Partnerships, Proof and Practice - International Nonprofit and Social Marketing Conference 2008 - Proceedings

The Strategic Fit of Community Events Hosted by Charities: Insights from Australia

A. Ruperto — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 19:09:34 PDT

A charitable organisation fits within the broader category of not-for-profit organisations (NFPs) which operate in a variety of sectors in Australia. As well as seeking to satisfy the demands of the persons in need of their services, many need to target suppliers of necessary operating resources. In an environment of growing competitiveness between NFPs for these resources and in many cases higher government and community expectations for these organisations to satisfy growing demand, many of these NFPs now resort to a number of marketing activities both as a means to increase awareness and as well as source funding and in-kind support. One activity for NFPs is to host a community event. There are calls for research to better understand the hosting of events by NFP organisations. This research identifies some key issues relative to the hosting of events by charities by conducting open-ended interviews with managers of charities. The findings make a contribution towards a greater understanding of events held by charities and NFPs generally and have relevance to managers as well setting an agenda for further research.

Factors Influencing Successful Collaboration: The Case of dKnet

J. Harman — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 19:05:39 PDT

Nonprofit organisations in Australia are facing increasing pressure to collaborate, yet much remains to be learned about the factors facilitating successful collaboration performance. This research explores a successful collaboration between eight disability services organisations in Victoria, centred on a shared Internet based knowledge management system. The research seeks to answer the key question: What are the factors associated with successful collaboration in this case? The research confirms a number of factors previously identified in the collaboration performance literature, but also identifies other factors (such as decision-making authority, institutional legitimacy and trust) which are understudied at the current time. Managers of nonprofit organisations (NPOs) in Australia face increasing pressure to engage in inter-organisational collaborations. Policy makers, funders and practitioners alike are extolling the benefits of collaboration; as a way of building financial sustainability, increasing innovation, even as a means to a more just and equitable society (Austin, 2000; Emerson and Twersky, 1996). For small NPOs in particular, collaboration with other nonprofits around such core functions such as marketing may hold particular promise. However, engaging in collaboration seems difficult in practice and much remains to be learned about the factors that influence its success. Against this backdrop, this paper explores a successful collaboration between eight nonprofit disability services organisations across Victoria. It seeks to answer the question: what are the factors associated with successful collaboration in this case? The paper is organised as follows. Section one provides a brief overview of the literature of collaboration performance and the method used by the researcher in this particular case. Section two provides some background to the collaboration (dKnet). It goes on to detail its outcomes and the factors that have significantly influenced its success. The paper concludes with a discussion of these findings and their implications for practitioners, policy makers and researchers of collaboration, nonprofit management and marketing.

The Impact of Cause-related Marketing on Nonprofit Organizations

D. Z. Basil — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 19:02:51 PDT

Cause related marketing (CRM) is an increasingly popular form of nonprofit/company alliance. The impact of CRM for consumers and companies has been studied, but little is known of the experience from a nonprofit perspective. This research surveyed 154 U.S. nonprofit (NPO) managers with direct CRM experience. Results demonstrate that CRM is a positive experience for NPOs. Outcomes generally meet expectations, and drawbacks are minimal. Overall CRM appears to be a promising method for NPOs to achieve both first order benefits (immediate financial support) and second order benefits (less tangible goals such as developing long term relationships and public awareness).

Reducing Underage Kerbside Drinking in North Tyneside: A Social Marketing Project

