An Analysis of Consumer Complaints about Social Marketing Advertisements in Australia and New Zealand

While social marketers are rarely targeted in discussions of the ethics of advertising, we are increasingly becoming aware of the importance of ensuring that social marketing messages are developed and conveyed in an ethical fashion. The article reviews complaints made by members of the general public in Australia and New Zealand to the advertising regulatory bodies in those two countries for the five years 2000–2004; examining the number, type, and nature of these complaints – including the categories of advertising, and the types of appeals, which generate complaints from the general public in both countries. We find that, as for commercial advertising, there is a need for further research to explore “community standards” in relation to social marketing messages; and that there is a clear need for social marketers to consider consumer attitudes towards advertising when developing communication strategies and messages.     

How Does Perceived Effectiveness Affect Adults’ Ethical Acceptance of Anti-obesity Threat Appeals to Children? When the Going Gets Tough,the Audience Gets Going

Little is known on the appraisal of ethically questionable not- for-profit actions such as social marketing advertising campaigns. The present study evaluates the ethical acceptance by adults of anti-obesity threat appeals targeting children, depending on the claimed effectiveness of the campaign. An experiment conducted among 176 Belgian participants by means of an online survey shows that individuals’ acceptance of social marketing practices increases along with the claimed effectiveness of the campaign. As such it demonstrates that the audience adopts a pragmatic perspective, challenging the non-consequentialist stance of social marketers who refrain themselves from using these ‘questionable’ techniques although highly effective. The trade-off between ethical judgment and claimed effectiveness varies depending on whether the threats focus on the child’s physical integrity or social life. Individual characteristics such as parenthood and age also influence the relationship. All in all, it seems that people with stronger connections to the issue such as parents are more ready to compromise. These findings enrich our insights into consequentialism in social marketing campaigns, how people respond to controversial messages targeted at vulnerable group, and open new venues to social managers and public policy makers. Managerial implications and concrete advice on how to communicate with the various audiences are proposed, as well as suggestions for future studies.     

Theoretical Framework of Social Marketing Effectiveness: Drawing the Big Picture on its Functioning

Social marketing involves campaigns that aim to change individual behavior as well as prosocial behavior in diverse fields, such as health prevention and environment protection. Restricted public funds, debates about the social responsibilities of governments, nonprofit organizations and societies, as well as financial crises have increased interest in effective social marketing as a means of mitigating existing social problems. This article aims to draw the big picture on social marketing effectiveness by developing its theoretical framework. This framework brings together fragmented findings on social marketing effectiveness and incorporates a framework as a theoretically grounded process from relevant stimuli to intended responses. It provides a basis for further research. Recommendations for improved social marketing campaigns are derived. Managerial implications have great relevance for public and nonprofit management, as social marketing strongly influences the work and mission of public and nonprofit organizations.     

Rethinking the boundaries of social marketing: Activism or advertising?

In some areas of public health concern, corporate marketing activities may negate social marketing messages targeting individuals. Traditional social marketing campaigns may be ineffective when commercial marketing activities create an environment that encourages and maintains unhealthy behaviors. This article explores the role of social marketing in these instances.     

Shaping safe drinking cultures: evoking positive emotion to promote moderate‐drinking behaviour

Social marketing by Western governments that use fear tactics and threatening information to promote anti‐drinking messages has polarized ‘binge drinking’ and ‘moderate drinking’ through a continuum that implies benefits and harms for both individuals and society. With the goal of extending insights into social marketing approaches that promote safer drinking cultures in Australia, we discuss findings from a study that examines alcohol consumers' moderate‐drinking intentions. By applying the theory of planned behaviour and emotions theory, we discuss survey results from a sample of alcohol consumers, which demonstrate that positively framed value propositions that evoke happiness and love are more influential in the processing of an alcohol moderation message for alcohol consumers. The key limitations of this study are the cross‐sectional nature of the data and the focal‐dependent variable being behavioural intentions rather than behaviours. Research insight into the stronger influence of positive emotions on processing an alcohol moderation message establishes an important avenue for future social marketing communications that moves beyond negative, avoidance appeals to promote behaviour change in drinkers. These research findings will benefit professionals involved in developing social change campaigns that promote and reinforce consumers' positive intentions, with messages about the benefits of controlled, moderate drinking.     

