The importance of shared beliefs for social marketing programmes

Abstract

Purpose

When social marketing tries to influence behaviours to increase societal welfare, erroneous shared beliefs of the target audiences can become impediments to success. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to categorize shared beliefs that can be obstacles for social marketing programmes and to identify the main sources of those shared beliefs.

Design/methodology/approach

A qualitative approach was used to examine the specific case of Type 1 diabetes. In-depth interviews with 12 experts and focus groups with 17 adults who had been living with Type 1 diabetes for five years or more were performed. The information was analysed applying thematic analysis.

Findings

The results indicated that there are two types of shared beliefs that can hinder social marketing efforts (misconceptions and ideological convictions) and three main influencers (primary groups, communication media and authority figures).

Practical implications

Target audiences can be segmented by their shared beliefs, and a specific message could be designed to reach each group.

Social implications

Obstacles that could prevent the audience from engaging in a desired positive behaviour could be identified.

Originality/value

To the author’s knowledge, this is the first study that uses social representations to categorize erroneous shared beliefs that could be barriers for impacting behaviours, as well as the first to identify the main sources of those beliefs. This approach could provide guidelines for the design of social marketing campaigns that could achieve better public engagement.

Citation

Calderon, C. (2019), "The importance of shared beliefs for social marketing programmes", Journal of Social Marketing, Vol. 9 No. 1, pp. 26-39. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSOCM-01-2018-0013