French And Blair-Stevens’ Customer Triangle

The customer triangle is a simple way of highlighting and promoting key features of social marketing by using the aforementioned benchmark criteria (French 2010). The researchers use the customer triangle to get an understanding of Plastic Change’s social marketing efforts with a core focus on the segmentation criteria. Below, each benchmark criterion is defined, with the customer triangle as a model of presentation.

Figure 9: Customer triangle

1. Customer orientation

“Seeing things through their eyes” and “seeing the customer in the round” are key quotes when it comes to customer orientation (French et al., 2010, 2011). It is all about understanding people’s social context and what challenges they are facing in their lives (French et al., 2011). By focusing on customer orientation, the marketer gains an understanding of the customers’

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characteristics, their needs, fears, aspirations and concerns (French et al., 2010, 2011).

Furthermore, the aim is to create interventions with the knowledge of what we know will motivate and affect people, rather than rely on the fact that people need to understand the issue before a change can be made (French et al., 2011).

2. Behavioural focus

When looking at behavioural focus it is about measuring changes in behaviour, which is also in the core essence of social marketing (French et al., 2011). However, it is not just a “change” of behaviour which is wanted. The change in behaviour is optimally sustained through the rest of the customer’s life. Before one can know if behaviour is changed, it is important to establish measurements of the desired changed behaviour. This is also called behavioural goals. The goals both need to be realistic and achievable. Bill Novelli states: “Picking the wrong goal is one of the mistakes non-profits repeat the most too often, people create an elegant plan around the wrong premise or the wrong goal” (French et al., 2011, p. 15). Therefore, a potentially successful social marketing programme should start with a clear, realistic and measurable behavioural goal.

3. Theory informed

Theory informed is about behavioural theory. The behavioural theory takes into account the biological, physical, psychological and social factors, not all factors are necessarily present in all theories (French et al., 2010). The bottom line is to understand underlying ideas of what may influence behaviour, to understand the problem and investigate the possible solution. This can be done by using a behavioural theory and applying it to the data gathered in the analysis (French et al, 2011). Since the criterion, in this case, is incorporated in the other criteria, it will not be used separately as with the other criteria. This means that it will be integrated into contexts where it is valid for the research.

4. Developing insight

Insight is developed to get a deeper knowledge of people’s lives with a focus on what will move, change and motivate people and their behaviour (French et al., 2010, p. 39). One of the keys is to develop actionable insights which are of deeper meaning to the audience (French et al., 2011). The insight is therefore developed by discovering why people behave in the way they

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do, what value they impose on objects and what they say. Enabling factors are key. This is done by understanding beliefs, attitudes, barriers to change and potential (French et al., 2011).

5. Exchange

Bagozzi (1975) stresses that: “Social marketing is a form of “complex exchange”, where value or benefits tend to be intangible of nature” (French et al., 2011 p. 16). Social marketing can, however, contain benefits that result from exchange in either a tangible or intangible way.

As stressed, social marketing seeks to create value for the “customer” through every aspect of the delivery chain, not only through a physical product. Therefore, the value is not in the product itself but in the service, benefit or value it provides to the “customer” (French et al., 2011, p. 16). The core product is thereby the benefit the “customer” gets from undertaking the behavioural goal of the social marketing programme (ibid.). What is being offered, is key.

When it comes to exchange there are: Positive, negative, passive and active exchanges. Positive exchange is when people get a physical social or psychological reward or benefit, whereas negative exchange is when people will face a penalty, social disapproval or some other form of negative consequence if they continue the current pattern (French et al., 2011). Passive exchange is when the exchange requires little cognitive engagement, whereas active exchange involves active decision-making e.g. when one is to make a conscious decision about changing behaviour. Both positive/negative and active/passive decision-making are spectrums rather than static categories, which is illustrated in figure 10 below:

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Figure 10: Exchanges (French, 2011)

The exchange requires a holistic view of the real costs and value to the audience. This includes time, effort, money and social consequences. Therefore, the key aim is to provide a positive exchange that maximises the potential offer and value to the audience whilst minimising the costs of adopting, changing or maintaining the particular behaviour.

The model of exchanges as seen in figures 10 is usable when it comes to the benefits the customers get from following a behavioural goal set by a company in its social marketing programme. The figure is therefore used to get an understanding of which benefits the customers get when promoting Plastic Change and whether it is an active or passive decision.

6. Competition

When social marketers seek to influence behaviour, it is not without competition. A key within social marketing is to know what may be competing against what you are promoting (French et al., 2011). There exist two kinds of competition: External and internal competition. The external competition is when someone or something is promoting a counter-behaviour to your behaviour. It could come from the influence of people, environments, systems, social norms or organisations (ibid.). Conversely, internal competition looks at people’s feelings and attitudes about something. This could be the difficulty of giving up on a habit or addiction. A social marketer, therefore, seeks to eliminate as many of the external and internal competitors as

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possible. This criterion is important since Plastic Change must consider who it is competing against when it comes to influencing people’s behaviour.

7. Segmentation

Another vital element of the customer triangle and social marketing, in essence, is segmentation. Segmentation is the process of dividing people into groups that exhibit same behaviour (French et al., 2011). This is usable for the marketer to stereotype and target the right people with the right set of minds in order to change behaviour. There is no “right” way of segmenting the target audience, but within social marketing, the marketer should focus on behaviour and motivations to develop a change in behaviour.

In this thesis, the researchers focus on segmenting by objective measures and motivation.

Objective measures, specifically, includes demographics which are characterised as gender, age, geographic location and educational background etc. In this thesis, the researchers will focus on the mentioned demographics. Gender is used in order to generalize the person who buys a certain product, service or who performs a certain behaviour. Age is also used often to get an idea of in which age group people are performing certain behaviours. One of the main reasons for segmenting by gender and age is to have measurable statistics of the target audience which eases the communication and marketing efforts. Segmenting by geography helps the company or NGO to narrow down where it should focus its attention to a larger degree than elsewhere (Hooley et al., 2012).

There are numerous of advantages of segmenting the market. For smaller companies or NGOs, it makes it easier to target a specific audience that shows interest towards the company/NGO, product or service. The company/NGO can thereby focus it competencies towards a smaller segment and is in a better position to gain success within the specific market. Furthermore, the company/NGO makes it more likely to tailor its product to the specific target audience and gain a stronger position.

Page 60 of 199 8. Methods mix

The final principle of the customer triangle is methods mix. Originally, the de-CIDES framework was the most useful framework to look at behaviours. The de-CIDES framework refers to the 4Ps of marketing but since the customer triangle looks at the customer it is more useful to use the 4Cs. The 4Cs looks at consumer wants and needs, cost to satisfy, convenience to buy and communication (Hooley et al., 2012).

Consumer wants and needs refers to what is served to the consumers. Before making a product or service, it is relevant to study what the consumer wants and needs and understand their motivations. Cost to satisfy is mainly concerned with the price of the product or service. When looking at convenience to buy, one looks at where the product can be bought. Lastly, communication is how and what you communicate to the target audience. Communication tries to establish a relationship with the customer (Hooley et al., 2012).