Factors Influencing the Adoption Process in an Employer Driven Hiv/aids Social Marketing Campaign: a Case Study of International Committee of the Red

Abstract

HIV/AIDS is today acknowledged as a global health problem. Many organisations today acknowledge the challenge posed by the pandemic to their profitability and to the productivity of their employees. In response, many organisations have put in place policies to reduce the impact of the threat that HIV/AIDS poses. In ICRC, the organisation has adopted the use of social marketing campaigns to promote behaviour change and to encourage people to speak openly about HIV/AIDS. It was considered important to conduct a study to determine the factors that influence the adoption rate among the employees of ICRC. The objectives of the research were to establish the adopter categories of ICRC employees, determine the relative factors that influence adoption in an employer driven HIV/AIDS campaign among employees in ICRC and establish whether these factors vary according to the hierarchical level and geographical location of the employees. This was a survey research which sampled a total of 125 employees of International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). They were selected from the staff records using stratified random sampling. A semi structured questionnaire was used whereby 47 staff members completed the questionnaire. Data was analyzed using mean scores, standard deviation and percentages. It was concluded that promotion, price and information were the main influencers of adoption of new behaviors. These were followed closely by product, place and motivation. Culture was found to have the least influence. The staff indicated varying extents to which various measures influence the adoption of new behaviors. Most of the variables had high standard deviations indicating notable variations across groups. The findings indicate that that several factors influence behavior change to a large extent. These include:- benefits of new behavior, HIV/AIDS workshops, anticipated feelings of pride and joy from new behavior, increased understanding of the dangers of current behavior, lunch time talk shows, video-shows, fear of death and educational pamphlets.

It can also be concluded that while the factors vary with hierarchical level and geographical location of staff. The variation was not significant. Of the two hierarchical level was found to be more of a discriminator than location. Most of the challenges were related to staff resistance to change, peer educators competence dishonesty, educators lack role awareness, lack of resources and lack of support from expatriate staff. It was recommended that ICRC should increase the level of promotion element to create awareness on the need to change. Staff segmentation in the social marketing was recommended to be more effective in targeting. Peer educators need to be educated on the need to be educated to show empathy to staff. The researcher suggested future research on measure effectiveness and impact of promotions, track actual behavior and experimental research to find out the best approaches. Research covering expatriate employees and qualitative research were also recommended.