Determining a Role for Value Co-creation in Social Marketing: Empirical Analysis of Social Services’ Branding

Abstract

Social marketing has become a strategic tool to achieve business and social sustainability both in nonprofit and for-profit organizations. Primarily the concept implies application of marketing principles and techniques to induce behavior change towards social causes. Social marketing is predominantly employed by social services; however, commercial organizations have also begun to use it in marketing their services and products. Researchers have strongly supported the concept and recommended further exploration, arguing that social marketing has yet to see widespread effects of its application. In a country like Pakistan, communities at large hardly exhibit any tendency of recovery or improvement in their social problems, and this is mainly attributable to a lack of organized effort in the social sphere. In such circumstances there is a need to undertake researches in academic and professional circles to investigate how social problems may be addressed using the social marketing approach. In this regard, this research has attempted to conceptualize a framework that could possibly be employed by social and commercial organizations for solving social issues of communities. Using grounded theory, the study explored the phenomenon of value co-creation as it would relate to social marketing, defining and substantiating its various dimensions which might help social services to effectively approach the communal problems of communities. The research also yielded that the emergent value co-creation construct could contribute to the development of social brands. An empirical research was conducted on two social services operating in the country. One social service was from the health sector, while the other was a microfinance organization providing iii interest free loans to the underprivileged segments of society. The study comprised two main phases. In the first phase qualitative data was gathered using focus group discussions. The findings of this phase were further deliberated through the second phase where the data was gathered based on convenience sampling to validate the findings of the first phase. The study revealed that independent participation, interaction, and engagement of social services’ stakeholders tend to be manifested in their expressions, experiences and actions, and that these in turn indicate the presence of key value drivers of trust, commitment, deliverance and relationships. These outcomes were derived from eight key variables synchronized through communication, which culminated in the value co-creation framework. Thus, the construct of value co-creation defines the application of social marketing to a social service in order to transform it into an effective and achieving entity.