Social Marketing Communication and Change Outcomes in Selected Public Organizations in Edo State, Nigeria

Abstract

Social marketing communication is identified as one strategic tool in influencing human behavior for the benefit of individuals and society. While it has been used extensively in fields like public health, environmental conservation, and social welfare campaigns, we explored in this study, social marketing communications and change outcomes in selected public institutions in Edo State, Nigeria. Our purpose was to examine how social marketing communication through its proxies like social offerings / benefit communication, economic trade-off communications, audience differentiation communication and social media influencer strategy would produce desirable behavioural change outcomes. We engaged four public sector institutions for data gathering using a cross sectional design executed through a survey. A properly structured questionnaire designed in a five Likert format scale was employed as our data gathering instrument and we utilized regression analysis for hypotheses testing. In overall, the findings show that social marketing communication had significant influence on human behavior for desirable changes. Specifically, the findings show that audience differentiation strategy (t = 6.07, p =.000); social offerings / benefit communication (t = 3.43, p =.001), and social media influencer strategy (t = 2.20, p =.002) were all statistically significant predictors with audience differentiation strategy exhibiting greatest effect on behavioural change outcome while economic trade-off communications did not show a statistically significant effect (t = .974, p =.332) on change outcomes. The result show audience differentiation strategy had the most effect on behavioural change outcomes and would strengthen social marketing communication as a potent tool in promoting behavioural change. Appropriate recommendations in line with the findings of the study were proffered.