MKT3SEM Social Marketing Plan Assignment Sample

• Subject Code : MKT3SEM
• University : La Trobe University My Assignment Services is not sponsored or endorsed by this college or university.
• Subject Name : SOCIAL MARKETING

Increased Planned Buying (Decrease Hoarding)

Contents

Wisdom

Knowledge gap

Social marketing problem

Situation analysis, stakeholders and partners, upstream policy issues

Stakeholder analysis

Upstream policy

Social marketing theory

Segmentation & targeting

The marketing mix and people & partnerships

Product

Price

Place

Promotion

People and partnerships

Implementation and evaluation

References

Wisdom

According to Luchs & Mick (2018), wisdom is something that is needed by someone for understanding how to live a healthy life, handle fundamental issues and evade risks wherein human beings found themselves within predicaments. Further, he summarized the concept of wisdom as intricate and eminent. The five facets of wisdom can be categorized in terms of Intentionality, Contemplation, Openness, Emotional Mastery, and Transcendence. Tukiaine (2010), mentioned in the research that wisdom is the goal of philosophical practice and is based on understanding how to live well, and related to this he provided a virtue-based description of wisdom.

Moreover, philosophical counseling must be looked upon as one of the processes where inner and neglected powers of the virtue of the counselee are unearthed and are allowed to transform her feelings, thoughts, and behavior. Sciandra et al. (2017), believed that consumers are continuously encouraged by the local and state governmental agencies as well as non-profit organizations so that they get engaged immensely into desirable behaviors.

Ardelt (2005), noted that wisdom does not have any uniform definition and that some of the current definitions have been derived from the explicit theories based on wisdom while others are related to intrinsic theories of wisdom that can be further differentiated as per the traditions of wisdom concerning East or West and if their preference is general or personal wisdom. The explicit theory is the expert knowledge within the significant practices of life and also in the conduct as well as the meaning of life. On the other hand, implicit theories are about the perception of laypeople towards wisdom who understands wisdom as the combination of reflective, cognitive, and affective personality characteristics, as judgment, exceptional understanding and communication skills, interpersonal skills, general competencies, and social unobtrusiveness. Mick, Spiller & Baglioni (2012), focused on the concept of introspection that is used sparingly within the research of marketing and consumer on a formal ground.

Knowledge gap

There has been a shortage of consumer research which is one of the major gaps. Moreover, there has been a requirement to identify in-depth the additional opportunities for research involving substantive, theoretical, and methodological considerations. Wisdom can be considered as essential and pertinent to consumption concerning any other sphere of life. However, there is a gap in the better understanding of the association between behaviours and values required to be used for coping up with the problems.

Social Marketing Problem

The social marketing problem chosen for this marketing plan is “increased planned buying (decreased hoarding)”. This problem has been chosen in the context of the current situation of COVID19 that has been declared as one the major pandemic in history and due to this situation hoarding has been decreased.

Situation Analysis, Stakeholders and Partners, Upstream Policy Issues

Hoarding or panic buying is a kind of disorder that implies to the excessive saving of items that may be viewed by others as worthless (Frost & Stekette, 2015). Hoarding entails collecting more items than can be used feasibly up to the point at which the functionality of a home is impeded. Moreover, the current situation has reminded several people about their mortality that has resulted in investing to compensate for fear.

The current situation of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic is challenging a massive toll on families, individuals, communities, and societies all over the world. Various drastic changes could be seen such profound change in the daily lives of the people, economies stumbling into recession and various traditional, economic, social, and public health have been placed under exceptional strain (Cascella et al. 2020).

The outbreak of the coronavirus is the time of uncertainty and is a situation where everyone is experiencing social distance or isolation and both of the factors could psychologically stimulate people for buying things that are not required by them (Wang et al., 2020). This can also be referred to as panic buying. Moreover, a feeling of not able to tolerate uncertainty can be linked with tremendous hoarding behavior.

Stakeholder analysis

In a situation like this, the stakeholders identified would-be retailers, distributors, wholesalers, customers, government, and manufacturers.

Upstream policy

The policy related to this problem would be to buy products at a fixed price or that which is labeled on the product. Apart from this, there must be some kind of penalty required to be imposed on them acting selfishly which can somehow be able to decrease hoarding. In this case, direct punishment can be imposed such as fines. Moreover, every staff member and contractor must report about the hoarding cases so that appropriate actions could be taken. Since higher bills of groceries can have ramifications, every customer must be allowed to have a fixed number of items or a fixed amount.

Social Marketing Theory

Social marketing theory can be considered as the theory of mass communication that is used for promoting socially crucial information along with the socially accepted behaviors (French & Russell-Bennett, 2015). The theory tends to integrate ideas, tools, techniques, principles, and socially advantageous concepts related to marketing to promote communication thereby benefiting society as a whole.

Social marketing theory was emerged during the 1970s by Philip Kotler and Gerald Zaltman and is now used by various welfare and social organizations. The theory is about understanding the psychological and social factors bringing resistance to the change within society (Brennan et al., 2014).

