you need to take a deep breath and just look around. Research plays an important role in the development of your program, and the first step is to gather all the information you can about the problem you are addressing, the environment in which it occurs, who it affects, and how it impacts their lives. In addition, your available resources will dictate the scope of the project. This section consists of the following chapters:

• Chapter 5: Research in the Social Marketing Process
• Chapter 6: Analysis
• Chapter 7: Conducting Formative Research

CHAPTER 5

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Research in the Social Marketing Process

Research plays a key role throughout the social marketing process—in understanding the issue and audience to develop an effective strategy, in tracking the implementation of the program, and in assessing the success of your efforts. If the word research is too daunting for you, think of it as gathering information from many different sources.

Each type of research is used at different points during the process:

• Formative research aids in the development of the strategy and includes the problem and environmental analysis, target audience research, and pretesting of messages and materials.
• Process evaluation research refers to the monitoring systems you put in place before and during implementation to track what is happening in the program and how people are responding in real time.
• Summative evaluation research helps you determine the effects of your program on reaching your goals and objectives, particularly in whether you brought about changes in factors such as knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors.

This section will focus on formative research as you start to build your program.

FORMATIVE RESEARCH

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The role of formative research in social marketing is to guide the initial development of the program. It helps to answer questions such as the following:

• What is the problem you are addressing?
• What is the context in which the problem exists?
• Who will be your target audience?
• How does your target audience think and behave as related to the problem?
• What product can you offer that will appeal to your target audience?
• What are the main barriers keeping your target audience from taking action?
• How can you best reach your target audience?
• Which messages and materials work best?
• What is the best social marketing mix?

Formative research occurs throughout the first four steps of the process: analysis, strategy development, program and communication design, and pretesting.

Before you start any research, know why you are collecting that information. Andreasen suggests a process called “backward research” in which you first identify the key decision points of the program and then determine the information needed to make those decisions.¹ From there, ascertain the best way in which to secure that information. Someone else might have already done the work for you by conducting research on that topic, or you might need to collect the data yourself. For example, to decide how best to reach your target audience with your message, you will need to find data on the types of media it pays attention to and where it gets its information on your issue, not just the standard knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors statistics. By thinking through the exact type of data needed, you can decide whether to use primary or secondary research and quantitative or qualitative approaches.

PRIMARY AND SECONDARY RESEARCH

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Generally, the most efficient way in which to gather information is through secondary research data from studies already conducted by other researchers or organizations. Secondary research includes sources such as journal articles, books, census data, marketing databases, and unpublished studies. The advantage is that your organization does not require on-staff expertise (beyond understanding and interpreting the research) or the additional expense of conducting its own research. It is rare, however, to find secondary research that answers all of your questions or addresses your specific target audience. You most likely will need to use a combination of secondary and primary research (i.e., data you collect yourself).

Primary research has the benefit of being tailored to the specific needs of your program. By using the process of backward research, you will know the questions to ask to get the information you need for strategic decision making. And you will be conducting research with precisely the people for whom the program is being developed.

In the pretesting stage, primary research is unavoidable; you must test your messages and materials with your own target audience. Such research also is necessary to assess the effects of the social marketing program once it has been implemented. As you will learn, primary research does not have to be difficult or expensive. You can conduct your own research, and your organization will be better off for it.

QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

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Another research concept that you need to know is the distinction between quantitative and qualitative research methods. When you think of the word research, what comes to mind? Things like statistics, experiments, and precision? The type of research most of us are familiar with involves quantitative methods such as standardized surveys, random samples, and statistical analysis. The results of quantitative research help you to understand how many people believe or behave a certain way, which characteristics are related to each other, and the probability that any behavior change was related to exposure to your program. In the quantitative world, things are black and white; they are either statistically significant or not. The only answers you obtain are those for which you thought to ask questions.

On the other hand, qualitative research methods help you to understand the “why” of an issue, bringing you beneath the surface of an answer. Many of these methods, such as focus groups, in-depth interviews, and observational studies, come from anthropology as well as commercial marketing. Qualitative research helps you to understand the issue from the target audience members’ points of view and enables you to find out why they think or do something the way they do. Responses are placed in context, and something as complex as human behavior is not reduced to a multiple-choice question.

Using both quantitative and qualitative research provides different perspectives on the same situation. There are times when one type of data is more appropriate than the other, but by integrating research methods throughout the program development process, your overall understanding of the issue will be much deeper.

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¹Andreasen, A. (1988). Cheap but good marketing research. Homewood, IL: Business One Irwin.

CHAPTER 6

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Analysis

Social marketers must know as much about the market they are entering as someone considering opening a new pizza delivery service in a particular community. Is there a demand for pizza delivery? Who are the potential customers? Who is the main competition? Why have previous companies failed or succeeded? What are the start-up costs? Before investing money and effort in starting the company, a good businessperson would investigate these issues thoroughly.

Similarly, social marketers must analyze several major issues when beginning to plan a social marketing program, including the following:

• The problem to be addressed
• The environment in which the program will be implemented
• Resources available for the program

By understanding the problem and environment, you will be better able to identify potential opportunities and stumbling blocks for the program. A realistic assessment of your available resources will help to narrow the scope of the program or may highlight the need for participation from other groups.

ANALYZING THE PROBLEM

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If you are planning a social marketing program, then you probably are already familiar with the topic you will be addressing. If not, then you might need to learn more about the issue before proceeding. Either way, research will help determine the approach the program should take. Secondary research is the best place to start to find the information you need. Once you have more narrowly defined the target audience and scope of the project, you also should conduct your own primary research.

Conducting a Literature Review

A literature review reveals the research information that already exists on your issue and helps you apply that knowledge to your own program. The process consists of the following steps:

1. Start with an Internet search to find freely available resources on your topic online.
   • Have an idea of the type of information you need to learn about your issue, such as biological or psychosocial aspects, epidemiology, and previous interventions that have been attempted.
   • You may be able to find excellent reports and articles, as well as data sets, that provide both broad and specific insights into your issue and audience.
   • Try different variations of keywords in your search to help you find everything that might be out there. Include social media and news sites in your search as well.
   • Follow links on the sites you find most useful to discover new sources of information that may not have shown up on your search.
2. Search the academic databases for the most valid research in peer-reviewed journals.
   • If you have access to a university library, you may be able to search its databases such as MEDLINE, PsychINFO, and POPLINE online or on site. You can also search Google Scholar for references to academic articles, books, and other publications.
   • Once ...