Background:

This paper addresses the key factors that cause social marketing programs (typically consisting of discrete programs or interventions, but also including broader-scale initiatives) to fail. It argues that understanding these failures offers greater insight to researchers and practitioners than publications solely focused on successes.

Focus:

Our paper discusses the causes of the failure of social marketing programs, an area that has largely been ignored in extant research.

Research Question:

What causes social marketing programs to fail?

Importance:

As the majority of practitioner-oriented social marketing research focuses on how to develop a successful program, we identify a tendency to ignore failed programs. We suggest that both researchers and practitioners can arguably learn more useful lessons from failures rather than successes. Thus, this paper contributes to social marketing literature by exploring the key causes of social marketing failures.

Methods:

We conducted ten semi-structured interviews with social marketing practitioners recruited using a purposive sampling technique.

Results:

We identify four elements responsible for the failure of social marketing programs, each centered on the planning and implementation stage. Firstly, formative research at the earliest stages of program planning is often neglected, resulting in a limited understanding of the target audience. Relatedly, extant research is frequently overlooked during this early planning stage, and this failure to use available social marketing theory and frameworks can result in program performing poorly. Thirdly, for a program to be successful, it must be congruent with the goals of the wider environment and infrastructure within which it is situated; adopting too narrow a focus can also result in a limited impact or program failure. Lastly, we found a common issue relating of stakeholder mismanagement, specifically around issues of power imbalance and mismanaged expectations resulting in social marketing program failing to launch. Researchers and practitioners must acknowledge that social marketing programs do indeed fail but recognize that in these failings lies insight into how to enhance future practice.

Recommendations:

We suggest that more attention is required from social marketing practitioners during the early design stage into understanding the target audience in detail. We suggest drawing upon extant social marketing frameworks and research to inform the planning and development of social marketing programs. We demonstrate how implementing these changes in the earliest stages of program designs would reduce the chance of program failure. Further, we suggest that adopting a more systems-level approach or critical approach would additionally benefit program outcomes.

Limitations:

A relatively small sample size could be considered a limitation of the study. Similarly, our focus on practitioner insights may limit the scope of the findings. Future research could advance the current findings by incorporating the views of a broader range of stakeholders, including the target audience themselves. We also suggest future research consider integrating the analysis of failure into the social marketing process to encourage practitioner reflection and inform and improve future practice.

中文翻译：

---

是什么导致社交营销计划失败？定性研究

背景：

本文探讨了导致社会营销计划（通常由离散计划或干预措施组成，但也包括更广泛的举措）失败的关键因素。它认为，与仅仅关注成功的出版物相比，了解这些失败对研究人员和从业人员提供了更大的见识。

重点：

我们的论文讨论了社会营销计划失败的原因，这一领域在现有研究中已被很大程度上忽略。

研究问题：

是什么导致社交营销计划失败？

重要性：

由于大多数面向从业人员的社会营销研究都集中在如何开发成功的程序上，因此我们发现了忽略失败程序的趋势。我们建议研究人员和从业人员都可以从失败中汲取更多有用的教训，而不是从成功中汲取教训。因此，本文通过探讨社会营销失败的关键原因，为社会营销文献做出了贡献。

方法：

我们对使用有目的抽样技术招募的社会营销从业人员进行了十次半结构化访谈。

结果：

我们确定了导致社会营销计划失败的四个因素，每个因素都以计划和实施阶段为中心。首先，在计划规划的最初阶段经常忽略形成性研究，导致对目标受众的了解有限。与此相关的是，在此早期计划阶段，现存的研究经常被忽视，而未能使用现有的社会营销理论和框架可能会导致程序执行不佳。第三，要使一项计划取得成功，就必须与该计划所处的更广泛的环境和基础设施的目标相一致；过分关注焦点也会导致有限的影响或程序失败。最后，我们发现了一个与利益相关者管理不善有关的常见问题，特别是围绕权力不平衡和期望管理不善导致社交营销计划无法启动的问题。研究人员和从业人员必须承认，社会营销计划确实确实失败了，但也意识到，在这些失败中，存在着如何增强未来实践的见识。

建议：

我们建议在设计的早期阶段，社会营销从业人员需要更多的注意力来详细了解目标受众。我们建议利用现有的社会营销框架和研究来为社会营销计划的规划和开发提供信息。我们演示了在程序设计的早期阶段实施这些更改将如何减少程序失败的机会。此外，我们建议采用更多的系统级方法或关键方法将进一步有益于计划成果。

局限性：

相对较小的样本量可以被认为是研究的局限性。同样，我们对从业人员见解的关注可能会限制研究结果的范围。未来的研究可以通过纳入更广泛的利益相关者（包括目标受众本身）的观点来推进当前的发现。我们还建议未来的研究考虑将失败的分析整合到社会营销过程中，以鼓励从业者反思并提供信息并改善未来的实践。