D. Ong — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:55:39 PDT

experience the highest levels of binge-drinking and life-time drunkenness in Europe. Youth drinking trends in North Tyneside reflect the national picture and many young people drink unsupervised on the streets, placing them at increased risk of alcohol-related harm (e.g. violence and assaults) and environmental danger (e.g. accidents and injuries), as well as contributing to residents’ fear of crime. The National Social Marketing Centre (NSMC) is working with North Tyneside Primary Care Trust (PCT) to use a social marketing approach to help reduce underage kerbside drinking in the Borough. A review of the secondary data and original primary research: in-depth, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and participant observation with underage street drinkers, their parents, local shopkeepers, residents and the trading standards lead, was conducted to explore why underage youths drink in public places in North Tyneside and what exchange could be offered to reduce this trend. A number of motivational drivers of underage street drinking were identified: 1) perception that there was nothing else to do; 2) normalisation of drinking and peer pressure; and 3) availability of cheap alcohol. These findings have led to the development of a multi-stranded intervention that incorporates: 1) ongoing social spaces with building-based activities; 2) out-of-hours activities in existing community services; 3) transportation; 4) reduction in underage alcohol sales; and 5) a communications strategy. The intervention is due to pre-test in July 2008 and preliminary results will be presented at the conference.

Describing Value in a Social Marketing Service: What is it and How is it Influenced?

N. Zainuddin — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:52:34 PDT

One of the challenges of social marketing is the maintenance of behavioural change in individuals. Consumers of social marketing services must first see value in adopting socially-desirable behaviours before committing to changing their behaviours. This paper proposes that in order to achieve sustained behavioural change in individuals, social marketing organisations must create and deliver value to their customers. A value creation process model is proposed which identifies four different types of value at different stages of the process. Sources of value that are likely to influence the value types are also identified. The paper concludes with recommendations for future empirical work which focus on identifying specific social marketing value types and sources that exist at specific stages of the social marketing service process.

Is it Green Marketing, Greenwash or Hogwash? We Need to Know if We Want to Change Things

L. Brennan — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:47:49 PDT

This paper explores the issue of sustainable marketing practices; more explicitly: whether or not marketers will trade off profitability for the environment. To examine this notion, a question was asked of certified practicing marketers (CPM) during a webinar on hot topics in marketing. Results show that the long term environment is still at risk as marketers are unwilling to trade off profits for sustainable practice. This implies that social marketing activities may require more intense efforts to redress this situation. These activities may need to include upstream social marketing that will require underpinning research for strategic direction.

It Depends on the Context: Community Views on the Use of Shock and Fear in Commercial and Social Marketing

K. Van Putten — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:43:54 PDT

Social marketing advertising has often utilised shock and fear based campaigns that contain frightening images, unsafe or illegal behaviour as well as violent and distressing images. To coincide with their use, there have also questions raised regarding the ethicality and acceptability of these types of appeals. Results from this pilot study support previous focus group findings, that members of the community have a teleological view of such issues in a social marketing context with a positive outcome justifying the means utilised to achieve it. All advertising whether it be commercial or social marketing, should maintain a level of ethical responsibility to ensure that campaigns are in line with evidence based community standards. This however can only occur when there is a relevant and well defined Code of Ethics to guide and uphold standards in relation to both commercial and social marketing advertising.

Service Failure in the Hospital Industry: The Indonesian Experience

L. Alfansi — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:39:14 PDT

The main objective of the study is to examine dimensions of service failures in the hospital industry. The primary study was conducted in four cities in Bengkulu province, Southwest Sumatra, Indonesia. Self-administered questionnaires were distributed in the survey to collect the dataset. The number of questionnaires distributed in the survey was 300 and 300 questionnaires were returned and analyzed. Factor analysis and cluster analysis were employed to the dataset. The result of the analysis reveals that service failure constructs can be categorized into six underlying dimensions such as Medical reliability errors, Physical evidences errors, Poor information, Medical treatment errors, Costly service, and Complaint handling failures. The study also indicates that hospital patients can be clustered into three segments, namely demanding segment, complainer segment, and salient patient segment. Service failure dimensions and the clusters found can be used by hospitals in Indonesia to improve their service process and delivery.

