Effectiveness of a brief versus a comprehensive social marketing program

Abstract

Purpose

Gamified and engaging school-based alcohol social marketing programs have demonstrated effectiveness; however, wide-scale dissemination of these programs is limited by their resource-intensive character. The purpose of this paper is to address this limitation, a brief alcohol social marketing pilot program was derived from a comprehensive alcohol social marketing program to compare effectiveness.

Design/methodology/approach

A sample of 115 14–16-year-old adolescents from six secondary schools participated in the brief alcohol social marketing pilot program. Program effectiveness was assessed using repeated measure analysis on adolescents’ knowledge, attitudes, social norms, self-efficacy and intentions to binge drink. Results were compared with the comprehensive social marketing program and a control group.

Findings

The brief pilot program produced statistically significant outcomes for the same measures as the comprehensive program across attitudinal variables, descriptive norms and opportunistic self-efficacy.

Research limitations/implications

Converting existing social marketing programs into brief alternates is more cost-effective and, in this case, demonstrated better outcome effects. However, findings are limited as in-depth comparisons were hindered by changes to content across program modes. No process for converting comprehensive programs into brief alternates was identified prior to this study, and therefore a number of considerations for program alteration were derived from program facilitator experiences.

Originality/value

The findings provide initial evidence that a brief version of an existing comprehensive program can be an effective alternate to more resource-intensive programs under more cost-effective circumstances for program developers and facilitators.

Citation

Durl, J., Dietrich, T. and Kubacki, K. (2020), "Effectiveness of a brief versus a comprehensive social marketing program", Journal of Social Marketing, Vol. 10 No. 3, pp. 377-394. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSOCM-11-2019-0199