Ch. 04.doc

CHAPTER FOUR UNDERSTANDING TARGET AUDIENCE BEHAVIOR Key Points This chapter reinforces the concept that the objective of all marketing strategy is to influence behavior. Attention given to changing beliefs and attitudes is a means to the ultimate end of behavior change. Since marketing is customer centered, all strategic planning begins with understanding target audience behavior. The marketer aims to bring about exchanges and value propositions so that the target audience members give up costs in return for expected positive consequences. In addition, the marketer needs to ensure that positive social influence by others occurs and that the target audience has a sense of self-efficacy about the behavior being promoted. The BCOS model (benefits, costs, others, self-efficacy) provides the drivers underpinning target audience behavior change. Exchanges in the nonprofit sector usually entail high involvement and complex decisions. The process of making them evolves over time and can be broken up into stages of: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation and action and maintenance. Different kinds of marketing interventions are needed at each stage to move target audiences to the next one. During contemplation, target audiences evaluate alternatives in the choice set and form attitudes, which influence their behavioral intentions. Behavioral intentions will also be influenced by others and by perceptions of outcome efficacy and self-efficacy. Chapter Outline Behavioral Drivers — The BCOS Factors The Central Role of Exchange and Value Propositions Types of exchanges Levels of Understanding of Target Audience Behavior Individual Behaviors Involvement and Complexity Highly Complex Decisions Stages of Change The Contemplation Process Simplified and Low Involvement Behavior Emotion and Mood Vignette: MD’s Wash Your Hands and You get a Starbucks Gift Card A study by the Institute of Medicine in 2000 estimated that between 44,000 and 98,000 Americans die each year due to hospital errors and that one of the leading causes is the spread of bacterial infection due to poor hand-washing and personal sanitation techniques. The Cruise industry has had some success through vessel sanitation programs, which, among other things provides hand-washing antiseptic to passengers upon re-boarding. The focus of the case is Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles using the Cruise ship model in modifying physician’s and staff behaviors to increase hand washing and reduce bacteria spreading behaviors. In addition to aggressive education, they increased the “value proposition” by creating a Hand Hygiene Safety Posse that gave out $10 Starbucks Cards as a reward for the right behavior. They raised the cost of the alternative behavior by creating a screen-saver showing the bacteria grown in a Petri dish after culturing and photographing reside on the hands of the doctors at a Chief of Staff’s Advisory Committee meeting. Hand-hygiene compliance at Cedars-Sinai rose to virtually 100% with no decline since the screen saver went up. This case illustrates the need to understand and address the underlying causes of behaviors that lead to problems. While it is important to ensure that people know and understand what behavior is risky to a population, it is not enough to just encourage a behavior through education and a rewards system. In this case, the “positive” education was accompanied by negative “counter-education” about the previous undesirable behavior. This case proposes that marketers not only market the desired behavior through education and reward, but also market the negatives of the current undesirable behavior. Do you agree? What other examples can you think of which uses this positive-negative behavior marketing approach? Chapter Summary The purpose of this chapter is to reinforce the author’s contention that the bottom line of all marketing is to influence behavior. Marketing may aim to change ideas, attitudes and thoughts, but only as a means to achieving the end result of behavior change. Efforts that seek only to change mental states do not constitute marketing rather relate to another discipline such as education. Behavior is driven by a vast complex of factors that are discussed through several theories, including the MOA model (motivation, opportunity and ability) and the BCOS (benefits, costs, others and self-efficacy) model. The first two factors – benefits and costs – are at the heart of the exchange process that nonprofit managers seek to influence. Marketers believe that the way to achieve competitive success it to offer superior value propositions which reinforce the complex benefits and overcome reluctance to change by addressing costs – economic, psychological, etc. When the target audience believes that the ratio of benefits to costs is better than alternative actions, behavior changes. Nonprofit managers seek to amplify benefits and reduce costs in order to get target publics to behave in certain ways such as donating funds or serving as volunteers. Complicating the benefits-cost decision making process is the influence of others in the form of interpersonal or