GIS for Measuring Product Performance and Strategic Planning: Mapping Condom Coverage, Quality of Coverage and Access to Condoms in Hot-Zone in Nepal

P. D. Pant — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:28:44 PDT

In recent years Nepal has progressed from a “low HIV prevalence” country to one with a so-called concentrated HIV epidemic in certain sub-groups of the population (e.g. sex workers and injecting drug users). Responding to this, national HIV/AIDS prevention efforts have focused on increasing correct and consistent usage of condoms among these groups. To support these efforts, this innovative research project was designed to use GIS to measure condom coverage, quality of coverage and access to condoms among women working in hot-zones, so as to facilitate more targeted marketing and distribution of condoms in these high-risk areas. The study was carried out in 15 of the 75 districts (defined administrative boundaries) of Nepal to assist evidence-based program-related decisions, and to monitor product and service performance. These 15 districts are combined into four geographically-defined study areas: (1) Kathmandu valley, (2) Dhading-Nabalparasi-Chitwan and Makawanpur district; (3) Rupandehi-Kailali Districts and (4) Kaski districts (see map 1). The study focused on geographic areas where high-risk commercial heterosexual activity was known to take place, as women working in these areas are the largest group infected with HIV. The study uses two sets of tools: GPS units to collect GIS coordinates, and audit administration in retail outlets to collect relevant information on condom products in the 19 sample hot-zones in each of the four study areas using systematic random sampling as suggested by the Lot Quality Assurance Survey (LQAS) method. This is pioneering work because it has created well defined hot-zones for targeted programmatic interventions. The hot zones can also be used to collect additional information that can be linked to assess program performance as well as monitor market performance over time, particularly the objectively verifiable product/service delivery. This study found that overall condom coverage in Nepal is good, with over 70 percent of hot zones having at least one condom-selling retail outlet per five high-risk meeting places. Donor subsidized condom (subsidized by donor and distributed by the social marketing company of Nepal) coverage ranged from 35 percent to 95 percent, while non-subsidized (condom sold by private marketers) condom brand coverage ranged from 20 percent to 85 percent. Despite this good condom coverage, the quality of condom coverage remains very poor, primarily due to low product and promotional material visibility, as well as few hot zones having the appropriate number of condom-selling outlets open at night. The ‘access to condom’ indicator was moderately strong in Kathmandu, with approximately 60 percent of hot spots having a condom-selling outlet within 100 meters. Outside of the Kathmandu valley, however, the results for this indicator were poor: approximately 15 percent of hot spots had a condom-selling outlet within 100 meters. The study has highlighted the need to focus programmatic efforts to enhance accessibility to condom-selling outlets and quality of coverage. For accessibility, resources should be used to increase the number of condom-selling outlets in hot zones. For quality of coverage, efforts should focus on increasing the number of outlets displaying condoms and promotional materials and the number of outlets open at night, perhaps through an incentive scheme. The research findings are the proof to improve condom provision in practice through public-donor-private partnership.

Defining a Process for Segmenting the General Practitioner Market for Rural Practice Recruitment

E. Hemphill — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:23:52 PDT

General Practitioner (GP) to patient ratios fall below benchmarks, particularly in rural areas. A marketing solution to this significant social problem might be to develop recruitment strategies differentiating medical practices (brands) and targeting different segments of the GP market. This paper uses data gathered from practice managers, GPs, and recruitment advertisements to develop a taxonomy of attributes considered in GPs’ practice choice. The key contribution of this research comes from the possibilities for GP recruitment outcomes from refined implementation of branding principles that includes differentiation between practices with targeted recruitment advertisements instead of the current practice of including a mix of Job, Practice and Family attributes. Adopting the structure of these sets of attributes as a taxonomy offers a new opportunity to examine how these attributes contribute to GP practice selection decisions. This research prescribes a path forward for future research to now determine the relative and absolute value of attributes considered in general practice selection. As a new step towards solving the rural GP shortage this will then lead to development of strategic marketing for GP recruitment. This work is of national and international importance as substantial policy initiatives in government and academic directives have not yet solved this significant social problem. The output from this work is a research instrument designed for GP data collection as a basis for developing improved practice recruitment strategies.

