Social Marketing of Successful Components of the Initiative: Promoting Behavior Changes by Making It Easier and More Rewarding: Benefits and Costs
Find ways as a social marketer to make the benefits of change attractive enough and the costs low enough that people will be willing to try something new.
-
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY MAKING BEHAVIOR CHANGE EASIER AND MORE REWARDING?
-
WHY SHOULD YOU TRY TO MAKE BEHAVIOR CHANGE EASIER AND MORE REWARDING?
-
WHEN IS THE BEST TIME TO ADDRESS BENEFITS AND COSTS?
-
WHAT ARE SOME WAYS TO LOOK AT THE BENEFITS OF BEHAVIOR CHANGE?
-
WHAT ARE SOME WAYS TO LOOK AT THE COSTS OF BEHAVIOR CHANGE?
-
HOW DO YOU MAKE BEHAVIOR CHANGE EASIER AND MORE REWARDING?
Marge was a single mother on welfare. When welfare reform hit, she was actually glad it was happening: she wanted to go to work and hoped that this would give her the opportunity to get off welfare once and for all. Her caseworker saw her as a prime candidate for job training and helped her enroll in a Certified Nurse's Aide program.
Although she was unsure of her ability, Marge was really excited. She had always been interested in healthcare and saw this as not only a way of finding a decent job, but the first step on a long climb to becoming a nurse. She eagerly waited for classes to start.
Then reality hit. First, Marge found out that the classes were held way across town, two long bus rides away - as much as two hours. She had to find child care for her two young children and worried about being away from them. Her caseworker got her on the waiting list for an approved daycare center, where childcare would be free, but even one opening, let alone two, might be months away. And there was no way Marge could afford to pay a babysitter for the 30 or more hours a week that she'd be away.
Marge was also discouraged by her intake interview for the program. The interviewer told her she'd be one of the oldest people in the class, and that, since she hadn't been in school for several years, she'd have to study hard. He didn't seem to be very encouraging, or to care much whether she succeeded or not. Marge was already worried about her ability to pass the course: the interview only increased her self -doubt.
After the interview, Marge gave up. If the training program had been closer to home, if there had been reliable child care, if the interviewer had taken an interest, Marge might have found it easier to go through with the training. The costs to her of the training program - the travel time, the child-care hassles, her anxiety about her children, her feelings of incompetence and self-doubt - simply outweighed the potential of benefits that were still vague and several months or years in the future.
When people are being asked to change their behavior, they pay attention to the benefits and costs of that change. This section will help you, as a social marketer, find ways to make the benefits of change attractive enough, and the costs of change low enough, that people will be willing to try something new.
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY MAKING BEHAVIOR CHANGE EASIER AND MORE REWARDING?
To make behavior change easier and more rewarding, you have to do your best to arrange things so that people perceive that they're getting the greatest benefits with the least cost possible. Alan Andreasen, in Marketing Social Change, proposes a three-pronged approach, summarized as SESDED: Superior Exchange; Socially Desirable; Easily Done.
- Superior Exchange: This means, very simply, you have to offer the best deal for the price. If people feel they're getting large benefits at a small cost, it's clearly worth it to them to change. By the same token, if the new behavior will clearly bring benefits greater than those of the current behavior - whether actual or perceived - then change is likely to occur.
There are three ways to try to create a superior exchange, all of which will be discussed in greater detail later in this section:
- Increase benefits. This could mean literally adding benefits to those already anticipated; providing information about benefits which people didn't know about previously; or changing people's perceptions about the importance of the benefits they know about.
- Decrease costs. Decreasing costs could involve subsidizing actual financial costs; changing conditions to make other kinds of costs less of an issue; or, once again, changing people's perceptions about the importance of particular costs.
- Decrease the desirability of competing alternatives. Badmouthing the competition is a standard commercial (and political) marketing technique. For social marketers, it is useful only in situations where the competition is a behavior detrimental to the health or well-being of the individual or society. If the goal is to eliminate the other behavior and substitute the changed behavior for it, then making the detrimental behavior less desirable makes sense. If the competition is a different program or treatment, then trying to discredit it may be unethical, and may easily backfire.
- Socially Desirable. People are much more likely to adopt a new behavior if friends, family, and/or their social group approve of it or practice it themselves. In that case, there is actually social pressure to make the change.
- Easily Done. The more easily the new behavior can be practiced, the more people are apt to adopt it. Removing barriers to participation in services, helping people gain the relevant skills to make a particular change, and providing material and psychological support are all ways to make behavior change easier to accomplish.
WHY SHOULD YOU TRY TO MAKE BEHAVIOR CHANGE EASIER AND MORE REWARDING?
There are really two simple reasons for you to try to make behavior change easier and more rewarding: it's possible, and it's important.
It's possible on two fronts:
- Through market research, you can find out a great deal about how your target audience views behavior change. This information can help you decide just how to market it, and increase the chances that your campaign will be successful.
- The benefits, costs, and conditions of behavior change are under your control, to at least some extent. You can change benefits, for instance, by increasing them; by altering the tone or target of an advocacy message; by attaching benefits to the behavior change itself, rather than just to its consequences; or by changing people's perceptions of their importance. By the same token, you can reduce costs by removing barriers, by providing more support for behavior change, by removing actual material costs (reducing or eliminating a fee, for instance), or by altering the circumstances or attributes of the desired behavior.
Making change easier and more rewarding is important because those can be the factors that determine whether or not people will actually make a behavior change. If they see the task as too hard, the costs as too great or the benefits as not great enough, they probably won't do what you hope they will. As a social marketer, therefore, you need to try to tip the scales on the side of change.
WHEN IS THE BEST TIME TO ADDRESS BENEFITS AND COSTS?
Access Checklist, PowerPoint