社會意見在塑造我們購買決策和購買經歷發揮了至關重要的作用。除了正面（或負面）的意見會鼓勵（或打消）我們購買某個產品，我們的意見更傾向於遵循我們的社交圈。社會意見的這些方面對於做出精確產品推薦、準確預測信息流向、及有效營銷活動發布極為重要。 / 在這篇論文中，我們首先研究極性意見對我們的購買決策的影響。同時，我們分析了兩個現實世界中的社會網絡，Flixster 和Epinions 中的消極和積極的意見的信息傳播模式。我們觀察到，否定意見的存在大大降低了表達意見的數量。考慮到這兩種意見的不對稱性，我們提出並擴展了目前最流行的兩個信息傳播模式，獨立分級和線性閾值模型。我們提出的拓展模型提供了一個可處理的影響問題和並能夠提高將來意見的預測精度，超過3%。 / 更進一步，我們研究了社會意見對我們表達產品意見的影響。該問題的假設是多次顯示我們表達的意見並不完全獨立於我們的社交圈，而是通過校準，使之跟社會意見相似。為了理解這一現象，我們為用戶的評分提出了一個新型的模型。該模型中，用戶對項目的評分是由社會輿論、用戶的偏好和項目特點的一個函數。該模型可以提高用戶評分的預測準確率達2%。此外，模型中學習到的參數可展示用戶對社會意見的遵循程度。用戶對社會意見的遵循分析表明，超過76%的用戶傾向於在一定程度上遵循他們好友的意見。平均而言，當社會影響存在的時候，用戶評分更趨於正面。我們還發現，社會的遵循者通常不是信息傳播的第一次參與者。 / Social opinions play a crucial role in shaping both our purchase decisions and our experience. While on one hand, we are encouraged (discouraged) to adopt a product upon hearing the positive (negative) opinions; on the other hand, our opinions tend to conform to our social circle. Both of these aspects of social opinions are important in order to make precise product recommendations, to accurately predict the information flow pathways and to launch efficient viral marketing campaigns. / In this thesis, we first study the impact of polarity of opinions on our purchase decisions. For the same, we analyze the information propagation patterns of the negative and positive opinions on two real world social networks, Flixster and Epinions, and observe that the presence of negative opinions significantly reduces the number of expressed opinions. To account for the asymmetry between the two kinds of opinions, we propose extensions of the two most popular information propagation models, Independent Cascade and Linear Threshold models. The proposed extensions give a tractable influence problem and improve the prediction accuracy of future opinions, by more than 3%. / Next, we study the impact of social opinions on our expressed opinions about the products. The hypothesis is that many times our expressed opinions are not completely independent of our social circle and gets calibrated such that they are similar to the social opinions. In order to understand this phenomenon, we propose a novel formulation for the users ratings where every expressed rating is considered as a function of the social opinion along with the user preference and item characteristics. The proposed method helps in improving the prediction accuracy of users’ rating by more than 2% in presence of social influence. Additionally, the learned model parameters reveal the degree of conformity of users. Detailed analysis of user social conformity show that more than 76% of users tend to conform to their friends to some extent. On an average, user ratings become more positive in presence of the social influence. We also nd that the social conformers are usually not the rst one to participate in an information cascade. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Garg, Priyanka. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2012. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 100-110). / Abstracts also in Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / Acknowledgement --- p.v / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Contributions --- p.3 / Chapter 1.2 --- Organization --- p.4 / Chapter 2 --- Background & Survey --- p.6 / Chapter 2.1 --- Network Structure --- p.6 / Chapter 2.1.1 --- Basic Definitions --- p.6 / Chapter 2.1.2 --- Structural Properties of Social Networks --- p.8 / Chapter 2.1.3 --- Network Generators --- p.12 / Chapter 2.2 --- Information Diffusion in Social Networks --- p.16 / Chapter 2.2.1 --- Basic Terminologies --- p.19 / Chapter 2.2.2 --- Principles governing the Decision-Making process --- p.19 / Chapter 2.2.3 --- Information Cascade Models --- p.21 / Chapter 2.2.4 --- Influence Estimation --- p.34 / Chapter 2.2.5 --- Viral Marketing --- p.39 / Chapter 2.2.6 --- Influence vs. Homophily --- p.44 / Chapter 2.2.7 --- Results from Large Scale Empirical Studies --- p.45 / Chapter 3 --- Impact on Product Purchase Decision --- p.47 / Chapter 3.1 --- Introduction --- p.47 / Chapter 3.2 --- Related Work --- p.49 / Chapter 3.3 --- Problem Definition --- p.50 / Chapter 3.4 --- Data and Observations --- p.51 / Chapter 3.4.1 --- Data Collection --- p.51 / Chapter 3.4.2 --- Observations --- p.52 / Chapter 3.5 --- Polarity-Sensitive Information Flow Model --- p.54 / Chapter 3.5.1 --- Social Influence Function --- p.55 / Chapter 3.5.1.1 --- Polarity-Sensitive IC Model --- p.55 / Chapter 3.5.1.2 --- Polarity-Sensitive LT Model (LTPS) --- p.58 / Chapter 3.5.2 --- Activation State of Influenced Node --- p.59 / Chapter 3.6 --- Influence Estimation --- p.61 / Chapter 3.7 --- Experiments on Synthetic Data --- p.63 / Chapter 3.7.1 --- IA and WP as Approximation of IC-N --- p.64 / Chapter 3.7.2 --- Quality of the Estimated Parameters --- p.65 / Chapter 3.7.3 --- Prediction Accuracy --- p.66 / Chapter 3.8 --- Experiments on Real Data --- p.69 / Chapter 3.8.1 --- Experimental Setup --- p.69 / Chapter 3.8.2 --- Observations --- p.70 / Chapter 3.9 --- Summary --- p.72 / Chapter 4 --- Impact on Posterior Evaluation --- p.73 / Chapter 4.1 --- Introduction --- p.73 / Chapter 4.2 --- Related Work --- p.75 / Chapter 4.3 --- Ratings under social conformity --- p.77 / Chapter 4.3.1 --- Problem Definition & Notations --- p.79 / Chapter 4.3.2 --- Conformer's Ratings --- p.80 / Chapter 4.3.3 --- Parameter Estimation --- p.82 / Chapter 4.4 --- Evaluation --- p.84 / Chapter 4.4.1 --- Goodreads Dataset --- p.85 / Chapter 4.4.2 --- Prediction Accuracy --- p.87 / Chapter 4.4.3 --- Influencers Quality --- p.89 / Chapter 4.5 --- Social Conformity Analysis --- p.91 / Chapter 4.6 --- Summary --- p.96 / Chapter 5 --- Summary & Future Work --- p.97 / Chapter 5.1 --- Summary --- p.97 / Chapter 5.2 --- Future Work --- p.98 / Bibliography --- p.100

Among Filipinos of lower SES 1/500 babies are born yearly with an orofacial cleft. This is one of the highest birth prevalence of orofacial clefting in the world. The main purpose of this study was to obtain contextual information prior to planning for community based health interventions in the Philippines regarding orofacial clefting. A descriptive ethnography was used to describe working class Filipinos' (including healthcare workers') current beliefs about the causes, prevention, and treatment of orofacial clefting, and vitamin taking practices during pregnancy. Modifications of Kleinman's explanatory models were made to include questions about people's general and personal beliefs about cause and prevention of cleft. Innovative methods were developed and used in field research and included an oral back translation method and double translation process. Filipinos reported the following explanations for cause of cleft inheritance, falls, cravings, environmental exposures, and God's will. Beliefs about prevention of cleft included limiting their number of children, being careful not to fall, and avoiding environmental exposures. Filipinos seek surgical repair as treatment for their cleft. Iron was the supplement women reported taking most often during pregnancy. Female participants reported that feeling better, cost of multivitamin, side effects, and bad smell and taste were reasons why they quit taking micronutrients before they had completed the recommended course. This study is the first to construct a Filipino explanatory model specifically for clefting. In constructing Filipino's explanatory model for clefting we found that people's general causal explanations for cleft were not always congruent with personal causal explanations, and people's causal explanations for cleft were not always congruent with their prevention explanations. Modifying Kleinman's explanatory models to include questions about general and personal explanations for cause of illness and questions about prevention should be used to educe a more complete explanatory model. Results from this research can be used to inform the design of health campaigns and/or possible vitamin trials. These campaigns could include but are not limited to developing information brochures and programs about the cause and prevention of clefting, or developing public health campaigns to promote the use of prenatal vitamins in women of childbearing age.

