National Alcohol Campaign - Essay Example

Case Study Report Alcohol is an organic compound that contains ethanol and it is used as a beverage. Its consumption is however referred to as a health hazard because research has shown that in Australia, it is the key cause of drug related health problems the first one being cigarette smoking. In April 1998, the Department of Health and Ageing Care formerly known as Commonwealth Department of Health and Family Services started a National Alcohol Campaign with was aimed at reducing Alcohol consumption rate among Australian youths. The Campaign was launched on February 2000 so as to curb the high rate together with a range of regulatory, policy and educational initiatives. It was however known that according to the World Health Organization (WHO), over 1.8 million people’s death was caused by excessive alcohol consumption. (Klatsky, 1995). As a result, the campaign’s primary aim was to enlighten Australian youths on the negative consequences which pose great death risks due to alcohol consumption. The second role of the campaign was to promote the parents awareness and role in the high rate of teenage drinking. Extensive research was then conducted in 1998 by Elliott where there arose a need for basic decisions regarding segmentation of target audience, communication objectives and key messages. The use of segmentation of segmentation as a basis for National Alcohol Campaign was very important because a very good tool for target identification. Elliott, in his campaign, used segmentation as a means of identifying relevant target market as well as preparing proper communication objectives. Day voices that ssegmentation enables efficient of the correct message to the correct audience. (Day, 1980). Among the various market segments in the National Alcohol Campaign was the primary audience which included male and female teenagers aged between 15 and 17 years. The other segment was the secondary audience which included parents of 12-17 year old children. These selected segments were necessary in ensuring communication vehicles namely; television, internet, magazines, radios, cinemas etc. It was also very important to market the campaign to market the various to various stakeholder groups to seek support. In this case assistance was sorted from the Alcohol and other Drugs Council of Australia (ACDA). The objective was to rally support form a range of over 600 stakeholder organizations. Among the stakeholder segments were; Local Government Association, law enforcement agencies, alcohol and other drugs association, youth affairs association, parents and educational associations, liquor licensing agencies and the Australian council of social service. The main reason behind this way to keep all the stakeholder groups informed about the campaign’s initiative and its current updates. The campaign was later evaluated and published in 2002 by the department of health and ageing. The report documented the evaluation results and it was evident that in the youth target market (15-17 years of age), the campaign was more effective to females as compared to males. This was due to reported positive changes in attitudes and drinking expectations of young females as opposed to males. On the other hand, finding showed that a significant lower proportion of parents perceived that their children were current alcohol drinkers which was different from what was indicated the reported behavior by the teenagers themselves. These findings were therefore considered important in guiding future campaigns. The Rational for using segmentation in the National Alcohol Campaign is the creation of a much broader concept which makes it more efficient and productive. It can be termed as the divide and conquer rule. In this case, the concentration of the campaign’s energy was directed to specific audience segments which helped gain an effective advantage. According to Thomas, segmentation usually helps to achieve focus and concentration which in this case is evident in the campaign evaluation report. (Thomas, 2007). In this report all the findings were based on the audience segments selected. It is therefore evident that due to effective of audience segmentation, the campaign was able to effectively reach to the desired Australians without wastage of resources, time and efforts. Indeed, ‘segmentation is usually very effective in aiding proper planning and resource management which is the singular most valuable marketing tool to the economy and the society at large’. (Wedel, 2000). The National Alcohol Campaign in this case used demographic segmentation which is the partitioning or dividing the target campaign audience in terms of gender, age, income, type of housing and education level. In this campaign, gender and age the demographic segmentation variables used. This included male, female, young and old audiences. Among the other variables in which the campaign would have been segmented include; psychographic/lifestyle segmentation and behavioral segmentation. Psychographic segmentation mainly emphasizes on multivariate analysis of the target audience’s attitudes, values, perceptions and interests. In this case the target campaign audience would have been segmented into specific lifestyles in terms of class for example the lower class audience (Low income), middleclass (average people) and upper class which includes the high income. This is because they all have different perceptions in relation to alcohol consumption. Behavioral segmentation can also be effectively used as bases of segmentation because it focuses on variables like usage rate, usage patterns and price sensitivity. The campaign’s audience would have then been segmented into the types of alcohol consumers ranging from heavy drinkers, social drinkers and beginners. In this way, communication to the various types of audiences would be structures separately and more effectively because dealing with heavily addicted alcohol consumer needs more attention and advice as compared to social drinkers and consequently beginners. For effective target marketing segments, proper guidelines should be followed regarding selecting the appropriate target market so as to be able to concentrate the market or campaign efforts effectively. (Dunbar, 2004). Firstly, market segments should be carefully evaluated according to they fit the organizations objectives, resources and capabilities. The objective in this case was to reach out to as many affected Australians and be able advice them on the dangers of alcohol consumption. The target segmentation strategy is often guided by the nature of the activity in question. The strategies can be categorized into; single segment strategy where one marketing segment is selected, selective specialization where different market mixes are offered to different segments, product specialization, market specialization and full market strategy. In our case the strategy used was the selective specialization strategy where specific target audience was selected and specific campaign strategies launched with different messages. This strategy was selected because the target audiences were of different dimensions which include teenagers, parents and stakeholders which influence the choice of the strategy due to their diversity. The segmentation implementation strategy was however very effective because it provided the appropriate segments In general, we can say that Alcohol Consumption is a killer habit which should be seriously campaigned against so as to help reduce the high rising death rates. Australian teenagers and youths are the advised to avoid Alcohol and other drugs consumption because apart from causing deaths, it caused other dangerous harms like being exposed to the risk of contacting HIV/AIDS, drunk driving accidents etc. The National Alcohol Campaign for Australia is very important because it aims at creating awareness among the Australian youth and parents. However, the use of segmentation as a basis for the research was very important because it provided or increasing the campaigns efficiency and effectiveness. The reason behind its positive outcome was because it made the campaign work easier and less time and resource consuming. There was no campaign efforts wasted due to effective planning. References Day, G 1980, "Strategic Market Analysis: Top-down and bottom-up approaches", Marketing Science Institute, Cambridge. Dunbar, I 2004, Market Segmentation: How to do it, how to profit from it. Butterworth-Heinemann. Klatsky, A 1995, "Alcohol and longevity". American Journal of Public Health. Retrieved 17 September 2009. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1615277.  Thomas, J 2007, Market Segmentation Global leader in Analytical research Systems, Decision Analyst, viewed 17 September, 2009. Wedel, M 2000, Market Segmentation: Conceptual and Methodological Foundations, kluwer, Amsterdam. Read More