Environmental Influences on Tobacco Consumption by Smokers Intending to Quit

L. Clark — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:17:55 PDT

A research partnership has been forged between The Cancer Council of NSW (TCCN) and researchers at Macquarie University to investigate the influence of two relatively unexplored environmental factors on smoking behaviour in Australia: retail availability of tobacco and the presence of other people smoking in the vicinity of an individual. A diary method was used to collect what is believed to be the first publicly available detailed data on the tobacco purchase and consumption behaviour of intending quitters. The results show that after allowing for their usual level of smoking, intending quitters are more likely to smoke if there are 1) others smoking in the vicinity (with separate and additive effects for friends and/or family and other smokers) and 2) cigarettes for sale in the vicinity. The evidence generated through this research partnership will be useful in suggesting avenues for future policy and practice in the tobacco control area.

Smokers’ and Former Smokers’ Responses to Tobacco Retail Displays

J. Hoek — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:53:14 PDT

Recent findings suggest tobacco retail displays increase smoking susceptibility and experimentation among young people; however, less is known about how they affect smokers, particularly those making a quit attempt. This paper reports on 20 depth interviews conducted with former smokers and lapsed quitters. Although participants had differing perceptions of the salience of retail displays, several reported the visibility of tobacco products had complicated their quit efforts and virtually all supported a ban on tobacco retail displays. The findings extend earlier studies and provide insights into how tobacco retail displays undermine cessation attempts and tempt recent quitters.

An Investigation of the Duplication of Game Purchases between Regular and Pathological Gamblers

D. Lam — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:41:39 PDT

The purpose of this study was to explore the duplication of game purchases in regular and pathological gambling. A clearer understanding of the differences between regular and pathological gambling can aid public policy makers to better regulate the industry and reduce gambling’s negative social impacts. It may also help social marketers to devise more cost effective programs. Using the data collected by the Australian Productivity Commission, this study found that pathological gambling follows the Duplication of Purchase Law, which states that the dominant factor of purchase duplication between two brands is their market shares. Moreover, pathological gamblers were heavy gamblers who tend to gamble more intensively across multiple games compared to heavy regular gamblers.

Social Marketing through Business Alliance with Commercial Partners

R. Satyal — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:35:53 PDT

In recent years, the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Nepal has gained greater significance. Nepal has progressed from a “low prevalence” country to one with a so-called "concentrated epidemic" in certain sub-groups of the population (e.g. sex workers, injecting drug users). Responding to this, national HIV/AIDS prevention and social marketing efforts have focused on increasing correct and consistent usage of condoms among these groups. The thirty (30) years of investment by USAID in social marketing of condoms in Nepal resulted in an almost total awareness, and an annual demand of approximately 44 million condoms. Two sectors (government and social marketing) serve approximately 80% of this demand. The commercial sector is represented by approximately 25 different brands, coming in an assortment of combinations of different features: from ribbed, flavored, contoured and ultra-thin to ‘vibrating condoms’, which the target group prefer and is ready to buy, given the choice. The supply of condom, which is the only barrier method that can effectively prevent HIV/AIDS, is still reliant on international donors.

Cause Marketing Partnerships, Diffusion of Breast Cancer Awareness & the Komen Case

V. L. Vaccaro — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:29:53 PDT

First, this paper examines the growth of cause marketing. Then, an overview is provided of cause marketing partnerships used to increase awareness of the breast cancer cause by nonprofit organizations in the U.S. and in Australia Next, this paper discusses Diffusion of Innovation Theory, and is the first to apply this theory to cause marketing, with an analysis done in the specific context of The Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, the largest breast cancer nonprofit organisation in the world. The rationale for selecting this particular organisation had the purpose of determining Komen’s successful usage of partnerships, including cause marketing alliances, which can serve as an example for other nonprofit organisations. This paper provided new insights on the relationship of diffusion characteristics, cause marketing benefits and marketing strategies which can be of valuable assistance to nonprofit organisations to help achieve greater success in the future. In addition, recommendations are made for future research.