She shares,but he does not: Gender differences in the sharing of charity‐related content on social networking sites

Online social networks are widely used methods of communication. This research examines gender differences in people's tendency to post charity‐related messages. In general, compared to males, females show more empathic concerns with online charity‐related messages, which increases their willingness to post messages on their online social networking sites. However, message framing is key. Females' higher tendency only holds for charity messages that focus on benefits to others or the feelings of others, not for messages that are self‐focused. This research also identifies one way of improving men's willingness to post. Messages that are framed by focusing on negative consequence appeals can increase empathic concerns, which can increase males' willingness to share online charity messages on online social networking sites.     

On the Effectiveness of Social Marketing—What Do We Really Know?

Social marketing continues to play an important role, as societies are facing diverse social problems. Therefore, scientific findings on the effectiveness of social marketing are particularly interesting. A rigorously elaborated, structured, state of the art covering two aspects—not only the currently observed restricted focus on health campaigns, but also the whole spectrum of topics and the diversity of applied methodologies—is needed. Accordingly, this article aims to identify and categorize relevant findings on the effectiveness of social marketing in a tentative holistic model, with a main focus on framing determinants. A research agenda, which includes research propositions on framing determinants in social marketing effectiveness, to enhance scientific progress in the field, is deduced from this state of the art.     

Transport Behavior: A Role for Social Marketing

SUMMARY

This article discusses travel behavior widely acknowledged to be a significant source of pollution: the use of private transport commonly referred to as the automobile. While this behavior can be tackled in a number of ways, this article presents an overview of key issues inhibiting a voluntary change in behavior among automobile users. These topics were identified based upon qualitative research data that was gathered from a number of UK households. The research methodology adopted different social marketing collateral in each of the households during the period of research. While weaknesses are identified in the marketing collateral, the research concludes that social marketing in itself cannot persuade people to make significant changes in their travel behavior. There are deeper issues at work for commuters that need to be more fully understood by the transport research community. The value of social marketing instead may lie as an effective channel of communication that can be utilized by designated authorities in delivering important transport messages to commuters and private transport users at large.     

Children's perception of food and healthy eating: dynamics behind their food preferences

Childhood obesity epidemic has been a popular topic for research as it has become a major health concern in many countries. As the focus of earlier studies has been predominantly on food marketing to children, there is still limited research on what other factors, apart from food marketing, influence their food preferences and eating habits. Bringing in children's perspectives as well as those of parents and guardians, this study aims to fill this gap by shedding light on further dynamics that can be influential on children's preferences. Through a qualitative inquiry, focus groups and individual interviews were conducted with children between the ages of 7 and 11. Aiming to investigate both meanings and practices, these sessions also included interactive and participatory research methods such as drawing, word games and role playing. Moreover, in-depth interviews were carried out with teachers and mothers to gain an understanding of their perspective on the topic. The findings show the different appeals and social influences behind children's food preferences, among which sensory and fun appeals as well as the influence of parents come forward. By revealing these different appeals of food and social influences, the study brings a new perspective to the discussions on childhood obesity and food marketing.     

How Economic Tropes Affect Attitudes Toward Social Welfare Policies

We offer a framework for understanding public responses to social programs designed to alleviate disadvantages experienced by some sectors of the U.S. population. The framework is built on 2 key tropes of generalized exchange theory: mutuality and possessive individualism. Using the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as a public sector context, we show how marketing messages can be manipulated to affect consumer likelihood to participate in and support the public policy. Consistent with cognitive attitude models, we find that beliefs regarding individual and mutual benefits are significant, positive predictors of ACA attitudes. In contrast, when messages are framed with ideological economic tropes—possessive individualism or mutuality—ACA attitudes diverge. Priming possessive individualism negatively affects program attitudes relative to a mutuality prime or a no-prime control condition. We conclude with policy advice for those tasked with effective implementation of public sector programs.     