This thesis presents a case study of the drink drive initiatives, including marketing communications, legislation and enforcement practices implemented in the state of Victoria (Australia) between 1989-2000. It has been argued that the 51% reduction in road toll was related to these initiatives. In order to explore the veracity of these claims, a holistic case study approach was adopted. In addition to an examination of the communications tactics and extant practices of enforcement agencies, the study involved interviews with two distinct groups: professionals in various fields pertaining to road safety, and members of the general Victorian driving community. The focus of this work was on the advertising and communications campaigns that were run by the Transport Accident Commission from 1989-2000; however the policy and enforcement initiatives were also examined in terms of their potential impact on the lowering of the road toll. Suggestions for the improvement of policy and communication strategies within a social marketing context are made.

On May 2011, the Environmental Protection Administration launched a policy to cut the use of disposable cups. This policy obliges non-alcoholic beverage stores to give customers incentives for bringing their own cups or recycling disposable cups. Because college students often buy take-out non-alcoholic beverage, this study aimed to explore how psychological variables might affect their intent to bringing their own cups. Results from this study may provide some suggestions for the policy above. This study started with a focus group interview with 31 college students. This interview gave me a preliminary understanding of students¡¦ intent to bring their own cups and the related psychological factors. I then combined the findings from this interview and literature review to design the framework and questionnaire for this study. Following Kotler and Lee¡¦s (2008) concept of social marketing, the questionnaire was mainly designed to assess five variables: policy incentive, benefit of bringing own cups, cost of bringing own cups, convenience in buying cups, and convenience in washing cups. A convenience sample of 197 students in National Sun Yat-sen University participated. The results suggest the higher the profit or the lower the cost for bringing own cups, the stronger will be students¡¦ intent to do so. However, the other three variables had no significant effect. In addition, the analysis showed female students were more intended to bring their own cups than male students did. Students from different departments also differed in their intent, but the differences were small. Based on these findings, several policy recommendations were proposed.

In recent years, the already idealized practice of families sitting down together to eat a homemade meal and enjoy each other's company has been bolstered by academic research that suggests family meals are good for children. In response to these findings, several organizations have launched campaigns promoting family meals. In this dissertation, I compare the ways family meals are framed by the organizations that promote them to how parents frame them by conducting a qualitative content analysis of ten campaign websites and interviews with 46 parents. The sample of campaigns represents commercial and nonprofit organizations, and the sample of parents varies by income and marital status, allowing me to determine whether frames used by a certain type of organization are likely to resonate with certain demographics. My findings suggest that while organizational framing of family meals is sometimes similar to way parents frame them, there are some important disjunctions that are likely to decrease the potential effectiveness of the campaigns. In general, campaigns frame family meals more in terms of conversation and what happens around the table, while parents frame them more in terms of food and labor. When campaign frames do match parents' frames, they align more closely with higher-income and married parents, particularly in the case of commercial organizations, while nonprofit campaigns align more closely with lower-income and single parents. This project contributes to the literatures on framing, social marketing, and consumption by using frame analysis to gauge the potential effectiveness of the promotion of a set of everyday consumption practices. It provides insight into how parents think about and perform the tasks involved in creating family meals within an organizational context and the creation of cultural discourse about them. A practical application is using this information to improve the promotion of family meals, particularly for lower-income and single parents.

As pressures of a growing population take their toll on our environment, efforts must be made to facilitate sustainable behaviours at the neighbourhood scale. Science is demonstrating that the abundance and diversity of native bees is declining in many locales around the world. One of the major drivers of this decline is the loss and fragmentation of habitat, caused in part by suburban expansion. This emerging landscape is dominated by a garden typology not beneficial to bee populations. Using the principles and theories of Community-Based Social Marketing (CBSM) and a survey of Guelph gardeners and homeowners, effective program strategies are outlined for implementation by Pollination Guelph, and target the behaviours and barriers associated with activities that negatively impact native bees. A CBSM based program will encourage bee-friendly gardening, promote the aggregate changes needed to alter the individuals gardening behaviours, and potentially increase native bee populations in the suburban neighbourhoods of Guelph.

