What Causes Social Marketing Programs to Fail? A Qualitative Study

Background: This paper addresses the key factors that cause social marketing programs (typically consisting of discrete programs or interventions, but also including broader-scale initiatives) to fail. It argues that understanding these failures offers greater insight to researchers and practitioners than publications solely focused on successes. Focus: Our paper discusses the causes of the failure of social marketing programs, an area that has largely been ignored in extant research. Research Question: What causes social marketing programs to fail? Importance: As the majority of practitioner-oriented social marketing research focuses on how to develop a successful program, we identify a tendency to ignore failed programs. We suggest that both researchers and practitioners can arguably learn more useful lessons from failures rather than successes. Thus, this paper contributes to social marketing literature by exploring the key causes of social marketing failures. Methods: We conducted ten semi-structured interviews with social marketing practitioners recruited using a purposive sampling technique. Results: We identify four elements responsible for the failure of social marketing programs, each centered on the planning and implementation stage. Firstly, formative research at the earliest stages of program planning is often neglected, resulting in a limited understanding of the target audience. Relatedly, extant research is frequently overlooked during this early planning stage, and this failure to use available social marketing theory and frameworks can result in program performing poorly. Thirdly, for a program to be successful, it must be congruent with the goals of the wider environment and infrastructure within which it is situated; adopting too narrow a focus can also result in a limited impact or program failure. Lastly, we found a common issue relating of stakeholder mismanagement, specifically around issues of power imbalance and mismanaged expectations resulting in social marketing program failing to launch. Researchers and practitioners must acknowledge that social marketing programs do indeed fail but recognize that in these failings lies insight into how to enhance future practice. Recommendations: We suggest that more attention is required from social marketing practitioners during the early design stage into understanding the target audience in detail. We suggest drawing upon extant social marketing frameworks and research to inform the planning and development of social marketing programs. We demonstrate how implementing these changes in the earliest stages of program designs would reduce the chance of program failure. Further, we suggest that adopting a more systems-level approach or critical approach would additionally benefit program outcomes. Limitations: A relatively small sample size could be considered a limitation of the study. Similarly, our focus on practitioner insights may limit the scope of the findings. Future research could advance the current findings by incorporating the views of a broader range of stakeholders, including the target audience themselves. We also suggest future research consider integrating the analysis of failure into the social marketing process to encourage practitioner reflection and inform and improve future practice.

The Impact of Dual Diagnosis on Drug Court Failure

There is limited research investigating the relationship between dual diagnosis and drug court outcomes. The current study examines the relationship between dual diagnosis and drug court failure by specific failure type. Utilizing data from a large urban drug court in the Southwestern United States, the study finds mixed results regarding the impact of dual diagnosis on drug court failure. Specifically, while there was no evidence that dual diagnosis predicted overall success/failure, dual diagnosis significantly increased the odds of serious program failure (e.g., new offense, absconding, revocation). In contrast, dual diagnosis significantly decreased the odds of less serious failure (e.g., rule violation, relapse).

IS RADICAL INNOVATION MANAGEMENT MISUNDERSTOOD? PROBLEMATISING THE RADICAL INNOVATION DISCIPLINE

This paper poses a critical view on radical innovation (RI) management research and practice. The study investigates how expected RI performance influences firms’ understanding of their RI capability. RI performance is often based on output measures such as market shares or fiscal return. On the contrary, RI capability building advocates for exploration, learning, and accepting uncertainty. Hence, RI capability building often focuses on the processes of the firms, and not the outcome. Thus, it is argued that the RI capability-building and RI performance expectations are based on different managerial orientations. Coupling a discussion of the literature with case findings from four large international firms, this paper identifies a discrepancy between RI capability-building and RI performance within literature and practice. This is regarded to be a major contributing factor to RI program failure. This study presents three misunderstandings related to RI research and practice and discusses implications of these findings.

Critical failure factors of public-private partnership low-cost housing program in Thailand

Purpose – Numerous studies to date have demonstrated the public-private partnership (PPP) project procurement method's failure to deliver low-cost housing (LCH) to low-income groups (LIGs) in developing countries. The purpose of this paper is to investigate critical failure factors (CFFs), and how they cause the failure of PPP-LCH program. Design/methodology/approach – Grounded Theory methodology was used to gather and analyze the data in order to identify, categorize, and develop the logically causal relationships among CFFs that cause PPP-LCH program failure. Findings – Ten CFFs in various phases of PPP-LCH project life cycle caused PPP-LCH program failure. Some CFFs resulted from ineffective PPP policy and strategy, while some were beyond the control of the project/program management team. These CFFs were inter-/intra-related to one another in a particular way. Originality/value – Despite the increase in PPP-LCH projects/programs for LIGs in practice and the prevalence of failure, the studies of PPP-LCH project/program failure still suffer from insufficient conceptual clarity about the causes of these failures. The lessons learned, to some extent, help decision makers in both public and private sectors to reduce the probability of the PPP-LCH project/program failure by clearly explaining the nature of each CFF.