A premise of social marketing is “every behavior is a transaction.” It’s actually an idea that is well understood in sociology, psychology, and communication, but to the uninitiated, it can sound pretty harsh. But transactional behaviors are not what you think! In social marketing, thinking of a behavior as a transaction really just means that a reciprocal or two-way exchange is taking place. It’s often quite neutral or caring rather than selfish or impersonal. In this third episode of our brief series on social marketing, we unpack the concept of behavioral transactions so that you can become better at analyzing them—and become more effective at using them to achieve better health outcomes and greater health equity. If you haven’t already done so, listen to our introduction to social marketing in Episode 6 and the first parts of this series, Episodes 26 & 27.
Resources:
More on transactions in communication: 1.3: Principles of Communication – Social Sci LibreTexts
You can explore more about the Five Whys and how to use them to uncover the roots of behavior:
https://business.adobe.com/blog/basics/5-whys-root-cause-analysis
https://nirn.fpg.unc.edu/sites/nirn.fpg.unc.edu/files/imce/documents/RCA%20Resources_11.7.18_0.pdf
https://www.emilyguybirken.com/post/using-the-5-whys-to-investigate-your-white-allyship
Worksheet link: Coming soon!
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