Social Marketing Changing Behaviors for Good

Question: Discuss about the Social Marketing Changing Behaviors for Good. Answer: Introduction: The idea of organ donation involves the pledge of a person of donating his organs for medical usage or research and education after his death. As mentioned by Marck et al. (2014), organ donation largely helps in treating the terminally ill patients by transplanting the needed organs collected from the donor. On the other hand, as mentioned by Gomez et al. (2015), the organ donation also assists in the saving the lives of the terminally ill patients by developing the research procedure of their treatment. For the successful completion of this report, the author has chosen the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Australia. Being a US based NGO, Make-A-Wish Foundation operates in 45 countries for arranging experiences described as wishes to the children belonging to the age group of 3 to 17 suffering from terminal medical conditions (Make a Wish , 2017). The rate of organ donation and transplantation is lower in Australia, than many other countries (22nd) (Lewis et al., 2015). According to the report of Ralph et al. (2016), more than 12000 Australians suffers in the organ transplant waiting lists or dialysis, each year. On the other hand, in 2015, 435 organ donors gave lives to 1241 people in Australia. In 2014, total number of organ transplantation was 1193 (Hyde Chambers, 2014). However, the number of the child recipient is not clear enough. However, it can be speculated that the number of children who became the beneficiary of this service is not insignificant. Hence, it can easily be ideated that the lack of donated organs are claiming the lives of the children that could be saved. Hence, the selection of Make-A-Wish Foundation for creating awareness for organ donation can be identified as relevant. The program/campaign focus: For encouraging the Australian community for organ donation to save the lives of the terminally ill children, the Make-A-Wish Foundation is going to arrange a social marketing program. As discussed by McKenzie-Mohr (2013), the idea of social marketing can be identified as the design, execution and control of programs with the aim of influencing the social ideas and commercially spread a social message which has the potential of benefitting the individuals and society by improving their wellbeing. Here, the organization is going to conduct a behavioral campaign, which is aimed to motivate people for donating their organs after their death. In this campaign Make-A-Wish Foundation is going to show the data where the children with terminal health condition had the potentiality of living but failed to attain it, due to the lack of donors and encourage the community for organ donation with the aim of saving another life. SWOT analysis: As discussed by Brennan et al. (2014), identification of the organizational strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats is an important part in the process of social marketing planning. Strange Weakness The organization has a huge name recognition which will be helpful in creating an effective impact upon the target community. With strategic alliance with various governmental and non-governmental organizations the organization becomes able to successfully serve its target clients. With a large business alliance and in-kind donation, the organization is successful in its operating area. Lack of serving the socially sustainable causes. Lack of volunteers or dedicated employees is weakening the strength of successfully executing the programs. Opportunity Threat As the organization working for the terminally ill children, it has the opportunity of enhancing its operation in health and child care sector. The organization can use the social media for awareness generation or collecting donations. The nonprofit making character creates threat to the potential success of the organizational initiatives. Lack of social awareness and lack of motivation in the community to serve the social causes. Figure 1: The SWOT analysis on Make-A-Wish Foundation, Australia (Source: Make a Wish, 2017) Justification of an appropriate target market: As mentioned by Lefebvre (2013), in marketing plan, the commercial organizations generally target the most suitable audience for promoting and marketing their products. In the social marketing strategy selection of target market is also of the same importance. As discussed by Evans-Lacko et al. (2013), market segmentation can be done depending on the demographic, geographic, psychographic and behavioral factors. For successful and effective execution of this selected behavioral campaign, the organization has chosen the educated Australian belongings from the urban areas mainly from the age group of 20 to 50. Influencing the youths will create a sustainable impact for the initiative. As mentioned by Burchell, Rettie and Patel (2013), the people need to make understand how the organ donation can be helpful in medical sector. Moreover, people may have some prejudiced idea regarding organ donation. However, it will be easy for the organization to influence the people who have a certain level of education and hold a non superstitious view of life. Moreover, the organization can go for targeting the people who are extraverts. As discussed by Luca and Suggs (2013), the motive of being famous can drive them to act in favor of the campaign message. Marketing mix: As mentioned by Cates et al. (2014), for obtaining the social marking objective of motivating the community people for organ donation, the organizations need to create an effective marketing mix. By identifying