Marketing as a management role, has undergone a serious shift, from what used to be an operational function of management, to its current strategic role. The marketplace has grown more competitive, with market rivalry that requires a proper strategy in order to emerge the winner. Globalization has increased this competition as much as it has opened new markets for firms around the world.
With marketing having moved from an inward-out approach to an outward-in, there has been need to develop a lasting relationship with customers in the market. As part of what has been referred to as social marketing, public relations and relationship marketing has been seen as key instrument for success in managing markets, especially in international events.
Marketing in the international forum is much more demanding than doing the same within the country. If a firm wishes to market its products within Switzerland, it would be easier to do so using the national mass communication channels to reach out for the intended customers. However, international trade is much more demanding.
According to Woodruff (1997, p. 78), international markets requires more effort because the area of coverage is large. For a firm to manage international markets, they would require a proper marketing strategy that would see to it that they reach out to the target group with the right information, and they manage to convince this group about the products they have for them.
Cancer awareness creation is an international event that would require proper marketing in the target area if success is to be realized. It has come to the realization of many nonprofit making organizations that marketing is an inevitable event. Marketing, as Ward (1999, p. 78) says, is the only way an organization, both for profit and not for profit organizations, can realize success in their activities.
World Health Organization gets funds from donors. These donors have their expectations of the firm. They expect the firm to achieve a given level of success within a given period of time. For this reason, World Health Organization has a role to ensure that it meets this target within the specified time. It may not avoid marketing as a tool of ensuring success.
Cancer is one of the leading causes of death in our current society. Many individuals, including such renowned innovators like Steve Job who was the founder of Apple Inc, perished out of this disease. According to the report by Ulaga and Chacour (2001, p. 80), cancer is not lethal is it can be detected at an early stage and measures taken to eliminate it.
However, if this is not taken care of early enough, the patient may have very limited chances of surviving this disease. It has been the concern of World Health Organization to create awareness of this disease among various countries around the world. Cancer treatment is very costly, and the process is daunting both to the patient and the family, and the medics concerned in the process.
To the patient, the process of cancer treatment is painful, cumbered with a lot of procedures and instructions that has a serious torture to the mind and body. To the patient’s family, the cost of treating cancer is huge. It would require huge amounts of money to get good hospitals to offer the patients good treatment (Kotler, Keller, Brady, Goodman, and Hansen 2009, p. 56).
Even with this, it is not an assurance that the patient would survive the disease. To the medics, cancer treatment is one of the complicated procedures that take several hours of keen monitoring of the patient.
To ensure success in this process, there must be appropriate machines and equipments that would facilitate the whole procedure. To the entire country, budgeting for cancer treatment is a costly venture. It would demand that the government foregoes other developmental projects to increase its budget on recurring expenditures.
For this reason, there has been pressure on World Health Organization to help curb the spread of this disease. Donors want to see the prevalence of cancer drop in countries all over the world.
This organization must therefore reach out to the intended information with an aim to convincing them to act in a manner that would help avert the disease all together, or to seek measures that would ensure that they intervene at early stages of the disease before it gets to advanced levels.
There are some conventional ways through which cancers can be avoided. Such ways include the type of food one takes, exposures to harmful radiations, including direct sunlight during some hours of the day, among other reasons (Andreson, Narus, & Rossum 2010, p. 36). These are simple instructions that can be followed by individuals around the world to avert possibility of getting the disease.
To achieve this, World Health Organization would need to reach out for the target population with the right message. The population would be citizen of various countries across the world. Public relation would be an important tool to this organization in ensuring that this process is a success.
Public relation would help the organization receive acceptance tough creating reputation with the target population. Majority of the citizens in the third world countries do not know this organization, and neither do they appreciate the need to stay safe from the possible causative agents of cancer (Barnes, Blake & Pinder 2009, p. 27). They make the largest target group.
Because of this, World Health Organization would require to develop a rapport with them. It needs to convince this group they bring hope, that they bring life, that their activity within the location is intended to ensure their health is maintained and that they are left to live lives free from such dreaded infections as cancer.
