Social Marketing

Research 33
Research
So how do you figure out which theories or determinants apply to your program? Your past
experiences? Gut instinct?
We suggest you use research – as much as you can afford. As you design a program, you
should constantly ask: how much do I really know about my audience? If you’re honest, and
unless you’re very unusual, you probably know much less than you need to know. You will need
good market research.
Research never gets everything right, but the more of it you do, the less likely you are to make
mistakes. But research takes time and money, so most of us never do as much research as we
would like. So, the best advice about research is to figure out all of those things in a program
that you have control over and do research exclusively on them. Ultimately, you want the
research to help you make decisions, not just give you information. Finding out facts that you
have no control over is a fruitless pursuit. If you don’t have enough money to afford mass media,
don’t research media habits. If your boss has already decided the audience he or she wants to
target, then learn more about that segment, not entirely different audiences.
At the same time, research is best when it combines a variety of different methods: reading
about what other people found; talking in depth with small groups of the target audience; or
surveying a large number of target audience members. The less research you are able to do,
the more the variety of research you need to do. Why? Because variety will help you uncover
the big mistakes.
Source research
Find other studies. Look at work done by others on your topic. Look for the determinants they
believe matter and the interventions they used. Learn from past programs. This sounds silly,
but so many times we do a literature review (a look at all the previous research reports about a
certain subject) just to say we have done it. The key is to list the five or ten ideas you get from
this reading and identify what actually matters to your specific program.
Qualitative research
Qualitative research includes techniques such as focus groups, prototyping, talking to community
leaders, direct observation, and in-depth individual interviews. These methods are qualitative
because they involve small numbers of the target population and, therefore, are not representative.
For this reason, you should never summarize the results of your qualitative work in percentages.
Fifteen percent of 50 people are only 7.5 people – no basis for saying anything general
about the population at large. However, qualitative research is very powerful to way to help you
explore ideas, try out vocabulary, and listen to members of your audience in their own words.
Social Marketing Behavior A Practical Resource for Social Change Professionals