the product or service offerings and designing the distribution channels, As mentioned by Firestone et al. (2016), product is the main offerings of an organization that the target customer is going to get after purchasing it. In the social media marketing product is the service offering that the NGO is going to offer. Make-a-wish will choose launching an online awareness and registration campaign. In collaboration with the social media plat forms, the organization can send personal message to the users saying BE THE GOD, it will be a web-link which will redirect the user to the official page of Make-A-Wish. Here, the organization will disseminate the information regarding the need of organ donation. The willing candidates will be provided some encouraging benefits from the organization. As mentioned by Lee and Kotler (2015), place is the platform from which the targeted customers are going to collect the product or the service offering of the organization. Here, the organization will go for launching the program in the social media sources, as it is the largest modern platform to address the young generation. The registration form will be available in the social media pages of Make-a-wish. Here, the organization may select using the Facebook pages or the Twitter accounts. In the context of social marketing, price is the cost that the organization is going to bear (Bakan, 2016). For executing the program the organization need to collect donations from the business alliances of the organization. Moreover, it can collect the donations from the social media platforms as they are going to launch the program solely on the web-pages and it will increase the time the users spending of Facebook and other social website and thus increasing their income. Being a reputable organization, Make-a-wish Australia can go for collecting donation from the international organizations working on the health sector or for the cause of organ donation. Here, the organization can also collect donations from the celebrities. Promotion: As mentioned by Andriamalala et al. (2013), promotion helps the organizations to communicating the message of the marketing plan to the target audiences. In the social media marketing, promotion can be identified as the use of various commercial promotional methods like advertisement, direct marketing or sales promotional method for communicating the social message and encouraging the target audience to behave in favor of that message. Here, the organization can select various strategies. Celebrity endorsement: as discussed by Bakan (2016), a number of empirical cases has identified that influencing the celebrities to support the social causes is typically helpful in attracting the attention of the communities. Here, the organization will engage the popular film stars and singers for supporting the cause of organ donation. However, it can be a bit () for the organization. Hence, the followings will simpler to use: Direct marketing: the organization is going to send personal invitation to every Facebook users and the followers of the organizations twitter account. By communicating directly to the users the organization will be able to make more effective communication with the targeted people (Lee and Kotler 2015). Sales promotion: here, the organization can select encouraging the behavior of organ donation by alluring the target audient with the awards like mentioning the name of the donor in the organizational website and providing personal mail of appreciation to them. On the other hand, the business alliances can also help the organization in this regard (Firestone et al., 2016). The company can go for making alliance with various popular brands, and the registered candidate will be provided certain level of discount from this brand. With such a tangible motivator the organization will be able to encourage more people for organ donation. Attention-grabbing message: For attracting the attention of the target customers the marketing teams select promotional messages. Make a wish can select the following attention grabbing message: Evaluate the effectiveness of your message: The message has a both a curious and direct approach to the target audience. As the target audience is the educated young demography, this message will catch their attention and they will go for visiting the page of the program. Moreover, the mysterious approach of the message with a web-link will surely catch the eye of the young generation. Conclusion: In conclusion it can be said that the social marketing of make a wish foundation needs to motivate the young people for donating the organs. It will support the organizational motive of serving the children in need. However, this project will be able to provide a focus on the sustainable services, which the organization notably lacks. The organization has chosen the social media platform as it is the easiest way to address the largest number of the young generation, which is the prime target of this program. The organization can hope to increase the number of registration of the organ donors with this social media program. References: Andriamalala, G., Peabody, S., Gardner, C. J., Westerman, K. (2013). Using social marketing to foster sustainable behaviour in traditional fishing communities of southwest Madagascar. Conservation Evidence, 10, 37-41. Bakan, J. (2016). Social marketing: thoughts from an empathetic outsider. Journal of Marketing Management, 32(11-12), 1183-1189. Brennan, L., Binney, W., Parker, L., Aleti, T., Nguyen, D. (Eds.). (2014). Social marketing and behaviour change: models, theory and applications. 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