Relationship marketing would also be a vital tool in ensuring success in this event. Awareness creation is not a one day event. Just like a business firm would need to keep a customer for a long time through a positive relationship to ensure continued benefits, this organization would need to develop a lasting relationship with the target population in order to ensure that they follow the guidelines provided.
Follow-ups would be easier if a good relationship is created (Best 2009, p. 37). It is through the follow-ups that this organization would be assured that their effort is bearing fruits. It is from this that it would be able to draw a report to show the impact of their activities in the targeted regions. It is the reports that donors would go through to ascertain the prosperity of the firm.
The author intends to analyze effectiveness of Relationship Marketing and Public Relation to the successful promotion of cancer awareness campaign taking into account relevant theories that exist in this field. In specific, this study intends to use Situational theory by Grunig to explain how public relation would be relevant for this organization in ensuring that it develops a rapport with the target population.
The study also intends to incorporate relationship marketing theory to further the understanding of how the organization can manage to achieve the desired goal in a manner that would be convincing to all the stakeholders of the firm.
World Health Organization has a mandate to manage the spread of various diseases and their effect on people around the world. It is expected to keep on check, the spread of such diseases as Tuberculosis, various types of cancer, diabetes among a host of other infections. One such disease that has raised a lot of concern is cancer. This disease is one of the leading causes of deaths in the world.
It is not curable in its advanced stage, though preventive measures can be taken to help curb it at earlier stages. The best way of managing this disease is by avoiding causative agents, and regularly going for the check-ups to ensure that one is safe (Dubois, Jolibert & Muhlbacher 2007, p. 80). The international forums have put pressure on this organization to find lasting solution to this predicament.
This task is very challenging. Finding the best approach through which this organization can achieve this objective is a daunting task. The area of jurisdiction is very large, with individuals who have varying cultural beliefs and practices. As Lindgreen and Finn (2005, p. 102) state, there are still a large number of people, especially in the developing world, who still believe that cancer is a curse.
They refuse to accept that this disease is as normal as any other and can be cured if diagnosed early or better still, be completely avoided by avoiding the possible causative agents. Such are some of the people that this organization has to reach out and convince that their notion is not correct, that cancer is not a curse.
These groups, which come from various corners around the world, are semi-illiterate or completely illiterate (Eggert & Ulaga 2002, p. 67). Although this does not imply that the entire target population of this organization is either illiterate or semi-illiterate, those who need this awareness most fall in this category.
The illiterate individuals, though they fall in this target group, are better positioned to access relevant materials from print sources or the electronic media.
Public relation is one of the tools that World Health Organization can use to navigate the uncertainties that this task comes with. According to Payne and Holt (2001, p. 69), public relation is the best tool that an organization can use to get into regions that are new and unpredictable.
It helps the firm create a bond with this new population, hence making it easy to introduce its products to them. Situational Theory put forth by Grunig is very relevant in this firm’s task at hand. According to this theory, the first thing that an organization should have is a deep understanding of its ‘publics’.
This theory groups public into three categories. He refers to the first category as the nonpublic. These categories of individuals are not affected by the problem at hand. In reference to the task of this organization, this group would not be the target group for their activities.
They may include individuals who are in the higher social class groupings or those in the first class countries who understands this disease and may not need awareness on the same (Fifield 2007, p. 80). Although they are part of the stakeholders because they form part of the donor of this organization, the direct operational activities of the organization do not target them.
The second group according to this theory is the latent public. In this group, there is a problem at hand, but the concerned public does not recognize its existence. This forms the basis of the target group. The activity of this organization is to create awareness about a problem that exists in the society, but which the society has not recognized.
Cancer exists all over the world, but there is a section of the public that are yet to appreciate its existence. They associate it with curse. The organization needs to identify the size of this group because the task will be based on them. As Piercy (2009, p. 89) explains, the organization would need to develop close relationship with this group in order to work with them.
