Customer research performed by ActionAid has revealed that 90% of their supporters fall within the category of “pioneers” in the Cultural Dynamics classification, compared to approximately 36% in the broader UK population (Turner, 2009). The common needs of these people are self-actualization and aesthetic cognitive factors. Understanding what drives their customers to support them enables ActionAid to design their marketing to target these triggering factors directly, thereby leading to higher success rates. Whereas guilt and social pressure are negative feelings that can be stimulated by shock, fear or pitifulness, self-actualization and ‘warm-glow’ are positive feelings that are likely to be triggered by other factors. ActionAid believe that these people are looking for inspiration. The insights from this customer behaviour analysis are therefore the following:
- Steer clear of fear / negative campaigns:
The people watching the ads with strong language and offensive pictures tend to refuse to donate, rather than become a “settlers”. As it has been stated in revised guidance in Charities and Fundraising - ‘The Commission encourages charities to be innovative in their approach to fundraising, but reminds trustees of the need to consider the advantages and disadvantages, including potential financial and reputational risks, and the ethical implications of any method of fundraising prior to adoption.’ ‘Although the charity may see a short-term gain to employing such methods, donors may feel that they are being unduly pressured into donating and develop a negative perception of the charity and charities generally.’
- Focus on ‘inspiration’ – ‘warm glow’ theory;
When people make donations to privately provided public goods, such as charity, there may be many actors influencing their decisions other than altruism. People are sometimes motivated by a desire to win prestige, respect, friendship, and other social and psychological objectives. Clearly social pressure, guilt, sympathy, or simply a desire for a 'warm glow' may play important roles in the decisions of agents. While such warm-glow giving has been acknowledged in the literature/ the most common approach has been to assume that preferences depend only on private consumption and the total supply of the public good and not on individual donations per se.
- Address the perception of ‘effectiveness’
American Institute of Philanthropy - a nonprofit charity watchdog and information service, is to maximize the effectiveness of every dollar contributed to charity by providing donors with information they need to make more informed giving decisions.
The AIP Guide lists charities by categories along with a financial analysis of the organization represented by a letter grade ranging from A to F. One can also find a list of the top-rated charities from its online website.
This site informs the public of the quality of certain charities. It has a grading system as to how effective an organization is with its donations as well as tips on how to donate safely. "Mission is to make philanthropy more responsive to people with the least wealth and opportunity, more relevant to critical public needs, and more open and accountable to all, to create a more just and democratic society. Conducts action research, provides technical assistance to nonprofits, and engages in policy advocacy. Its reform activism targets foundations, corporations, individual donors and workplace fund-raising."
- Provide information on different ways to support, i.e. non-financial options.
Over the last few years we have seen a major increase in the alternative Charity gift market, as more people take control of how their money is spent and where it is going. We have seen a massive increase in the number of ethical alternative gift ideas, education gifts, gifts for the land, gifts for business and ultimately the gift of life. Besides that, supporters can help other way, donating their time for social campaigns, writing and sending the letters to necessary organization or just by sharing with friends.
Exchange
According to ‘Cultural Dynamics’ – Inspiration is the best motivator for ‘Pioneers’ to show their support. “...reward is a direct joy”, “I'm over the moon”, “It feels great”, “We feel good” – These are the quotations of the supporters. They become happier by helping others, receiving the inspiration in return. Based on the customer value delivery system, exchange is what the customer receives minus the sacrifice needed to receive it. Total customer value is the perceived sum of product, services, image and personal benefits (Kotler, Keller, Brady, Goodman & Hansen, 2009: 381).
Applying this model to ActionAid we can see that donating some amount of money or time, customers receive clear brand and clear values plus transparency of funds and as the most important – self-satisfaction and inspiration.
Competitors
In general it is pretty hard to define the real competitors among the charities. In case with ActionAid we could state that the alike charities, such as “Oxfam” and “Worldvision” are the biggest competitors but in fact there are other foundations that can create concerns.
According to Breeze Beth there are small local charities, which in fact increase their presence all around the world in form of small donation cans in almost every public places (supermarkets, shops, restaurants, cinemas). ‘Donate now’ – is the advantage of such charities. Easy accessibility is another advantage. People are acting mostly automatically, putting money into these cans.
