NSPCC Marketing - Essay Example

28 January 2008 Marketing NSPCC is a charity organization aimed to protect children from abuse and family violence. The organization proposes unique service to diverse target audience including children from different backgrounds, races and classes. Similar to other marketing organizations, NSPCC proposes clients unique services including protection from abuse and protection of human rights of children, psychological and social support, etc. In general, service as a business offering, perhaps, embarrasses when thought of as an act of enslavement to the customer. The notion of service is, as a result, revised or specialized in ways that avoid that harsh association with inferior status. Pfeffer and Salancik (1978) described the relationship between an organization and its environment as a quasi-marketplace, in which representatives of the focal organization are continually negotiating and allocating organizational control with members of critical publics on whom the focal organization depends for its survival and success. A charity like NSPCC operates in a complex environment influenced by political and social difficulties, family relations and laws. The vulnerability of the charity like NSPCC is determined by its degree of dependency on a resource and the external sources of this resource (i.e., the greater the dependency, the higher the potential for loss of autonomy). NSPCC depends upon resources and philanthropy (NSPCC Home Page 2008). 7 Ps model can be applied to NSPCC and its activities. The main Ps are product, price, promotion and place. Strong position of a charity organization is based on brand loyalty and high quality of service range. The likely decision process of the target market is the quality and unique taste that appeals to the consumers' minds with offerings. Product positioning is characterized by establishing trustworthiness, confidence, and competence for customers. NSPCC establishes trustworthiness and unique image as a children's rights organization (McDonald and Christopher 23). This strategy is supported by the "buying process" and the pricing, and as the most important high quality of all services. Pricing decisions influence the organization forcing it to find new ways to reduce costs. NSPCC can use flexible cost-plus pricing to ensure that its services are competitive in the context of the particular market environment. NSPCC has to spend its own resources in order to meet the requirements focusing on technological efforts, security and support. NSPCC opens new officers and involves different social institutions in order to meet needs and demands of the target audience. As a typical marketing company, NSPCC promotes its activities and policies including public relations and advertising campaigns. Modern marketing is customer-oriented, so a charity organization like NSPCC depends upon physical layout, customer service and processes concerning customer service. Unique services help NSPCC to sustain its market position and develop strategies according to current needs and demands of the target audience. Given the increasing turbulence and complexity of the market place, and the rapid pace and impact of technological change, the need for a disciplined, systematic approach to the market has never been greater. Customer service and processes involve call centers and support, people's centers and live chats, etc. Physical layout involves attention to learning environments and attractive layout of agencies, etc. in sum, these features show that NSPCC follows marketing principle of a traditional business applying them to unique environment and purposes (McDonald and Christopher 29). The location of the customer is not strictly physical, though. In many if not most instances of service-giving, location is preponderantly psychological. Even physical location is likely to be chosen for its psychological "image" association or its easy exploitation of well-established customer habit. Successful service is always as much an entertainment as it is an economic utility. Finding the customer where he or she lives psychologically is the first priority of good service delivery. Psychological associations and images that drive human behavior tend to be specific to the individual, or, at minimum, subject to categorization only at complex levels. Some physical locations appeal to one category of customer, turn off another and leave a large number with feelings of indifference (NSPCC Home Page 2008). 2. As a charity organization, NSPCC relies on donations and philanthropy. The two main groups are individuals and companies which donate. Consortium proposals have been around for many years but are just now coming into their own as powerful and cost-effective mechanisms to achieve the outcomes suggested in proposals (Lansdowne 21). For many charity organizations their activities are marked by larger problems and fewer resources. Some projects proposed by NSPCC that make the most of the limited resources available to them win the funding. Many grantors have links to other parts of the world. The political and social changes in Europe and America, as well as the increasingly international interests of governments and corporations, all point to a marked rise in the success rate for international proposals. Changes in trade and tariff rules and the growing number of multinational corporations may mean that a local corporation has a vested interest in another country. Including an elementary school from that country in their project plan may dramatically improve your grantseekers' chances for funding (Lansdowne 76). The publics involve private online donations and gift aids, donations through tax return and through salary, giving shares or other resources (equipment etc.). Service clubs and organizations prefer to support projects that require smaller amounts of grant funds. In addition, they are motivated by a tight focus on the target population. A grant for equipment that will be used by many students in your district and be available to parents or other members of the community is a good example. Whether they are financing after-school programs or computer equipment, service clubs and organizations want to feel that they are making a difference in the community (Lansdowne 64). An individual may be able to reduce the size of a request by eliminating an activity or two without having much effect on the project; however, if the individual eliminates too many activities he/she will probably not be able to accomplish project as outlined. Instead, it may be preferable to modify the objective and reduce the amount of expected change or the number of students or participants the project will reach (NSPCC Home Page 2008). Open-systems theory defines organizational environment as general and specific, the latter being composed of those groups and individuals that are affected by the organization and/or that can affect the organization (i.e., those publics "directly relevant to