The Influence of social marketing on consumer behavior: a case of Nyeri Town constituency
Date
2017
Authors
Mwangi, Linda Wangechi
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Strathmore Univerity
Abstract
The world today is facing a dilemma on how to effectively appeal and reach out to people experiencing social and individual problems such as alcohol and drug abuse, domestic violence, lifestyle disease prevention and cures, road safety measures and low self-esteem leading to suicide. The use of social marketing campaigns has however been used to try and solve this dilemma by using the traditional marketing platform; TV, radio, print media and social media to try and change people’s behaviour. Though social marketing unlike commercial marketing focuses of influencing the consumer’s behaviour for their own wellbeing, faces a lot of challenges such as budgetary constraints, competing with commercial marketing campaigns for the viewer’s attentions and lack of priority in the consumers’ mind. Thus aim of this thesis was to investigate the influence of social marketing on consumer behaviour of Nyeri town constituency consumers’. There were four objectives; all to which were to understand the effect of the social marketing campaigns on the consumer’s attitude, purchase patterns and recall as well as to establish how frequently the consumers’ encountered the campaigns. Data was collected through questionnaires, where 110 questionnaires were issued but only 89 were analyzed through SPSS by use of descriptive analysis, correlation tests, cross tabulation tables and factor analysis statistical tools. The results led the researcher to conclude that first; consumers occasionally encountered the social marketing messages through the various platforms. Second, social marketing has a fair influence on consumer attitudes and lastly, social marketing had little influence on consumer’s actual purchase and brand recall. This therefore lead the researcher to recommend that social marketing campaigns to be run and launched more frequently for it proved to be an effective tool in influencing consumer behaviour only if consumers encountered the messages frequently. It was also recommended that social marketers should tailor messaged to appeal to the different audience to influence their brand recall, actual purchase and attitudes. The study was however limited to Nyeri Town constituency consumers’ as the unit of study. Also, the study only focused on consumer attitudes, actual purchase and brand recall and excluded consumer memory, perception and motivation as measurables of consumer behaviour. To add on, the study only sought to find out how often consumers’ encountered social marketing messages, it did not however study which of the social marketing platforms were effective in influencing behaviour, therefore providing areas for further research.
Description
Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment for the requirements for the Degree of Master of Commerce (MCOM) at Strathmore University
Keywords
Alcohol and Drug Abuse, Social Marketing Campaigns, Commercial Marketing, Commercial Marketing Campaigns