Wellbeing framework for social marketing

Economists and social scientists have started to recognise wellbeing as a means to provide a more comprehensive assessment of an economy than GDP. For this reason, there is a move in many western countries to monitor wellbeing. Nicolas Sarkozy, the President of France, one of the proponents of wellbeing, is calling for an abandonment of GDP in favour of a wellbeing measurement. More recently, the General Assembly of the United Nations passed the “Happiness: Towards a holistic approach to development” resolution. This resolution is requiring member states to establish measurements and indicators of wellbeing (United Nations 2011). Thus, while recognition of wellbeing is present at many levels more evidence based research is needed to establish it as the framework for policy making.

A potential area of application for the wellbeing framework is social marketing. The service-dominant logic (or S.D.Logic) lens of marketing attempts to facilitate activities fundamental to customer wellbeing. The focus is no longer on exchanging currency for commodities but exchanging service for service to create value. This gives rise to the idea of co-creation, which when permeated through marketing networks makes markets innovative, ethical and relational oriented. If these are the traits that create vibrant markets and societies then wellbeing should be the unit of analysis when addressing social marketing issues.

In the Department of Marketing at the University of Otago, our aim is to develop a wellbeing construct and wellbeing framework for addressing social and public issues in social marketing. The Dunedin City Council in New Zealand is currently consulting its citizens on a wellbeing strategy. The Dunedin population will serve as an ideal sampling frame for validating wellbeing in relation to key economic, political and social factors. The aim of this research is to investigate marketing issues within the wellbeing paradigm.

This call is for potential PhD candidates to join the University of Otago’s PhD programme and make a contribution to the area of societal wellbeing. The University of Otago is the oldest university in the Australasian region and the most research-intensive university in New Zealand. The Department of Marketing is the largest faculty in the university and is EQUIS and AACSB accredited.

The successful candidate must have a quantitative research background. Some familiarity with qualitative research methods would be advantageous. The successful candidate will have the opportunity to be involved in social marketing research projects and in delivering marketing courses in the Department of Marketing, University of Otago. Suitable academic backgrounds: marketing, consumer behaviour, economics, social psychology and sociology or a combination of these; a First or Upper Second Class Honours degree or a Masters degree is required in any one of these subjects. Graduates from other areas and disciplines will be considered if they can demonstrate both engagement with the topic and relevant ability.