To Share and Protect: Using Regulatory Focus Theory to Examine the Privacy Paradox of Consumers' Social Media Engagement and Online Privacy Protection Behaviors

Consumers' personal information often informs retailers' marketing efforts in terms of creating value in the online marketplace. This study examines four factors related to consumers' social media engagement and online privacy protection behaviors. Regulatory focus, social exchange, and marketing relationship theories explain the online consumer personal information share-and-protect model developed. Consumers aged 18–64 years across the United States participated in this survey research. The results suggest that while personal privacy violation experience and perceived secondary control of one's personal information are influential antecedents, privacy concerns and trust in social media websites mediate each of these respectively. The findings suggest that promotion- and prevention-related behaviors regarding personal information align with the orientation of the antecedents, indicating that regulatory focus theory shows promise for examining the privacy paradox. We conclude by developing a matrix that integrates regulatory focus and social exchange theories to guide future research.     

Ten Years of ‘Social Media Marketing’ Research in the Journal of Promotion Management: Research Synthesis,Emerging Themes,and New Directions

The study synthesizes research in emerging social media marketing domains by analyzing published articles on social media marketing in the Journal of Promotion Management published since 2007. We utilized interpretation and synthesis based assessment for examining the usage of social media marketing concepts with a focus on social media, social networking sites' utilization by firms, social media metrics and social media measurement, consumer decision making, consumer perceptions, and utilizing social media marketing across countries and cultures. We found a fair balance of application of social media variables across studies, even though most of these studies were quantitative. After studying the gaps presented in social media based studies of recently published articles, we present emerging social media marketing themes, new research foci and directions, and tried to build on research implications for both theory and practice.     

The impact of gender in marketing communications: the role of cognitive and affective cues

Turkey This paper explores the role of gender in the processing of the marketing communications messages of travel agencies operating in the Turkish domestic tourism market. The study focuses on the family holiday information search process and particularly investigates how wives and husbands respond to different marketing communications messages and why. By the use of focus group studies and interviews with tourists it is established that, although there are similarities between wives and husbands in terms of their responses to various advertisements, the underlining reasons are different. While husbands make their decisions through the use of heuristic devices, such as the credibility of the sender and the attractiveness of the sender and or message, wives make their decisions based on the content of the cognitive and affective cues provided in the marketing communications messages. The research also points out that there is a large potential for improving the marketing communications messages of travel agencies operating in the Turkish domestic tourism market.     

Beyond Advertising and Publicity: Hybrid Messages and Public Policy Issues

Abstract

This research explores a growing genre of marketing communication, labeled hybrid messages, which creatively combine key advantages (and avoid key disadvantages) inherent in advertising and publicity messages. Several types of hybrid messages are discussed, including those with long established histories (product placements, program-length commercials, program tie-ins), and those with a relatively recent origin (masked-art, masked-news, and masked-spokesperson messages). To obtain integrative insights on hybrid messages, this study: (a) reviews their historical/current regulatory status, (b) discusses their pros and cons, theoretical rationales and practical implications, and (c) delineates an extensive agenda for future research. Several important public policy questions raised by hybrid messages are addressed.     

Exploring interactive communication using social media

Engaging consumers in interactive marketing communication is instrumental in business–customer relationships building and development. Social media enables consumers to initiate marketing messages and gain growing control in the communication process due to its enhanced interactivity features. This study investigates whether communication between businesses and their social media users is interactive and how interactive it is. It also attempts to determine what types of messages are more likely to result in interactive communication. The findings reveal that businesses are attempting functional interactivity while individual users are increasingly securing a control to achieve contingent interactivity. Businesses are adopting a consumer-centric approach in designing and executing marketing communication messages to achieve interactivity though significant variance is established between businesses as measured by Interactivity Performance Matrix. Challenges remain for businesses as to how to engage their customers by utilizing the interactivity features of social media to facilitate relationships formulation and development.     

