A survey of the practice of social marketing in christian churches in Kenya

Abstract

This study was aimed at finding out the extent to which Christian churches in Kenya practice social marketing. The research tried to establish the tools of social marketing mix used by Christian churches in social marketing campaign. The extent of measuring the impact of and the tools use were also sought, Literature review was used as a research instrument, It targeted church administrators, bishops, senior pastors or assistant pastors as respondents. The population of interest in the study was Christian churches in Kenya who were members of National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) and Christian Health Association of Kenya (CHAK) recorded as at December 2007. There were 36 "- registered church of which 34 of the registered church had their headquarters in Nairobi. The questionnaire return rate was 83% percent. Descriptive statistics accompanied by use of frequencies, percentages and means were the basis of data analysis. The findings indicated that the church organization employed various social marketing techniques in their social campaigns, which included campaigns against drug abuse, campaigns against HIV/AlDS, benefit of drinking clear water, encourage participation in physical activities among others. The finding also indicated that.the churches employed various tools in reaching out to their target audience with.social marketing messages. These included advertising, publicity, mass communication and personal communication. These findings are in line with the observation in previous studies. Recommendations for the study were suggestive and spelt out that more emphasis should be placed on personal communication to communicate with the target audience. Personal communication creates a relationship between members-and society and, if used carefully, can achieve the desired impact. And emphasis should a.so be placed on special Events (e.g. sports and rallies) to educate the people about all they need to communicate social issues. Such events attract people members and society, and the church can use the situation to create more awareness and influence behavior change. More sponsorship of events needs to be sought from both the corporate world. and other sources, in order to educate the church members and society on social issues. A lot of emphasis needs to be placed on evaluation of impact of the social marketing campaigns. Finally, suggestions for further research included: a study be done to assess on the awareness creation! behavior change of the church members and target members of the society.