Value creation in social marketing for the continued use of wellness services

In social marketing, in order to incentivise individuals into performing desired social behaviours, a value proposition is required (Dann, 2008; Kotler and Lee, 2008) as consumers often act out of self-interest (Rothschild, 1999). Value propositions offer relevant and timely incentives to encourage individuals to not only voluntarily perform these behaviours, but maintain these behaviours long-term. Much of the current research in value is focussed on a goods-oriented commercial marketing context, using an economic approach, which has resulted in a lack of investigation of value in a social marketing context from an experiential perspective (Holbrook, 1994), which this paper seeks to address. An online, Australia-wide survey was conducted on users of a “wellness service” (Zainuddin, Previte and Russell-Bennett, 2011, p.377) and the data was analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM). The results indicate that value created in this wellness service leads to satisfaction with the service and subsequently behavioural intentions to use the service again in the future.