Impact Of Social Marketing On Business Marketing Strategy – Research Study

Problem Statement

Discuss about the Social Marketing in Marketing for Constructing Research.

The concept of the social marketing has gained a high level of popularity in the private non-profit, private for-profit and government agencies. Social marketing is the systematic process of marketing with some other behavioral goals of the business organizations towards a social good. The activities of the social marketing are associated with developing awareness among the public regarding the impact of different products. The social marketing activities are connected with the socio-cultural, political and environmental factors of the business environment. It helps the business organization to organize the marketing activities in a systematic way by developing proper policies for the marketing of the products (McKenzie-Mohr  2013). The social marketing concept also helps the business organizations to perform the CSR activities to improve the brand image. In this research paper, the impact of the social marketing over the marketing of the business organizations will be analyzed.

Social marketing is a major factor of the marketing concept to increase the behavior of the customers.  The practices of the social marketing are associated with the promotional tools of the business organizations. There are many critics regarding the definition, use and impact of the social marketing over the marketing. The actual impact of the social marketing over the marketing strategy and business performance need to be clear by conducting research work in this area.

The main aim and objective behind initiating this research work is to do investigation regarding the impact of the social marketing over the marketing. In order to complete this aim of the research study, the following research questions will be used.

Q1. What are the important factors of the social marketing?

Q2. What are the challenges faced by the business organizations to perform the social marketing activities?

Q3. What are the impacts of the social marketing activities over marketing?

Q4. What are the suitable recommendations for utilizing the social marketing activities to improve the marketing strategy?

The social marketing concept is getting high level of popularity day by day. At present, every type of business organizations is focusing the social marketing concept in the marketing strategy. The topic has been important in this time but the use of the social marketing in the area of the marketing strategy is not so clear to the business organizations. There are many critics about the expansion of the marketing strategies beyond of the traditional marketing management strategy. Many previous practitioners and scholars are now recognizing the social marketing as a viable subject of research, teaching, and practice. Research work in this topic will help to understand the concept of the social marketing in a clear manner. Research work in the present market regarding the impact of the social marketing over the marketing will shed light on the actual impact in present situation in a clear manner.

Research Objectives/Questions

At first, the literature review will be conducted to understand the different types of concepts and strategies used in the social marketing. In the literature review of the research study, the existing theories and models of the social marketing will be analyzed to understand the important activities of the social marketing strategy. Primary and secondary data will be collected from the annual reports of the popular business organizations and the personnel associated with the management of the special marketing strategies of the business organizations. In this way, the second objective of the research study i.e., to understand the challenges of the social marketing activities will be understood. Primary data will be collected from the common people or the target customers of the business organizations and the managers of some popular business organization regarding the impact of the social marketing over the marketing strategy. This will help to fulfill the third objective of the study. The findings of the data collection of the research study will be analyzed and compared with the findings of the literature review section to understand the present loop holes in the social marketing practices. The theories and models will be analyzed with the present findings to give some suitable suggestions to the business organization to improve the marketing strategies of the business organizations.

The outcomes of the research study will help to analyze both the positive and negative impact of the social marketing over the marketing strategy of the business organizations. In order to use the social marketing strategy within the business environment, the clear understanding of the concept should be understood by the management of the business organizations. The responses of the target customers will help to understand the impact of the social marketing activities over the behavior of the customers. It will help the managers of the business organizations to use the social marketing strategy as an advance tool of the marketing strategy of the business organizations. The different aspect of the using the social marketing activities will be understood in a clear manner with the help of the outcome of the research study. It is very important to understand the existing problem with the social marketing activities to resolve the problems in future. The outcome of the research study will shed light on the problems or challenges faced by the existing business operations. The understanding of these factors will help the business organizations to improve their market strategy. Therefore, it can be concluded that the small and big business organizations will be benefited from the outcome of the research stud as they will be able to improve their marketing strategy with the help of these to gain more profit in the future business operations.

