Marketing perspective
The third and final aspect of the theoretical framework forming the basis for the proposed study is that provided by adopting a marketing perspective. The unique position of this research is to look at the issue of lower-than-desired science enrolments as a marketing problem. This section outlines how marketing can provide this alternate perspective.
Marketing theory provides a powerful vehicle to inform science education. Marketing is an activity which is aimed at exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners and society at large (Elliott, Rundle-Thiele, & Waller, 2010). Children as young as 3 have been demonstrated experimentally to recognise brands (Fischer, Schwartz, Richards, Goldstein, & Rojas, 1991) and within a few years of this command their own disposable income or at least wield power to influence adult purchases (Sutherland & Thompson, 2003). Adolescents like to be treated as individuals who care about their world and receive their information in manageable packages from a ‘friend’ (Elliott, Rundle-Thiele & Waller, 2010). Developing a positive attitude towards science as a ‘brand’ may be valuable in ensuring science has a place in the cluttered mind of the student. Marketing has been used by benevolent organisations such as the Red Cross to ‘brand’ their organisation and to help people recognise its benefits easily (Moroko & Uncles, 2009). Branding needs rigorous analysis of what a customer desires and how that becomes a purchase decision (Ehrenberg, 1974; Preston, 1982). Marketing techniques are powerful and useful however particular care must be taken when using them with children (Le Guay, 2003). Marketing can inform students that science indeed can fulfil the roles they set for themselves (SjØberg & Schreiner, 2004). Below is a concept of how I believe the market is segmented based on my reading. |
Links that can be made between my analysis of studies conducted in the area of adolescent development and how these relate to marketing concepts (in purple).
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