The Asthma Foundation NSW and Consumer Engagement

R. White — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:26:35 PDT

Consumer engagement is not a new term or concept. However its importance and benefits have been gaining increasing attention and application worldwide. Consumer engagement commonly means having consumers involved in a process. This can be for a variety of reasons – such as policy, program, product and service development or for political purposes. The aim of consumer engagement is to involve the consumer – whether you are planning a new health service, developing a new program, building a new highway or testing a new toothpaste. The core of consumer engagement is that the consumer is engaged, consulted or participating. They are part of the development, planning or decision-making process.

Not Just Any Volunteers: Segmenting the Market to Attract the High-Contributors

Melanie J. Randle — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:22:44 PDT

Growing competition in the third sector has resulted in non-profit organisations making more sophisticated use of marketing techniques to attract volunteers. Not only are organisations attempting to attract more volunteers but increasingly the focus is shifting to attracting the right type of volunteers, or those who will contribute the most hours. This study segments the volunteering market by number of hours contributed in the past 12 months, and identifies significant differences between the characteristics of high-contribution and low-contribution volunteers. High-contribution volunteers are found to (1) exhibit distinctive socio-demographic characteristics; (2) have a greater number, and broader range, of motivations for volunteering; and (3) initially get involved in volunteering in different ways to low-contribution volunteers. Findings are important because they provide practitioners with a description of those individuals most likely to contribute more hours which can be used to increasingly attract these types of people, and subsequently reduce the amount spent continually attracting new volunteers.

Product Evaluation in a Social Marketing and Community Development Context: A Case Study

A. Hill — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:18:20 PDT

We provide a case study of product evaluation for social marketing undertaken specifically within a ‘community development’ context. Starting Points is a highly differentiated not-for-profit development program targeting parents/caregivers of 0 – 4 year olds. The service ‘product’ evaluated is essentially the enhancement of ‘parental confidence’ achieved through participation in community based programs which are both marketed and delivered by peer facilitators. The paper locates such evaluation within the program evaluation and marketing audit literatures, describes the research design, and reports preliminary empirical results. These suggest the Starting Points product is perceived by participant parents and their partners as resulting in significant increases in parental confidence, sustained well past the immediate post participation period. These results provide one critical empirical element of a thorough product evaluation, itself a step towards a thorough-going social marketing auditing process applicable within a community development context.

Communication About Organ Donation Intentions: Formative Research for a Social Marketing Program Targeting Families

Sandra C. Jones — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:12:46 PDT

With the introduction of the Australian Organ Donation Register (AODR), responsibility regarding organ donation decisions primarily rests with the individual. However, family members can be instrumental in facilitating or hindering the rate of organ donation by objecting to or confirming the individual’s wishes. Attitudes and beliefs of family members have been shown to be a strong influence on people’s intentions to donate. Numerous studies have also demonstrated that family communication about organ donation can improve the rate of organ donation. We surveyed 23 matched pairs of undergraduate university students and their parents and found that attitudes to organ donation were positive and that there was a tendency for these dyads to give concordant responses regarding attitudes, level of family communication and intent to donate. The implications of these findings are valuable to the development of social marketing messages to improve Australia’s organ donation rate.

Developing Effective Communication Strategies to Promote the Help-Seeking of Young People With Mental Health Problems in the Illawarra

L. Phillipson — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:05:55 PDT

Formative research was undertaken in the Illawarra to identify local communication strategies to influence the help seeking behaviour of young people in relation to a new youth -focused GP mental health service. Research with the target market (12-25yrs) revealed the need for a local campaign to address the stigma associated with the use of mental health services, the need for segment - specific strategies tailoring communication variables and channels to reach different market segments and the need to emphasise the central role of the GP to the service In addition, responses indicated that a local campaign should also address the need for segment - specific strategies tailoring communication variables and channels to reach different market segments .