In order to make them appreciate that this problem exists, this organization would need to help them see that this is a world problem and has nothing to do with the curse. Media, as one of the tools used in public relations, would help this organization reach out for this group effectively.
World Health Organization can partner with local media stations to reach out for this group of individual. It is from this group that a report of the firm’s impact would be determined.
This theory defines the third category as the aware public. This group forms the individuals who recognize that a problem exists. The organization aims at turning the second group above into this group. This group appreciates that cancer is a disease that exists in the world and that it is dangerous.
According to this theory, the aware public forms the basis of finding a lasting solution to the problem at hand (Flint Woodruff & Fisher 2002, p. 31). Having identified this group, this organization should then devise methods of letting them know the best ways through which this disease can be prevented or diagnosed at an early stage.
The fourth category is the active public. This theory holds that this group can be of negative effect to the firm if their action is geared against the firm. This would happen if they feel that the firm played part in the genesis of the problem. This group may include the donors who may decide to withdraw their support because they feel that World Health Organization is not performing to its expectation.
It may also include the target group who feels that this organization has no role in making them aware of the problem at hand. Conversely, this group may include individuals who feel that actions should be taken to help this organization achieve its objective (Holbrook 2003). This last group is the desired one in the firm’s aim to achieve the most from the market. The model below illustrates this.
Relationship marketing is another tool that World Health Organization can use to ensure success in its operations. Ahmed and Rafiq (2002, p. 43) says that while public relation helps a firm identify and reach out for the desired target group, relationship marketing on the other hand helps the firm maintain a lasting relationship that would help it maintain its achieved success within the target group.
It would be important to ensure that the organization keeps close relationship with the target population once the initial visits are made. They would need to ensure that the study population adheres to the procedures that were explained earlier.
By keeping this relationship, it would not only be easy to ascertain the impact of the activity but also help the target group make constant inquiry of the problem at hand, hence ensure success through cooperation. Relationship marketing theory holds that a firm is made up of various stakeholders playing different roles to ensure ultimate success.
The firm needs to develop a lasting relationship with these organizations in order to ensure its success. World Health Organization has several groups of stakeholders who play important roles in ensuring success in its operation. In the activity at hand, the model below can be a representation of the relevant stakeholders and how they relate to the organization.
As can be seen from the model, this firm has a relationship with four broad categories of individuals it should develop a lasting relationship with. They all affect this organization directly and constantly, and therefore they have to be incorporated in all the stages of the firm’s duties.
This way, the firm would stand a better chance of winning. This model is therefore very relevant for World Health Organization in its effort to create cancer awareness in various nations. The above stakeholders need to be closely coordinated to ensure harmony in the entire process of the campaign.
The Unified Model, as proposed by Watson and Noble (2007, p. 92) gives a clear way in which Public Relation and Relationship Marketing can be used by World Health Organization as clear strategies in achieving its objectives. With its five stages, this organization would be in a position to determine if it is making progress or not. The model is as illustrated below,
The Unified Model
Source: Watson, T & Noble, P 2007. Evaluating Public Relations
The first stage would be planning how the whole process of awareness creation would be done. In the output stage the organization the organization would formulate messages to that would be taken to the target group, after which it would take this information to the field at the impact stage.
The effect stage would determine attitude and motivation of the target group following the awareness creation. The final stage would a behavioral characteristic that would result into the right action.
Conclusion
The focus of this essay was to critically assess the relevance of Relationship Marketing and Public Relations in cancer awareness creation by World Health Organization. Public Relation is one of the tools that organization cannot currently assume. The corporate world has gotten very competitive, and it is necessary that organizations develop methods that would enable them reach the target population in the easiest way possible.
After reaching out for the target population, it is important that a relationship is created and maintained. This relationship would give the firm a competitive advantage over other firms. Relationship Marketing would help in this.
World Health Organization has come to appreciate the importance of both Public Relation and Relationship Marketing. In its Cancer awareness creation, this firm has found relevance in Unified Model which employs both Public Relations and Relationship marketing principles.
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