social pressures. These “other” influences can work for the marketer, such as when a donor gives because he or she sees his or her peers doing it, or against the marketer such as when teens engage in self-destructive behavior because “everyone is doing it!” in their personal social circle. The fourth element of the BCOS model is self-efficacy, which refers to a person’s belief in personally being able to make the behavior happen. Many times people have social support and a belief in the beneficial effects of a behavior such as stopping smoking, but are unable to adopt it because they think they actually cannot succeed. The basic principle of exchange is that trade-offs occur between the perceived benefits and costs of any particular behavior. The challenge of marketing is to maximize the perceived benefits and minimizing the perceived costs of the behavior though a compelling value proposition. For the marketer to be successful, the target audience must believe that the exchange the marketer is promoting is better than any reasonable alternative, including doing nothing. It should be noted that the nonprofit and the target audience are at inverse positions in this propositions — in that whatever benefits a target audience might derive from a transaction represents a cost (of providing it) to the nonprofit, while the costs that the target audience pays (effort, time, money, etc.) represents benefits to the nonprofit. Exchanges can be between two parties or involve multiple parties who are allied with either the marketer or the target audience or who seek to influence the exchange. Exchanges can involve either fixed duration transactions (such as product sales) or continuing duration transactions. The latter is more typical in a nonprofit environment where the goal is often to get the customer to adopt a desired behavior and then reinforce it. Understanding of target audiences is crucial to nonprofit managers and marketers in key broad decision-making categories: (1) aggregating target audiences into segments; (2) selecting the appropriate target audience segments; (3) positioning the desired behavior(s) as a desirable value proposition; and (4) how to translate the value proposition into specific decisions about the offer, its costs, and how it will be delivered and communicated. There are four levels at which a manager can understand target audience behaviors so as to make these decisions better or easier: (1) Descriptive Understanding in order to profile and categorize target audiences; (2) Understanding of Associations of behaviors with each other and with target audience characteristics; (3) Understanding of Causation which establishes how and why target audiences make certain decisions; and (4) Ability to explain causation or why certain audiences will behave or think in a certain way. It is most effective to base personal observation and research of these issues on a sound model, such as the BCOS model. Individual behaviors that a marketer can influence require target audiences to decide to act or not act. Decisions about actions vary in two important dimensions: level of involvement and complexity. The degree of involvement in decision-making relates to the degree of problem solving and personal relevance activated, which can be high or low. High involvement decisions are typically complex in nature, although previous experience can reduce the complexity. Exchanges in nonprofit organizations are typically high involvement in nature. High involvement and complex decisions do not come about quickly, but evolve over time. The process can be broken down into four stages of change: (1) precontemplation, where a person is not thinking about the behavior of interest; (2) contemplation, during which the person thinks about the behavior and calculates its costs, benefits, what others think, and his or her own ability to act; (3) preparation and action, in which the person has moved to a willingness and desire to act; and (4) maintenance, where the person tries the behavior and the challenge is to permanently adopt it. Nonprofit marketing campaigns can be more effective if marketers tailor their interventions to the stage at which the target audience is found. For people in precontemplation, the marketer needs to focus on creating awareness, knowledge and interest in the targeted behavior through marketing actions aimed at need arousal. During the Contemplation stage, marketers must influence the target audience in information gathering and ensure that the targeted behavior is in the set of choices being considered, is evaluated as preferable other options and then becomes the intended behavior to perform. For those in Preparation and Action the key is to help bolster self-assurance and maximize opportunities to act, while for those in Maintenance attention must shift to creating reward systems, making repeat behavior easy, keeping social or interpersonal pressures positively bearing down on the desired behavior. Understanding the choice set and process by which decisions are made are crucial to the marketer. Criteria for making choices from the choice set are based on the individual’s needs. