Competition and its influence on consumer decision making in social marketing

Abstract

This paper extends the largely conceptual understanding of competition in social marketing by empirically investigating, from a consumer perspective, the nature of competition and its influence on decision making at the individual level. Two phases of qualitative inquiry in Australia, comprising 30 and 20 semi-structured interviews, respectively, examined the role of competition in young adults’ decision to adopt and maintain help-seeking for mental ill-health. The findings from thematic analysis suggest that competition operates at both the behavioural and goal level to influence consumers’ decision to perform behaviour and that the types of competition in operation may vary from the adoption to the maintenance of behaviour. The findings are integrated into a framework that social marketers could employ to identify, analyse and address competition.

Keywords:

• competition
• social marketing
• help-seeking
• mental health
• Goal Systems Theory

Acknowledgements

This article draws from the author’s doctoral thesis, which was completed at the Queensland University of Technology. The author would like to thank her advisors, Professor Judy Drennan, Professor Ian Lings, and Associate Professor Judy Proudfoot, for their constructive supervision. The author is also grateful to the three anonymous reviewers whose recommendations substantially improved the manuscript.

Notes

² All participants are referred to by pseudonym.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lisa Schuster

Dr Lisa Schuster is a lecturer at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia. Since attaining her PhD from QUT, her research interest lies in extending understanding of consumer responses in social and services marketing. She has published in several peer-reviewed journals, including the European Journal of Marketing, and international conferences, where she has received two ‘Best Paper’ awards.