Segmentation & Targeting

Segmentation and targeting are referred to as a process in which potential customers are identified by a firm and also involve choosing consumers to pursue and build value for the customers that have been targeted (Camilleri, 2018). To segment a market, it is important to segregate the customers based on several factors into various groups. The process involves identifying segments, combination methods, whom to target, and added costs (Haider et al., 2017).

In the case described above, there would not be any specific segmentation process involved. Moreover, the target audience would include almost every person of age between 15to 60 and above regardless of any gender. Since the situation like the coronavirus pandemic compels people to buy essential goods, the high-income group would be the major target of this situation. However, poor people or low-income groups people would not be the targeted audience as they would prefer buying as per their needs and income. Moreover, people in need of essential items like food and medicines, having children, and who are unable to handle stress can also be targeted since consumer goods can be regarded as more than functional. Additionally, people who are living alone or are unmarried or not having any family are also to be targeted.

The Marketing Mix and People & Partnerships

The marketing mix is a concept that is referred to the amalgamation of various components shaping the process of business in delivering value to the customers (Wu & Li, 2018). It is quite crucial for every business to clearly understand and execute the appropriate strategy of the marketing mix that can be helpful for it to bring in more sales for the offerings they sell to the customers. There are majorly four regions of marketing contributing to the marketing mix and are regarded as the 4Ps of the marketing and they are product, price, place, and promotion. Each factor contains its variables and once defined appropriately, provides an outline to the business for marketing of the goods and services.

Product

The product related to the situation described in the social marketing plan can be referred to as all the essential items. Essential items can be termed as the necessities required for the survival of human beings. During COVID-19 like pandemic situations, people may get into panic buying of products such as food, medicine, and safety kits.

Price

The price of the product must be fixed or it should be sold as per the manufacturing retail price. Increasing or decreasing the price of the products will not make any difference to the consumers.

Place

It is recommended that there should be appropriate approaches for placing the product to reduce delivery times or it can be made more reliable to improve the image of the business. The products can be placed at the departmental or grocery stores or online grocery sites.

Promotion

The products can be promoted through social media as it is one of the most convenient and cheapest methods to highlight the products or services by any business. The promotional activities of the products should be such that it should concentrate on every aspect of it (Chumaidiyah, 2014).

People and partnerships

In this category, the distributors such as retailers and wholesalers would be the partners and the people would be the everyday consumers who require all those essential goods.

Implementation and Evaluation

The social marketing plan can be implemented by various methods. One such method is building a website for promoting and implementing the plan. Moreover, the plan can also be implemented on various social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. These approaches to implementing the plan will help create awareness related to the problem identified in this study (Talpau, 2014).

The evaluation can be made in terms of key metrics for measuring the effectiveness of the implementation activities. Some of the key measure indicators are a rise in the number of followers, reactions on the posts, referral traffic, finding out the reach, and click-through rate.

References

Brennan, L., Binney, W., Parker, L., Aleti, T., & Nguyen, D. (Eds.). (2014). Social marketing and behaviour change: Models, theory and applications. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Camilleri, M. A. (2018). Market segmentation, targeting and positioning. In Travel Marketing, Tourism Economics and The Airline Product (pp. 69-83). Springer, Cham.

Cascella, M., Rajnik, M., Cuomo, A., Dulebohn, S. C., & Di Napoli, R. (2020). Features, evaluation and treatment coronavirus (COVID-19). In Statpearls [Internet]. StatPearls Publishing.

Chumaidiyah, E. (2014). The marketing mix strategy in influence to the competitive advantage. In Proceedings of the 2014 International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management (Vol. 7, No. 9, pp. 818-826).

French, J., & Russell-Bennett, R. (2015). A hierarchical model of social marketing. Journal of Social Marketing.

Frost, R. O., Steketee, G., & Tolin, D. F. (2015). Comorbidity in hoarding disorder. Focus, 13(2), 244-251.

Haider, A. A., Zafar, A., Khalid, A., Majid, A., Abdullah, M. A., & Sarwar, M. B. (2017). Marketing Management. Head, B, 22.

Luchs, M. G., & Mick, D. G. (2018). Consumer wisdom: a theoretical framework of five integrated facets. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 28(3), 365-392.

Mick, D. G., Spiller, S. A., & Baglioni, A. J. (2012). A systematic self-observation study of consumers' conceptions of practical wisdom in everyday purchase events. Journal of Business Research, 65(7), 1051-1059.

Sciandra, M. R., Lamberton, C., & Reczek, R. W. (2017). The Wisdom of Some: Do We Always Need High Consensus to Shape Consumer Behavior?. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 36(1), 15-35.

Talpau, A. (2014). The marketing mix in the online environment. Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Economic Sciences. Series V, 7(2), 53.

Tukiainen, A. (2010). Philosophical counselling as a process of fostering wisdom in the form of virtues. Practical Philosophy, 10(1), 48-57.

Wang, C., Horby, P. W., Hayden, F. G., & Gao, G. F. (2020). A novel coronavirus outbreak of global health concern. The Lancet, 395(10223), 470-473.

Wu, Y. L., & Li, E. Y. (2018). Marketing mix, customer value, and customer loyalty in social commerce. Internet Research.

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