the organization in achieving its goals," (Grunig and Hunt 143). Whereas the general environment encompasses conditions that may impact the organization potentially, Robbins said that the specific environment "is the part of the environment with which management will be concerned because it is made up of those critical constituencies that can positively or negatively influence the organization's effectiveness" (Grunig and Hunt 143). The main target audiences are children in need and their families, children and young people who experience violence and abuse, etc. The problems with diverse target audiences are that it is difficult to monitor all of them and control allocation of resources. Also, it is impossible to control resource attraction and forecast find rising. These fund-raising features establish an continuous process of exchange that requires management and negotiation by the charitable organization, especially by those partners who manage its projects and programs. The concept of autonomy is a core principles in the exchange process in that the power of an organization to determine and pursue its own purposes is affected by how successful the charity is at managing its principles. Following Lansdowne autonomy is impossible in charity organizations because business, government, and nonprofit strive to establish autonomy by dominating or cooperating with groups or other organizations within their environments. 3. The main advantage a charity gets from a promotional tie-in is improved personal image and wider possibilities for target audiences. The promotional tie-in plays a key role in managing, through domination o cooperation, the interrelationships an organization has with the various publics in its environment. Through his efforts to explain and predict the public relations behaviors of organizations, Grunig and Hunt (1984) has developed models of public relations that explain how an organization manages its environmental interrelationships. Grunig and Hunt (1984) underlines that the aim of communication is publicity and public information, which is a one-way flow of communication for the purpose of information dissemination. In general, "the NSPCC's Corporate Partnerships Team tailors each partnership to suit the individual company's needs. Elements of a partnership may involve employee fundraising, cause-related marketing, gifts-in-kind or even volunteering, secondments and campaigning" (NSPCC 2008). Cooperation with Early Learning Center aims to improve support activities and increase number of services provided to target audiences (NSPCC Home Page 2008). Partnership helps NSPCC manage its interdependencies by cooperation (i.e., creating a dialogue with publics and maintaining a balance between accountability and autonomy through negotiations). The relationship between charitable organizations should be seen as environmental interdependencies, in contrast to conventional wisdom, which views these relationships as benevolent, business, or pseudo relations. These fund-raising interdependencies constitute an ongoing exchange process that requires management and negotiation by the charitable organization so that it can protect and enhance its autonomy (NSPCC Home Page 2008; Lansdowne 65). The fundamental goal of charitable organizations is autonomy from their environments, which include interdependent relationships with donors. Thus, partnership can limit autonomy of NSPCC and its independence. By managing these interdependencies through their fund-raising function, charitable organizations sacrifice some of their autonomy, but reduce the risk of losing even more. If interdependencies with donors are not managed or are ignored (i.e., donor relations are not recognized as potential sources of external control) fund raising may lead to a greater loss of organizational autonomy (Lansdowne 92). 4. "Shock" campaigns have a great impact on feelings and attitudes of the general public. In spite of criticism, 'shock" campaigns help general public to understand the problems faced by children and become active participants of such organizations like NSPCC. Regardless of any self-proclaimed motivations of altruism, shock" campaigns are designed to yield direct, short-term benefits to charitable organizations in the form of increased donations. As related to public relations, shock" campaigns are promotion (i.e., programs are designed to affect the behavior of the consumer public). It is argued here that such direct benefits generated from marketplace exchanges can be detrimental in the long run to charitable organizations and to the corporations who deduct their gifts to such organizations. For instance, in order to attract public attention to the problem of school violence NSPCC published "horrific and disturbing and brilliantimages. Lizzie Emmett recalls that some of the media branded the adverts sensationalist, but the positive response was astonishing: There were grown-ups who recognised a scene from their childhood, and it brought things flooding back" (Shock Tactics 2000). This practice shows that advertising is used as a communication medium which has a great impact on attitudes, values and choices of public. The motivation and opportunity to process information will determine the amount of effort expended during the choice process. This has an important effect on: (a) the amount of information retrieved and processed for choice, and (b) the willingness to retrieve less accessible information. Visual images appeal to emotions and consumers portraying "people like me". For instance, visual communication in news portrays daily lives of people, their problems and possible solutions. Advertisers do not take it for granted that audiences have a high attention level. Researchers underline that while the preceding figures may readily be categorized as symbolic portrayals of emotion, the occurrence of such symbols in social interaction is less apparent (McDonald and Christopher 81). However, one could argue that such basic expressions as smiling and frowning appear in so many contexts and so often that they have become symbols of emotion (NSPCC Home Page 2008). In sum, NSPCC activities are based on traditional marketing aimed to meet needs and demands of the target audience. NSPCC uses traditional methods and promotional techniques in order to attract attention of donators and general public. Works Cited 1. Pfeffer J., & Salancik G. R. The external control of organizations: A resource dependence perspective. New York: Harper & Row, 1978. 2. Grunig J. E., & Hunt T. Managing public relations. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1984. 3. Lansdowne, D. Fund Raising Realities Every Board Member Must Face: A 1-Hour Crash Course on Raising Major Gifts for Nonprofit Organizations. Emerson & Church; 1 edition. 2007. 4. McDonald M., Christopher M. Marketing: A complete Guide. Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. 5. NSPCC Home Page. 2008. 6. Shock Tactics. 2000. 2008. Read More