A strengths-based approach to eliciting deep insights from social marketing customers experiencing vulnerability
A large part of social marketing focuses on people experiencing disadvantage or requiring support in changing behaviour for societal and individual benefit. At the core of social marketing, the concept of consumer vulnerability has been developed into customer vulnerability to include not only individuals who consumes but also the buyer who obtains the good, service, or idea. Sometimes this is the same person, but in many cases, this involves different people that behavioural change interventions need to target.
Research on customer vulnerability mostly adopts a deficit approach to define vulnerability, thus only focuses on the attributes a person lacks, namely powerless, helpless, or low levels of control, rather than on the circumstances that create vulnerability. This deficit-focused definition, historically based on previous researchers’ definitions, also reflects the past rather than the future. Moreover, since experiences of vulnerability can be sensitive, it is challenging to elicit insights on how customers think, feel, and behave compared to other marketing contexts. Such deep insights can be drawn from vulnerability customers’ tacit knowledge, or the implicit knowledge attached with one’s experience. Tacit knowledge is more difficult to express and elicit as people are often unaware that they possess this knowledge and feel difficult to share with others who lack shared experience or mutual understanding. While tacit knowledge is critical to deep insights in marketing, specifically in product development and sales, its role in social marketing remains under-explored.
Therefore, this study addresses the research gaps in the customer vulnerability literature, by recommending a shift from the current deficit-based to a strengths-based approach (SA) to vulnerability in social marketing. It does so by developing a strengths-based definition and a five-step, strengths-based process to elicit deep insights (I) from tacit knowledge about vulnerable experiences (V), hence, termed the SAIV process. This research is part of a large, national project aimed at widening participation (WP) and increasing representation of equity groups, mainly comprised of people from low socioeconomic (LSES) backgrounds, in Australian tertiary education.
Method and sample
This study focuses on secondary school students (Years 7 to 12) and recent school leavers (up to five years post-school not yet enrolled in tertiary education) from LSES backgrounds. A total of 65 secondary school students and 22 recent school leavers from LSES backgrounds across four Australian states were recruited for two qualitative studies: interviews and co-design workshops. Interviewees comprised 11 males and 11 females, three of whom identified as Indigenous Australians and four who were from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Workshop participants comprised of 37 males and 28 females, ten who identified as Indigenous Australians and 14 who were from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. The research team included an Indigenous Australian and others with lived experience of LSES backgrounds.
This project employs tailored and stepped method combining traditional qualitative techniques, co-design, and a strengths-based approach. A participatory design methodology allows researchers to tap into participants’ tacit knowledge and generate ideas to improve the design of existing WP services, resources, or programs. Personas of secondary school students (current or recently completed) were generated and prototyped from the interview data to be used in workshops to develop a persona-based WP national digital social marketing solution.
Interviews and workshops were conducted face-to-face for 60 to 90 minutes. The interview data were transcribed from audio recordings and coded using an inductive-deductive approach, with themes first emerging and then coded against relevant frameworks in an iterative process. Data from the workshops, which comprises visual depictions of digital solution concepts, were coded by examining visual artefacts for evidence of the need for different types of social support, different stages of change, and different levels of technology interaction using the PIP (passive-interactive-proactive) typology.
Key findings and recommendations
Five themes were identified to help develop a strengths-based, human-centred, process-oriented, solutions-focused, and holistic definition of customer vulnerability. Hence, the authors provide a new definition reflecting these themes as follows: ‘Experiences of vulnerability are subjective perceptions of susceptibility, which are part of the human condition that may come to pass with the passage of time, prompt introspection and give rise to greater strength and resilience’. Social marketers are encouraged to adopt such strengths framing to improve intervention efficacy and outcomes for those experiencing vulnerability.
Ten tacit knowledge concepts were identified to use in combination with findings from the literature to develop a five-step SAIV process for social marketers to elicit deep insights from tacit knowledge from participants experiencing vulnerability.
Step 1 is to share experience of vulnerability between the social marketing project team and participants. This establishes a safe space and shared understanding that is necessary for Step 2, in which a narrative approach is developed using a variety of projective and visual activities to elicit deep insights into participants’ experience of vulnerability. The emerging tacit knowledge enriches Step 3, being the co-design of strengths-based personas, by exposed important nuances, preferences, contexts, and previously unknown characteristics that improved the personas’ fidelity. In Step 4, persona-based solutions addressing barriers and motivators for each persona were co-designed, empowering participants to help themselves and others like them. Lastly, solution attributes were identified and embedded as features of the co-designed solution in Step 5.
Notably, the personas developed for this project were psychographic-based rather than demographic based. Although psychographics is harder to measure or monitor at the national level, practitioners are recommended to integrate more psychographic-focused elements into their work, as high effectiveness is demonstrated in smaller-scale projects such as this study. Moreover, social marketers should utilise a strengths-based approach to maintain the mindset that honours the customer and further the work stemming from positive psychology.
Researchers
More information
The research article is also available on eprints.