Social Models for Marketing: Diffusion

Among the most data-driven models for behavior change, particularly at scale or on a population-basis, is Rogers' diffusion of innovations. When I reviewed the most popular theories and models then being used in social marketing programs, I added that Diffusion of innovations research and concepts offer a tremendous amount of insight for social marketers to use in designing their programs, yet we see very little active discussion of it in social marketing circles.  Social diffusion offers one of the most robust theories for taking innovations in ideas, behaviors and practice to scale. Yet, though the calls for scaling up successful behavioral interventions for such things as HIV prevention are reverberating around the globe, we see little discussion or application of the model by social marketers or, for that matter, few others in public health.

Social marketing needs to focus on ‘pushing the curve’ of adoption of health practices among individuals, the adoption of effective interventions among practitioners, and the adoption of health-promoting and supportive policies among policy-makers. Adopting diffusion of innovations means that we understand how and why people adopt (or fail to adopt) healthier, environmentally conscious or socially beneficial behaviors. These characteristics include (a) the contextual factors that surround the adoption of new practices and policies, (b) people’s perceptions of the innovation as a normative behavior among their reference group or peers (which studies suggest account for anywhere from 50-86% of the variance in the rate of diffusion of new behaviors), and (c) a risk-benefit analysis that substitutes certainty of outcomes and familiarity with the new behavior over costs and benefits of changing current ones.

Social marketers need to design their behavior, product and service offerings to answer the questions people have that are associated with adoption or termination:  

How is this better than what I currently do? ·     

How is it relevant to the way I go about my everyday life? ·     

Is it simple enough for me to do?·     

Can I try it first?   

Can I watch others and see what happens to them when they do it?

Social marketing for behavior change at scale also needs to explore more extensively the use of audience segments such as:

Innovators:  who have a high tolerance of risk; are fascinated with novelty; usually viewed by others in their community as mavericks, not opinion leaders; and whose social networks transcend geographic boundaries.

Early Adopters: who are the community opinion leaders and well-connected socially and locally; have the resources and risk tolerance to try new things; and are the people who are watched by others – and they know it.

Early Majority: the people who are very engaged in local peer networks; rely on personal familiarity before adoption and continually ask the question ‘How does this new behavior, product or service help me?’

Late Majority: the group of people who are most sensitive to peer pressure and norms, yet very cautious about change of any kind; they seek to minimize uncertainty of outcomes and want to see the proof of relative advantage locally – not read about it on web sites or see it on television.

Laggards: these are the traditionalists who believe in the tried and true; they are near isolates in their social networks which explains why they can be so difficult to reach and influence (versus having individual deficits); they are often suspicious of innovation and change agents; and they are seeking assurances that adoption of new behaviors (such as stopping smoking, driving a low carbon emission vehicle) will not fail.

The diffusion of innovations literature should also wake-up policy-makers and social marketers that there are immediate needs to apply marketing principles to such social goals such as improving evidence-based practices in public health and medicine. Maibach, Van Duyn & Bloodgood (2006) suggest three marketing-based solutions: (1) conduct consumer research with prospective adopters to identify their perspectives on how evidence-based prevention programs can advance their organization’s mission, (2) build sustainable distribution channels to promote and deliver evidence-based programs to prospective adopters, and (3) improve access to easily implemented programs that are consistent with evidence-based guidelines.

There are lessons we have learned over the years that can be used to re-conceptualize social marketing strategy to promote diffusion of product and service use as well as adoption of new behaviors.

1. Find sound innovations/solutions. Ones that meet the criteria noted earlier and are relevant to people’s everyday lives.

2. Provide opportunities for Innovators to discover them.

3. Engage the curiosity of the Early Adopters.

4. Target the weak ties between Innovators and Early Adopters through identifying the ‘boundary spanners’ who interact with multiple networks.

5. Promote the work of Early Adopters.

6. Create spanable social distances between groups through various means including using social media such as social network sites and blogs and convening meetings of the ‘unlike’ rather than the usual host of agents.

7. Enhance the salience and attractiveness of the ‘positive deviants’ – the people who are already practicing the target behavior or using the product and service; put the practitioners of ‘new’ behaviors in contexts and situations that attracts imitation or modeling.

8. ‘If you can’t imitate them, don’t copy them.’ Expect and encourage reinvention.

9. Support time and energy for discovery, testing, networking, adapting, monitoring and preserving the past. Do not write off the traditionalists, especially when encouraging organizational change.

10. It starts with yourselves and your partners.

With respect to this last point, remember that highly linked and centralized coalitions are less likely to adopt new evidence-based public health programs than ones that are less dense and have more decentralized structures. What is important for adopting new practices and programs are 'boundary spanners' or individuals from organizations who are not tightly bound exclusively to the clique (or usual cast of characters). These are the people more likely to be open to innovation; the traditionalists have their own, seemingly immutable, point-of-view.

Our challenge in the years ahead, whether it is in HIV prevention or the prevention of childhood obesity, is to apply in a deliberate and systematic way what we have learned from the evidence-base of diffusion research to achieve broad and sustainable change. It seems that very few policy-makers, behavioral change experts and public health officials know how to transform programs focused on individual behavior change to ones scaled for population impact. And few program directors and donors seem willing to take the risk that is inherent in moving from ‘the zoo’ of controlled experiments to ‘the jungle’ of people’s real lives. Social marketing provides us with a framework to fill this gap between knowledge and practice.

References

Global HIV Prevention Working Group. (2007) Bringing HIV prevention to Scale: An urgent global priority.

Lefebvre, R.C. (2001). Theories and models in social marketing. In P.N. Bloom and G.T. Gundlach (eds),  Handbook of Marketing and Society. Newbury Park, CA:  Sage Publications, pp. 506-518.

Maibach, E.W., Van Duyn, M.A. and Bloodgood, B. (2006). A marketing perspective on disseminating evidence-based approaches to disease prevention and health promotion.  Preventing Chronic Disease [serial online] July.

Rogers, E. (1995). Diffusion of Innovations (4^th Ed). New York: The Free Press.

Valente, T.W., Chou, C.P. and Pentz, M.A. (2007). Community coalition networks as systems: Effects of network change on adoption of evidence-based prevention. American Journal of Public Health, 97: 880-886.