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs provides a model which places needs in categories of: physiological, safety, social, esteem and self-actualization. Marketers can determine the criteria consumers’ use by any of four methods (outlined in the appendix of the chapter): (1) direct questions, (2) indirect measurements, (3) perceptual mapping, or (4) conjoint analysis. In analyzing benefits and costs, individuals consider their own set of perceptions about the desired behavior, their beliefs and how important or valuable each of the benefits and costs are to him or her, the set of criteria weightings. Collectively, these perceptions and their importance comprise what the individual believes is the value proposition being offered. The focus of required research should be on behaviors and behavioral intentions, not just beliefs if campaigns are to be developed which will truly influence behavior. In addressing choice behavior based on beliefs and criteria weightings, marketers have seven focused choice interventions. The marketing professional can: (1) change beliefs about alternatives; (2) Change beliefs about competitive behaviors or doing nothing; (3) Change weightings in the value of the criteria weights; (4) Call attention to neglected favorable consequences or (5) add new favorable consequences which changes the criteria or criteria weighting; (6) Bring positive referents to bear, influencing the “other” in the BCOS model, or (7) finally, focus on support or influence to an individual’s self-perceptions. The more experience a person has with making complex decisions, the more simplified the process becomes. For simplified behavior, the experienced target audience member will evaluate a pre-selected choice set of known behaviors on familiar criteria with already set weightings and the decision will involve little concern for efficacy. For low involvement behavior that is habitually routine, little evaluation takes place and as Bagozzi’s research demonstrates, future behavior is best predicted by past behavior. Most models focus on rational, thinking approaches to choice, however other social scientists caution marketers not to underestimate the effect or mood or emotion in behavior choice. Marketers in high involvement, emotion packed behavior marketing should consider focusing not only on rational facts, but try to communicate in ways to create moods or feelings and positive associations with the organization’s offerings. Teaching Suggestions It is sometimes helpful to “test” student’s reading behaviors by offering a short quiz at the beginning of the class. Continue to try to find new ways to incorporate visual and audio elements into the lecture. If guest lecturers are not available, often, recorded interviews can augment class discussion. Frequent class interaction with open-ended questions reinforces learning as form of demonstration. In discussing Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, work with the students to find examples in the classroom or environment of products and or services which meet each of the level of need, such as having the class in a building to meet physical and safety needs, the class itself or “brand clothing” as examples of social needs and esteem needs, and finally, the eventual degree as an example of the self-actualization need. Frequent discussion helps to illustrate key points – discussion of text points can lead to the next text point or key learning. Possible discussion points for this chapter include: Have student discuss or seek out as an out of class assignment a high-involvement behavior marketing case in the nonprofit world such as use of condoms, family planning, weight loss, smoking cessation or others and describe how the nonprofit used or failed to use the behavioral models shared in the chapter. Have students create a list of examples and tools used to “market” to target audiences in each of the stages of change in a making a complex decision – from precontemplation to maintenance. Discuss the overall decision making process, consider breaking the class into groups to map out an actual experience of decision making taken by one person in the group such as deciding on a major or degree program. Have them include discussion of how their choice set developed in comparison to the models in the text. How well did the models capture what actually happened? What implications can be drawn? Where does the BCOS model fit in here? Discuss high involvement decisions and have the students interview someone about lack of success in adopting a high involvement behavior such as dieting or smoking cessation, using questions that operationalize that model. How well did the model predict the person’s actual behavior? What practical problems occur in trying to use it? What feasible strategies for changing complex behaviors can be developed? Discuss the role of mood or emotion in the decision making process. What kinds of nonprofit environments should consider targeting messages to mood and emotion? Why? Short Answer Questions 1. Describe the four drivers of human behavior that the authors organize the chapter around. (BCOS) Benefits: the