Using behavior change communications to overcome social marketing sales plateaus: case studies of Nigeria and India

In an effort to improve social marketing programming knowledge about the extent to which behavior change interventions can bolster social marketing sales this report presents case studies of two social marketing programs: the Society for Family Healths condom program in Nigeria and the Commercial Market Strategies projects oral contraceptive program in India. Both programs recently adopted behavior change strategies to counter stagnating reproductive health product sales and both collected multiple rounds of household survey data to closely monitor program outcomes. The analysis reveals that both social marketing sales and method prevalence increased significantly following the behavior change campaigns in the two countries. However a substantial time lag of up to two years transpired before measurable change occurred in some indicators of knowledge and attitudes related to method use. These findings suggest that behavior change communications can help revive social marketing sales in mature social marketing programs. Given time this approach appears to be effective at improving knowledge and attitudes related to reproductive health methods which in turn may contribute to further increases in method prevalence in the long run. (authors)