This research examines the interrelationships between tourism, poverty alleviation, and social marketing. It argues that tourism growth is necessary but insufficient by itself to alleviate poverty. Although tourism has often been connected with poverty under the rubric of pro-poor tourism (PPT), limited research has investigated this from the poor’s perspective. Little is also known of various poverty causes, including poor people’s behaviours in affecting poverty. Although tourism may contribute to alleviating poverty, negative poverty-related behaviours (e.g. depletion of natural resources) are still found in some host destinations. Where behaviour change is considered significant for tourism to help alleviate poverty, social marketing may be important given its potential in motivating voluntary behaviour change. This is particularly necessary for a developing country such as Vietnam, where tourism is encouraged for poverty alleviation. The district of Sapa, Vietnam is chosen as a case study area, which has substantial levels of poverty although tourism has developed for years. This research seeks to answer four main questions: What are the barriers to poverty alleviation identified by PPT projects in Vietnam? What are the roles of social marketing in PPT projects in Vietnam? What are the barriers to poverty alleviation identified by PPT projects as perceived by local people and key informants in Sapa? What are the roles of tourism as a means of poverty alleviation as perceived by the locals in Sapa? This research was designed in two stages. The first involved a content analysis of tourism-related projects in Vietnam, where a systematic search for project documents was conducted. Forty-five projects were found and then analysed against a set of six social marketing benchmark criteria. Twenty-one projects were judged to meet all the criteria, most of which were implemented in national parks (NPs) and nature reserves (NRs) that are home to important resources for tourism. Typical project objectives included preventing or mitigating local people’s dependence on natural resources and promoting tourism as an alternative livelihood. The most popular competing factors identified were local people’s poor perception of conservation needs and traditional dependence on natural resources, stakeholder conflicts, and weak policy implementation. This stage suggested that social marketing might help tourism contribute to natural resource conservation and poverty alleviation. The second stage utilised both qualitative and quantitative methods. Interviews were conducted with 47 poor people and key informants in Sapa. A survey was then administered with 187 local people. It identified that local people perceive poverty as a lack of rice and/or income and attribute it to internal and/or external causes. Tourism holds important potential for poverty alleviation in Sapa. However, this potential is substantially reduced by barriers to business development, employment, and thus benefit distribution within the sector. It is also worsened by the exclusion of poor people from development plans, decision-making processes, and project design and implementation. The non-poor and tour operators are perceived as the main beneficiaries of tourism. Local women often follow tourists to sell handicrafts, resulting in discomfort for tourists and conflicts among community members. More local people consider tourism a contributor to poverty alleviation and wish to participate in tourism. The most critical barriers preventing participation include insufficient knowledge, skills, work experience, funds, and poor foreign language proficiency. Limited capital and farming land is the most important obstacle to poverty alleviation overall. This research suggests that to maintain the long-term viability of tourism in Sapa, social marketing can be used to promote behaviour change in handicraft sellers and forest resource dependents. To this end, alternative livelihoods other than tourism are required. There is a need to put in place a policy framework that entitles poor people to more land in the forest so that they can grow more rice and medicinal fruit and protect their own forestland. Social marketing can also promote changes in the self-interested practices of tourism businesses and relevant forest policies. In addition, an appropriate intervention framework should be established to reduce household sizes and thus mitigate land use pressures. From a local perspective, this research helps planners, managers, and policy-makers in Sapa as well as other similar destinations in Vietnam and elsewhere understand more clearly the barriers to poverty alleviation and the obstacles to poor people’s participation in tourism. It also generates greater awareness among academics and the public in Vietnam regarding the potential of social marketing for alleviating poverty through tourism. On a broader scale, this research enriches and deepens tourism scholars and practitioners’ understanding of the various ways social marketing can help alleviate poverty and protect natural resources. Furthermore, given the centrality of poverty alleviation to the sustainable development agenda, the findings of this research contribute to wider social scientific debate, practical development discourse and, as such, to Vietnam’s society as a whole. This research concludes that only by valuing the perspectives of poor people can meaningful approaches to alleviating poverty through tourism become clearer and more likely to succeed.