positive consequences of a marketing exchange Costs: what has to be given up or incurred from the exchange such as time Others interpersonal or social influence Self-efficacy; feeling that one can actually behave in the desired way 2. Describe the stages of change involved in making a highly complex decision Precontemplation; where the person is unaware of the issue Contemplation: where the persons things about the costs, benefits, social influence and efficacy of the behaviors proposed Preparation and action: where the person is ready to act Maintenance; where the person has begun to act and faces keeping up the behavior 3. What levels of relationships between variables should a marketing manager study in order to understand consumer behavior? Descriptive understanding of the characteristics of the market Understanding of the associations between market characteristics and behaviors Understanding the causal relationships where one variable leads to another Ability to explain why causal relationships exist What are the Strategic options for changing behavior? change beliefs about alternatives; Change beliefs about competitive behaviors or doing nothing; Change weightings in the value of the criteria weights; Call attention to neglected favorable consequences or add new favorable consequences which changes the criteria or criteria weighting; Bring positive referents to bear, influencing the “other” in the BCOS model, or finally, focus on support or influence to an individual’s self-perceptions. What are the characteristics of the kinds of high involvement exchanges that marketers in nonprofit organizations manage? Involve very elemental aspects of one’s self-image Involve major personal or economic sacrifices Risk major personal or social costs if a wrong choice is made Involve a considerable amount of peer pressure for or against Multiple Choice Questions The high involvement that is typical in consumer decision making in nonprofit marketing exchanges does NOT include the following: a. the decision is seen as of high personal importance b. a sense of self-efficacy is needed c. the decision has been taken many times before (moderate; p 96) d. the personal or social risks of a “wrong” decision are perceived as high e. Outside peer pressure is high Believing that the ratio of benefits to costs of the option is positive, is characteristic of: a. behavior change b. exchange c. behavioral intention d. indications of positive peer pressure e. all of the above (Easy; p 92) A perception that quitting smoking will cause a person to gain weight is an example of: a. a behavior consequence or outcome (Moderate; p 96 ) (AACSB Reflective Thinking) b. self-efficacy c. interpersonal influences d. cost/benefit analysis e. “wrong-headed” thinking what are key factors that determine what criteria are used in choosing amongst options in a marketing exchange? a. elaboration likelihood b. behavioral intentions c. personal needs (moderate; p 102) d. social need e. fixed duration exchanges According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a sense of belonging is a: a. physiological need b. safety need c. social need (Easy; p 103) d. self-esteem needs e. self-actualization needs Which is an example of a Cost incurred in an exchange? a. loss of self-respect (from the perspective of the “client” of a nonprofit) (Challenging; p 92) (AACSB: Reflective Thinking) b. the values received (from the perspective of the “client” of a nonprofit) c. acquiring a new idea (from the perspective of the “client” of a nonprofit) d. the nonprofit acquiring a new volunteer (from the nonprofit’s perspective) e. quitting smoking – from the point of view of smoking cessation program In nonprofit marketing, the equivalent of the for-profit CRM model is: a. fixed duration exchanges b. multiple party exchanges c. maximizing perceived benefit d. continuing duration exchanges (Moderate: p 94) e. developing a compelling value proposition A case of a non-profit smoking cessation program creating a superhero “captain smokefree” to visit schools and show fifth-graders gross pictures of blackend lungs and pictures of people pulling oxygen tanks, is an attempt by the marketer to: a. influence the perceived benefits of stopping smoking b. increase the perceived cost of starting to smoke (Challenging; p 92) (AACSB: Reflective Thinking) c. maximize perceived association with superheroes d. impact those in the maintenance stage of highly complex decisions e. putting smoking in the adolescent’s choice set Relatively habitual routine consumer behavior a. is best predicted from past behavior b. occurs with relatively cognitive evaluation c. is low involvement behavior d. is aligned with incidental learning theory e. all of the above (Moderate; p 109) Members of a target audience may be more affected by their feelings and mood when facing a decision which a. involves fixed duration exchanges b. involves multiple party exchanges c. has a clear high benefit d. involves continuing duration exchanges (Moderate: p?) (AACSB: Marketing theory) e. has a high perceived psychological cost and involves greater perceptions of self assurance (Challenging; p 110) 41