Another point of concern is that potential supporter divides the charities into certain categories: local vs. international, helping people vs. helping animals, etc. ActionAid being huge International Organization is already beyond the definition of “local” charity. Supporters prefer the money to stay inside the country, where they can trace the whole chain.
The ‘little green men’ constitute a newer type of competition, with examples of these being The Costa Foundation and the Nike ‘Girl Effect’. ActionAid has a clear advantage as a non-profit organisation given the insight that customers prefer donating to less ‘business-like’ organisations (Sargeant, 2004). ActionAid are set apart from these by having a well-established, influential network and extensive reporting, proving their efficiency.
Nowadays, the small foundations are not the real competitors but they are still “under-the-radars” and ignoring these charities can lead to miss their boost from the shadow. Thus, the appropriate steps must be taken in order to be ready to catch the trend. Though, the “street strategy” showed itself as unsuccessful tool for ActionAid, it must not be totally ignored and can be used at least with the goal to create the image of “local” charity.
Segmenting, Targeting, Positioning (STP)
Historically, ActionAid has based their market segmentation on demographic structures such as region (e.g. Yorkshire / West Country campaigns), age (e.g. Bollocks to Poverty), and gender. In recent times, ActionAid has begun to pay increased attention to more advanced models of segmenting the market, such as value-based segmenting as discussed above. Values-based research into their customer base has revealed that “pioneers” are strongly represented among their supporters and that addressing the positive feelings associated with supporting a charity can trigger desired behaviour and brand advocacy amongst this population segment in favour of ActionAid.
Proposition
The proposition is to use the internet and social networks as a tool to reach the customers.
A social network is a made up of individuals (or organizations) called "nodes", which are tied (connected) by one or more specific types of , such as , , common interest, financial exchange, dislike, , or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or .
An example of a social network diagram
There are some measures of social networks:
The extent to which a node lies between other nodes in the network. This measure takes into account the connectivity of the node's neighbors, giving a higher value for nodes which bridge clusters. The measure reflects the number of people who a person is connecting indirectly through their direct links.
An edge is said to be a bridge if deleting it would cause its endpoints to lie in different components of a graph.
This measure gives a rough indication of the social power of a node based on how well they "connect" the network.
The most famous social network nowadays is Facebook. Facebook is a and website launched in February 2004. As of January 2011, Facebook has more than 600 million active users. Moreover, the take-up and use of Facebook is increasing exponentially (Facebook,2010). The average age of the Facebook users is 44. Though the Charities are widening their presence in this social network, ( – the list of top-10 Charities application in Facebook), ActionAid Facebook pages have more than 100 000 fans in total. Creating the application can help to access the necessary results by inspiring people to show their support and by asking them to share the application with their friends.
Benefits of such application are that the supporters can be reached 24/7 all around the world. Moreover, creation of such kind of application does not require big spending and what is more important do not has a maintenance costs.
Besides the Facebook, there are other famous social networks, which can help to cover all age ranges and different social ranks.
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Sargeant points out that social organisations have multiple customers. For the purposes of this analysis, we have chosen to focus on ‘supporters’, which includes people who donate time or money. Unless otherwise specified, customer refers to supporters in the following.
Social Marketing Group report. University of Exeter. 2010.
Based on a value system developed by Cultural Dynamics Marketing & Strategy. See appendix for more information.
“Aestethic cognitive” is the need for order, symmetry, closure, structure and beauty (Maslow, 1970: 25-26).
Andreoni, James (1987),' Impure altruism and donations to public goods: a theory of "warm-glow" giving,' Working paper. University of Wisconsin,
Cultural Dynamics (2010): CDSM Values Modes. Cultural Dynamics
Social Marketing Group report. University of Exeter. 2010.
Wasserman, Stanley, & Faust, Katherine. (1994). Social Networks Analysis: Methods and Applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
50% of active users log into Facebook each day (Hird, 2010). An average of 4 hours 39 minutes per user per day is spent on Facebook (Nielsen, 2009).