Justification of the Project

Social showcasing is the precise use of promoting alongside different ideas and methods to accomplish particular behavioral objectives for a social decent. Social showcasing can be connected to advance, for instance, merit products, make the general public evade negative mark merchandise and along these lines to advance that considers society’s prosperity in general. This may incorporate requesting that individuals not smoke out in the open zones, for instance, request that they utilize safety belts, inciting to make them take after rate limits (Nolan and Varey 2014).

Albeit ‘social promoting’ is now and again recognized just as utilized standard business activity for showcasing practices for implementation of non-business objectives, this is an over-disentanglement. The essential points of ‘social promoting’ is ‘social great’, while in ‘business advertising’ the point is fundamentally ‘monetary’. This doesn’t implacable for the business advertisers, who cannot add to accomplishment of social great. Theories and models for what sorts of social issues in what sorts of circumstances are most suitable (Burchell,  Rettie and Patel 2013). In characterizing what social advertising is, numerous creators incorporate the thought of trade hypothesis to connection it to its promoting roots. Different authors on the subject discard any notice of trade hypothesis, either in their meaning of social promoting or its key components, in a survey of the trade idea’s place in social showcasing, reasons that ” is either missing or uncaring”.

Added to this disarray are different creators who allude to a “social advertising hypothesis”. While creators, for example, perceive the worth of the trace related ideas for management of social advertising, both the components are holding open numerous and other hypothetical models, which might be connected in the genuine improvement of social showcasing programs. “Showcasing is hypothesis based. It is presumed on speculations of buyer conduct, which properly drawn upon the behavioral and social sciences” (Lefebvre 2013). Truth be told, this is the thing that happens in the act of social showcasing. Numerous social advertisers don’t report on their work in expert diaries or at gatherings, and of the individuals who do, as it were a couple concentrate on the hypothetical models that affected their judgments on determination of target crowds, questions postured amid developmental exploration concentrates on, procedures chose, how program components were chosen and created, what results were proposed and how they were measured (Hastings and Domegan 2013).

Health belief Model: As discussed in the above section, this theory is the most popular theory among the public health practitioners. This theory was developed for generating the awareness among the common people (Lefebvre 2013). The core components of the theory are as discussed in the below section:

• Perceived sensitivity and vulnerability
• Perceived benefits and advantages
• Cues to action
• Perceived severity and extremity
• Perceived barriers and hindrance

Expected Research Output/Outcome

Social Cognitive Theory (SCT): SCT is associated triadic reciprocality in which the interpersonal, cognitive and behavior are analyzed. One of the key aspects of the SCT is an environmental variable. As opposed to the previous hypothetical models, SCT expressly to recognize that conduct is not controlled by commonly structured data and figures, or that is an individual result of their surroundings, however that selected individual has provided direct affect on what activities they pursue, their own attributes, and how their reaction changes as per their environment. There are several surrounding changes are based on three different elements are following in nature (Nolan and Varey 2014). It is fall under one of the key ideas of SCT (ecological variable) is observational learning. In difference to prior behavioral speculations, SCT recognized that it is not only one that fortifies or rebuffs practices, yet it additionally gives a milieu where an individual can observe the activities of others and assumed the outcomes of those practices. Forms overseeing observational learning included:

• Attentional: for picking up and looking after consideration
• Retention: for being recalled
• Production: for duplicating the watched conduct
• Motivational: for being empowered to create the conduct

Other center parts of SCT included:

• Self-adequacy: for a judgment on an individual’s capabilities to achieve a specific level of execution.
• Outcome desire: a judgment of the possible result such conduct will produce.
• Outcome hopes: the quality set on the results of the conduct.
• Emotional adapting reactions: techniques used to manage enthusiastic jolts including mental resistances (refusal, constraint), intellectual systems, for example, issue rebuilding, and push administration.
• Enactive learning: for achievement from the outcomes of an individual’s activities comparison with various observational learning.
• Rule learning: initiated for creating and structuring several behavioral examples, regularly accomplished through secondary procedures and abilities through direct experience.
• Self-administrative capacity: a lot of conducts is motivated and controlled by inner gauges and self-evaluated response to their own observed activities (McKenzie-Mohr 2013).

