%0 Generic
%9 Master's Thesis
%A Leff, Mara
%D 2016
%F pittir:26398
%K Social Marketing, Participatory Action Research, India, Hand washing, Behavior Change, Health Communications, Global Health
%T The emergence of a social marketing framework to increase hand washing among rural women in Telangana, India while conducting Participatory Action Research (PAR)
%U http://d-scholarship-dev.library.pitt.edu/26398/
%X This project examines the feasibility of employing methods associated with the Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach to develop a Social Marketing campaign around hand washing in Southern India. Historically, media and large-scale behavior change communications campaigns have driven public awareness on a myriad of health topics. With that said, these efforts can fail to produce measurable results often due to an absence of important insights into the target audience, and therefore a lack of cultural relevance in messaging efforts. Blending a participatory approach with traditional campaign development tactics that are inherently more top-down, may create more tailored and targeted communication’s strategies. This work applied a unique approach to creating a Social Marketing campaign by engaging the target audience as co-creators in the development process. Focus groups were held with mothers in five study villages selected in Medchal Mandal, an area located in the state of Telangana. During the qualitative analysis process, there was a natural emergence of core Social Marketing campaign components. Participants organically provided suggestions for various campaign concepts within the same framework that is commonly used by Social Marketing professionals. Their suggestions for where, when and how a campaign should be carried out generally mapped on to the Marketing Mix or 4Ps. The study was successful in producing rich insights into the target audience using a feasible approach for community engagement. It also has exciting implications for future work around participatory campaign development and increased synergy between the fields of participatory research and Social Marketing. It was concluded that moving forward, this blended approach should be further investigated as a potential method for igniting social change.