Market research (also called consumer or audience research) is research designed to enhance your understanding of the target audience’s characteristics, attitudes, beliefs, values, behaviors, determinants, benefits and barriers to behavior change in order to create a strategy for social marketing programs.
How It Is Done
Define your research questions.
Review results of your work from section 1 (included in documents) to identify information gaps; restate these gaps as research questions.
Ask basic social marketing questions (e.g., barriers/benefits of recommended behavior)
List out/consider 3-5 barriers/benefits of the recommended behavior. Google the Health Belief Model for more information, if needed.
Write ~1 paragraph summarizing this and how it applies to your social marketing plan.
Ask questions to clarify how to segment your audience (e.g., demographics, psychographics).
Provide additional information here ~1 paragraph about who EXACTLY you hope to reach. Include information from part 3 of your discussion post this week, if applicable.
Ask questions to assess the environment (e.g., community attitudes towards HIV)
From the supplemental reading and your own research, provide additional information here ~ 1 paragraph about the current attitudes toward your chosen vaccine in Mississippi. Be sure to touch on the current political factors and the recent policy decisions that might impact this.
You will ultimately strive to answer the following research question:
How can public health communicators most effectively promote (name of your)____ vaccine uptake and decrease vaccine hesitancy among _______ (list specific populations) in the state of Mississippi?
Fill in the blanks above– this will guide your project!
Develop a market research plan.
Which answers can come from secondary sources and which ones require collecting new data?
In this class, undergraduate students will only be conducting secondary research. If you are an undergraduate, write “N/A” & skip ahead to #3! Graduate students, on the other hand, will conduct both secondary research and primary research in the form of one in-depth interview with a key stakeholder.
For the purpose of promoting vaccinations in Mississippi, grad students have the option to interview someone who actively works to promote vaccination, such as a public health educator or psychologist who can provide insights on strategies, or a member of their intended population(s). The chosen interviewee should provide valuable insights for the project. Grad students will need to draft an interview guide with approximately 10 open-ended questions, get them approved in the Week 2 Assignment, and include them in their final project. Interview time should be around 30-60 minutes and can be conducted in person, via Zoom, or phone. The findings from the interview will need to be summarized in a maximum of 2 pages and submitted with the final project and separately on Blackboard for full credit.
Who do I interview? It depends…For instance,, if you wanted to reach college students, you could interview a friend or relative who may be on the fence about vaccination to learn more about their rationale and what messages might be most effective. For the purposes of the Week 2 Assignment:
Write who you plan to interview, and explain why you chose this person/think that they will have great insights for your project.
Draft an interview guide with ~10 open-ended questions that will provide insights into your social marketing plan effort. These questions will need to be approved in the Week 2 Assignment before you conduct your interview. You will also include this question list in the final project. Interviews should take ~30-60 minutes to conduct and can be done in person or via Zoom or phone – NOT via email, please.
After you complete your interview, you will summarize what you learned in no more than ~2 pages, and submit this along with your final project AND in the separate submission window on Blackboard to get full credit.
Conduct and analyze market research
Summarize research results, using secondary research (aka literature review style). Be sure to research: a) the issue, b) the populations that you hope to reach, keeping in mind the various social determinants of health (see Chapter 2: A Population Health Primer for a refresher here), and c) the strategies that other organizations/states have used to promote vaccination. Be sure to read the Michigan I Vaccinate case study and consult additional external sources. All students must write the paper using the APA 7 style manual. For this assignment, undergraduate students will need 10 sources, Master’s level students will need 15 sources, while Ph.D level students will need 20 sources. These are minimums to meet standard; you can certainly include MORE if needed.
***Note: For the Week 2 Assignment, graduate students will just need to present their interview question outline and list who they plan to interview/why they chose this person. For the actual final project, you’ll incorporate these primary research findings into this section, too.
To have a truly successful public health communications effort, it MUST be research-based. So, be sure to spend enough time/consult enough sources here.