Hypothesis:

            H₁: Social marketing has a great influence on the marketing of the business organizations.

            H₀: Social marketing has no impact on the marketing of the business organizations.

• Literature review: In depth study of the existing theories and models of the social marketing concept will be performed accordance to the extreme beginning level of the research study. There are also many research activities have been conducted for the social marketing arena. The research papers or journal articles written by the previous researchers will be used in this section. Some textbooks regarding the social marketing concept will also be used for the literature review (Leedy and Ormrod 2013). The different types of activities of the social marketing will be clearly understood in the literature review section of the research study.
• Research methods: The research study will be completed by following the positivism philosophy. The scientific factors of the research area will be used for analyzing the social impact of the research factor. Deductive and inductive approaches are the two most important research approaches used for the academic research works (Eaton 2013). Inductive research approach is used for the research studies are conducted for implementing new theories about the research topic. Deductive approach will be used for conducting the research study where the existing theories will be used to analyze the present impact of the social marketing (Novikov and Novikov 2013). Design of the research study will be descriptive. The academic research works can be done by three methods depending on the data used in the research study. They are quantitative, qualitative and mixed research method. The research studies that use the quantitative data are called the quantitative research method; the researches that use qualitative data are called the qualitative research work. The mixed method of research is not any new method. It is the mixture for the quantitative and qualitative data in one research study (Brown and Stowers 2013). In this particular scenario, quantitative and qualitative both the data will be utilized for analyzing the impact of the social marketing on marketing. Therefore, the methodology of the data research study will be conducted on the basis of mixed method.
• Data collection method: As discussed in the previous section, qualitative and quantitative both the data will be utilized for the research study with the help of primary and secondary data. The selected secondary data of the research study will be qualitative only. This database will be collected from the annual reports of the well recognized business organizations, authentic news reports and research works conducted by authentic organizations or individuals (Klassen et al. 2012). This data will be collected from the online resources available in the World Wide Web. The primary data selected for the research study will be quantitative and qualitative in nature. The primary data will be quantitative, which is supportive for the research study will be collected from the common audiences or the target customers of the companies, which are using the social marketing in their marketing strategy. A marketing survey will be conducted among the targeted audiences who are the customers of a particular company (Chandra and Sharma 2013). In the survey, the people will be asked about the impact of the social marketing activities performed by the business organizations. Survey questionnaires will be developed for this purpose. There will be some simple close ended questions. The level of agreement of the respondents will be gathered by using the options of Likert scale (1. “Strongly disagree”, 2. “Disagree”, 3. “Neutral”, 4. “Agree”, 5. “Strongly agree”). The questionnaires will be distributed among the respondents and then they will give responses by choosing the options as per their choices (Alvesson and Sandberg 2013). The qualitative primary data of the research study will be collected by interviewing all the people who are in managerial position within a particular business organization, and they are using the social marketing strategy in their marketing strategy. The will be asked about the challenges and benefits they are having in the use of the social marketing.
• Data analysis method: The data analysis methods used for the quantitative and qualitative data of the research study will be different according to their usage. All the statistical analysis will be conducted to analyze the quantitative data of the research study. The entire database will be collected and then summarized in graphical and tabular format (Brown and Stowers 2013). Then the statistical analysis will be done by using the SPSS software package. In order to analyze the qualitative data, deep observation will be required.

The research study will be organized as the following structure. There will be five chapters in the final research paper.

• Chapter One: The first chapter of the research paper will be the introductory chapter. In this chapter, the aims and objectives of the research study will be described in detail.
• Chapter Two: In this chapter, the literature review will be conducted by reviewing the available literature regarding the social marketing theory and concept. Research papers of the previous researchers will be reviewed in this chapter for this purpose.
• Chapter Three: The third chapter of the research paper will be about the methodology of the research work. Research philosophy, approach, data type, data collection method and the method of data collection of the research study will be described in this chapter.
• Chapter Four: The data collected for conducting the research study will be summarized and analyzed in this chapter. The findings of the research study will be compared with the theory and concepts found in the literature review section of the research study.
• Chapter Five: This will be the last chapter of the research paper, where the entire findings of the research study will be summarized to draw the conclusion of the whole research study. The objectives or the research questions has been declared in the chapter one will be compared to the findings of the research study.