Upstream social marketing strategy: An integrated marketing communications approach

This article provides an organized approach for managers to develop social marketing strategies that target upstream decision and policy makers. A conceptual application model and five-stage process is presented for an upstream social marketing strategy based on integrated marketing communications (IMC). IMC concepts are described in the context of social marketing, as well as specific stages for creating an IMC social marketing strategy; these include target audience research and determination, channel selection and integration, strategic message creation, and measurement and control. A central and novel feature of the IMC social marketing strategy model is the simultaneous targeting of an upstream decision maker and influential peripheral (upstream) audiences in order to triangulate and increase campaign effectiveness. An IMC approach to upstream social marketing ensures consistent, persuasive messages specifically crafted for the selected target audiences and coordinated through precise channels to maximize impact. This multi-channel, multi-audience approach to message creation and channel selection produces synergies that increase the potential to influence an upstream decision/policy maker.     

Conceptualizing the brand in social media community: The five sources model

The emergence of social media is challenging the ways that marketing academics and practitioners conceptualize and manage brands. This research explores the consumers׳ specific motivations for the purpose and structure of the consumption of brands in social media community. Keeping the evolving economic relevance of social consumption in mind, the resulting conceptual model has been designed to give a better understanding of the unique branding opportunities and relationships that social media present to brand managers. The research employs a triangulated method that includes a social media-based Facebook focus group and face-to-face interviews. The findings suggest that consumers expect some very specific two-way interactions with brands and that social media may be the only way to effectively deliver these demands. This study identifies five core drivers of brand consumption in a social media community articulated in the Five Sources Model: functional, emotional, self-oriented, social and relational. These core drivers represent unique opportunities for brands to enhance their relationships with their customers and to increase the likelihood of an active and beneficial online community built around their brands. Future research implications are discussed.     

The effects of framing messages and cause-related marketing on backing intentions in reward-based crowdfunding

This study explores the main and interaction effects of framing messages and cause-related marketing on backing intentions by manipulating frame types, frame valences, and cause-related marketing in the message narratives of crowdfunding projects. We conduct an online experiment for a crowdfunding campaign and analyze data using independent-samples t-test and ANOVA. This study's findings show that negative messages lead to higher backing intentions than positive ones regarding attribute and goal framing messages. Narratives with cause-related marketing in crowdfunding projects had a more significant effect on increasing backing intentions than those without cause-related marketing. Positive attribute framing messages combined with cause-related marketing had significantly higher backing intentions than messages without cause-related marketing; for negative attribute framing, there was no significant difference between with and without cause-related marketing. This study theoretically advances the literature on reward-based crowdfunding, which provides scholars with insight into the effects of the written narrative design of crowdfunding projects on backing intentions and extends to the applications of framing effect theory and cause-related marketing. Practically, this study provides project initiators and crowdfunding platform operators with new perspectives on proposal copywriting content design and project operation.     

Comparing adolescent-focused obesity prevention and reduction messages

Drug abuse, smoking, and disordered eating literature reveal that some health promoting messages can induce unintended or harmful effects on the target audience. Scholars recommend careful messaging in social marketing campaigns, by shifting the focus away from health outcomes. This study tests the effects of adolescent-targeted obesity prevention messages (body-image, health benefit) with positive experience and unrelated messages on health behavior intentions and unintended effects. A pre-post experiment (N = 95) reveals that body-image public service advertisements (PSAs) may increase anxiety when compared to unrelated PSAs (no main effect, significant planned comparisons are found). Health benefit PSAs are more readable (F = 4.59, p < .05) than all other PSA groups and show higher healthy eating planning (F = 3.19, p < .05) compared to unrelated ones. No significant weight attitudes, self-esteem, and stages of change differences are found by message type. Overall, health benefit messages are not less effective.