Social Marketing Quarterly

Racial and ethnic targeted marketing of junk foods, particularly sugar sweetened beverages (SSBs), is a health concern for communities already disproportionately suffering from obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.

The article is a report on qualitative research which explored attitudes and message testing intended to dissuade youth from drinking SSBs.

Can the incorporation of countermarketing messages improve the effectiveness of a curriculum and/or social marketing campaign to reduce SSB consumption among youth in The Bronx, NY?

Eight focus groups (N = 66) with youth 12–15 to explore ideas and messages to reduce SSB consumption. Youth were recruited from a coalition of afterschool programs dedicated to eliminating racial and ethnic health disparities. The focus groups explored product (formulation), price (low), place (ubiquity), and promotion (racial and ethnic targeting), and focused on messages that can be used to counter existing industry messaging.

Countermarketing, a sub-field of social marketing, has been effective in tobacco control, but its effectiveness has been less understood with ultra-processed foods and beverages. We wanted to learn how participants would respond to information about the product manipulation and racial targeted marketing that underlies much of the poor nutritional choices in underserved communities. We were seeking to determine if incorporating this information into a comprehensive social marketing plan could positively influence consumption habits.

Eight focus groups with 66 students. The focus group guide was informed by the Theory of Planned Behavior and the literature on youth consumption of SSBs, and employed a semi-structured interview design. Using an inductive modified grounded theory approach, the team identified relevant themes and insights for social marketing practice.

The results of this study can assist in the development of a social marketing strategy to reduce SSB consumption among populations targeted by food and beverage companies. The study reinforces prior research that countermarketing messaging may be effective in such a campaign. Potentially effective messaging topics include racial/ethnic targeting, product formulation, and the health effects of processed foods.

While this research project covered messaging and broad strategy, it did not explore specific tactics to activate the concepts discussed in the focus groups. Also, while the study may be considered generalizable to other large cities in the U.S., broader applicability should be met with caution.

SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) has spread to almost every area globally, infecting millions and killing millions. Several measures have been instituted across the globe to reduce the spread of the pandemic. However, the traditional strategies employed by governments and other stakeholders to tackle COVIT-19 pandemic have not been effective in changing behaviour.

The study sought to investigate the influence of social marketing on eliciting voluntary adoption of Covid-19 safety behaviours during and beyond the coronavirus pandemic by integrating two behavioural change theories.

the study tested the following key hypotheses: perceived susceptibility of the Covid-19 pandemic will have significant influence on motivation to engage in safety behaviour, perceived severity to the Covid-19 pandemic will have significant impact on motivation to perform the Covid-19 safety behaviours, perceived benefits for engaging in the Covid-19 safety behaviours will significantly influence motivation to engage in the safety behaviours, perceived efficacy of the safety measures to prevent Covid-19 will have positive and significant impact on motivation to engage in the safety behaviours, there is a positive association between confidence in ability to perform the safety behaviours (self-efficacy) and motivation to perform the safety behaviours, there is a positive connection between cues to action and motivation to perform the Covid-19 safety behaviours and there is a negative relationship between perceived barriers and motivation to engage in the Covid-19 safety behaviours and Motivation to perform the Covid-19 safety behaviours will result in the actual performance of behaviour to wash hand frequently, avoid handshaking, social distance, and wear a facemask.

The data was collected from 540 respondents in Ghana and the hypothesised relationships analysed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The study found a strong positive and significant relationship between motivation to engage in the safety behaviours and actual performance of the behaviour. The result further shows severity, perceived benefit, response efficacy, perceived barriers, cues to action, and self-efficacy as antecedents for motivation to engage in the safety behaviours during and after the pandemic. There was however, an insignificant relationship between perceived susceptibility and motivation to engage in the safety behaviours.

The contribution of this research among others to the field of social marketing constitutes an extension of previous theories that will expand generalisations or fine-tune the theoretical propositions. It is worth mentioning that although the health belief model has been empirically proven for its predictive ability to explain a significant amount of variance in health-related behaviours, integrating response efficacy and motivation from the protection-motivation theory in our model provides a high explanatory power of the model. The study, thus, contributes to the theory-building effort in social marketing.

Since this study only concentrated on residents in Accra, we do not assume that the findings reflect the views of the general Ghanaian population. This may limit the generalisability of the results. Future research may consider collecting data from the general Ghanaian population.

To counter the effects of radicalization, we should first understand the persuasion mechanisms used by fundamentalist organizations to reach and engage with potential candidates to religious radicalization, particularly in Western societies.

The paper analyzes ISIS and Al-Qeada (AQ) propaganda as grotesque transparency strategy, with particular attention to the so-called “Islamic State.”

The main research question guiding this case study is: how the “grotesque transparency” strategy is articulated in the context of radicalization propaganda by Islamist terrorist organizations? The secondary research question is: how the understanding of the “grotesque transparency” strategy could inform social marketing and policy initiatives to counter the effects of such propaganda?

The novelty of grotesque transparency in the context of digital networks lies in the ease with which potentially everyone can be a propagandist, transforming the strategic prescriptions of the organized terrorist into an individual “creative” tactic or action. In this context of media fragmentation, the notion of social marketing as mainly a strategic endeavor to favor general change of attitudes and behaviors may be reconsidered as a more dialogic and individualized interaction to understand the expectations, needs and ideas of the “tribal groups.”

By applying the “aquarium metaphor”, the author describes the narrative of such radical groups, including the visual elements that are key in the case of grotesque transparency in the digital media ecosystem.

The visually grotesque gives meaning to events in a world of excess, fragmentation, and disenchantment. The language of the ocular reduces ambiguity, privileges the concrete, and facilitates moral judgments. It has become a way of “knowing” based on emotion.

Social marketing experts and officers might reconsider the very notion of strategy when trying to counter the effects of grotesque transparency radical propaganda among certain groups of the population, moving beyond the more traditional approach of control-command to a more open and interactive process to engage in a dialogue and connect with individuals, their families and peers through strategizing.

The analysis presented here of the Islamist terrorist propaganda is based on a literature review and some empirical research. The question of reception and tactical appropriation by some groups remains an important area to be explored in future research.