Task Name	Start Day	End Day	Duration (Days)
Research Proposal
Literature Review
Data Collection
Data Analysis
Final Report Submission

Activities	1st to 4th Week	5th to 9th Week	10th to 15th Week	16th to 20th Week	20th to 21th Week	21th to 23th week	24th Week
Topic Selection
Literature review
Collection of Primary data
Collection of Secondary data
Research plan formation
Appropriate Research Techniques Selection
Analysis & Interpretation of the collected Data
Findings
Conclusion of the Research Study
Submission of Final Work

The proposed budget required to conduct the research study is around $5000 to complete by the mentioned time frame in the Gantt chart. The mentioned amount of money will be required for the different types of activities as described in the section below:

• The literature review of the research study will be conducted by reviewing relevant textbooks, journals or academic research papers. These resources are not free of cost. In order to get access to these resources around $1500 will be required.
• In order to gather the database for the research study, a survey needs to be conducted among the targeted audiences. In order to this, questionnaires have to be printed and distributed among the target people. The different types of activities which require costs are posting/mailing, travelling, printing etc. These activities will cost around $2500.
• The calculations of the collected data will be done by using some software tools. Some money needs to be allocated for this purpose. The cost required for this activity is around $1000.

The budget requirements are summarized in the table given below:

Purpose	Estimated Amount of money
Literature review	$1500
Data collection	$2500
Data analysis	$1000
Total estimated budget	$5000

References:

Alvesson, M. and Sandberg, J. 2013. Constructing Research Questions. London: SAGE Publications.

Bhadra, M. 2012. Mental Health & Mental Illness: Our Responsibility. Health Renaissance, 10(1).

Brown, J. and Stowers, E. 2013. Use of Data in Collections Work: An Exploratory Survey. Collection Management, 38(2), pp.143-162.

Burchell, K., Rettie, R. and Patel, K., 2013. Marketing social norms: Social marketing and the ‘social norm approach’. Journal of Consumer Behaviour,12(1), pp.1-9.

Chandra, S. and Sharma, M. 2013. Research methodology. Oxford: Alpha Science International Ltd.

Eaton, S. 2013. The Oxford handbook of empirical legal research. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 16(6), pp.548-550.

Hastings, G. and Domegan, C., 2013. Social marketing: From tunes to symphonies. Routledge.

Klassen, A., Creswell, J., Plano Clark, V., Smith, K. and Meissner, H. 2012. Best practices in mixed methods for quality of life research. Qual Life Res, 21(3), pp.377-380.

Leedy, P. and Ormrod, J. 2013. Practical research. Boston: Pearson.

Lefebvre, R.C., 2013. Social marketing and social change: Strategies and tools for improving health, well-being, and the environment. John Wiley & Sons.

McKenzie-Mohr, D., 2013. Fostering sustainable behavior: An introduction to community-based social marketing. New society publishers.

Mitchell, M. and Jolley, J. 2013. Research design explained. Australia: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

Nolan, T. and Varey, R.J., 2014. Re-cognising the interactive space: Marketing for social transformation. Marketing Theory, p.1470593114523444.

Novikov, A. and Novikov, D. 2013. Research methodology. Leiden, Netherlands: CRC Press/Balkema.

Popping, R. 2012. Qualitative Decisions in Quantitative Text Analysis Research. Sociological Methodology, 42(1), pp.88-90

Salaberry, M. and Comajoan, L. 2013. Research Design and Methodology in Studies on L2 Tense and Aspect. Boston: De Gruyter.

Thomas, J. 2013. Empathic design: Research strategies. Australasian Medical Journal, 6(1), pp.1-6.