The purpose of this study is to gain a deeper understanding of the dynamic of perceived benefits and barriers associated with cooking meals at home. The findings will be used to design a social marketing campaign promoting healthy home-cooked meals. Participants included 64 SNAP-eligible mothers throughout the state of Kentucky aged 21-49 years with young children. Eight focus groups were conducted in four metro and four non-metro counties. A mixed methods approach was used to examine behaviors such as where families purchase foods, the types of foods purchased, family cooking skills and habits, and family time management. Results from this study show women regularly incorporate home-cooked meals into their lives. Three major themes evolved from analysis: learning more about preparing healthy, home-cooked family meals; the important relationship of families and cooking, and the dread of kitchen cleanup following a meal. Data from the written survey provided information regarding eating and cooking patterns in a week, important meal characteristics, relative confidence in cooking skills, and Internet and social media use.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Antioch University, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed August 1, 2008). "A dissertation submitted to the Ph.D. in Leadership and Change program of Antioch University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy October 2007."--from the title page. Advisor: Dr. Jon Wergin. Keywords: community-based social marketing, recycling; paper reduction, environmentally preferable purchasing, higher education, behavior change, mixed method study, greening Includes bibliographical references (p. 196-204).

M.A. / The shift from the Old to the New Economy has developed due to four key trends, namely globalisation, consumerism, environmentalism and corporate governance. Globalisation and the Internet has resulted in consumers being able to track the behaviour of corporations (Vise, 2006:119) and consequently, a New Consumer has emerged, where emphasis on corporate transparency and the environment has become a key concern for these New Consumers, as New Consumes are characterised by Lewis and Bridger (2000:21) as independent, sophisticated, involved and well informed about the production of goods and services, where these New Consumers are feeling the pressure to confront and act upon the fact that unbridled production and consumption, which was proliferate in the Old Economy, comes with escalating pollution at a significant human/animal/earth cost (Trendwatching, 2007). Moreover, in the world of globalisation and information overload, Salzer-Mörling and Strannegård (2004:224) argue that the proliferation of brands as well as a cluttered marketplace has meant that corporations now need to not only be differentiated in the marketplace, but also be distinct and one of the ways which corporations in the New Economy are achieving this is by focusing on the corporate brand as the point of differentiation. Hence, by ensuring that the corporate brand is socially responsible, companies are able to use this to stand out from the competition. However, in order to truly become distinct within the marketplace, companies are using a strategy of corporate social responsibility referred to as Cause Related Marketing, which Business in the Community (2004:2) defines as a commercial activity by which businesses and charities or causes form a partnership with each other to market an image, product or service for mutual benefit. Cause Related Marketing thus has the added benefit of creating a win-win-win situation, implying a win for the business, a win for the cause and a win for the consumer (Adkins, 2005:6,101). In addition, the context of symbolic interactionism has been selected as a theoretical base of communication for the process of Cause Related Marketing, whereupon symbolic interactionism relates to the shift from the old to the New Consumer and the resultant implications of the New Economy, as Mead (1962:168) notes that as a rule people assume that the general voice of the community is identical with the larger community of the past and the future and society assumes that an organised custom represents morality, so that the things people cannot do are those that everybody would condemn, which correlates with corporations not being able to pollute the environment and behave in an unethical manner. Consequently, so as to ensure that the corporation creates a successful Cause Related Marketing partnership, it is important that the process of Cause Related Marketing is implemented appropriately. The three key constructs of the process of Cause Related Marketing that have been identified include finding a strategic fit, communicating the partnership and properly assessing the Cause Related Marketing campaign. One company that has created a successful Cause Related Marketing partnership is Nedbank, a South African bank that launched the Green Affinity programme, in partnership with WWF-SA, almost 20 years ago, long before environmentalism, transparency and Cause Related Marketing became corporate buzzwords. Hence, Nedbank has been utilised as an intrinsic case study in order to determine how the process of Cause Related Marketing is utilised by Nedbank’s Green Affinity programme according to a selected group of employees at Nedbank’s Group Marketing department in Sandton. Keywords: New Economy, New Consumer, environmentalism, globalisation, transparency, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, distinction, Cause Related Marketing, process, symbolic interactionism.