Social marketing approach to increase organ donation: A Research on attitudes toward organ donation

ivABSTRACTSOCIAL MARKETING APPROACH TO INCREASE ORGAN DONATION: ARESEARCH ON ATTITUDES TOWARD ORGAN DONATIONMehpare TOKAY ARĞANDepartment of Business Administration - MarketingGraduate School of Social Sciences, January 2007Advisor: Assoc.Prof. Sevgi Ayşe ÖZTÜRKOrgan transplantation is one of the most important developments of medicaltechnology today. Success rates of organ transplantation are higher than ever. One ofthe roadblocks to organ transplantation, however, is the lack of donors.Social marketing is an application of marketing approaches from the businessworld to planning and management of social program that concentrates on changingattitudes, and especially, changing behavior patterns of different target groups, in orderto improve the well-being of a community and society as a whole. Social marketingprinciples and techniques are most often used to improve public health, prevent injuries,protect the environment, etc. Organizations about organ donation also use marketingstrategies and techniques to influence a target audience to voluntary donate.This thesis contains four chapters. In chapter 1, concept of organ donation, organmarket, factors affecting organ donation and alleviating organ shortage were explained.Chapter 2 was about social marketing approach based on organ donation. In chapter 3,social marketing campaign management and steps were explained. At the last chapter ofthe thesis, chapter 4, there was a study on university students.The study in the last chapter focused on knowledge, attitudes, experiences andwillingness about organ donation of university students. The study carried on sample,which involved 1167 students of Anadolu University in Turkey. In the study, aquestionnaire was applied in order to explain donation information and behavior of thevuniversity students. The questionnaire consisted of seven parts. SPSS 12.0 was used toanalyze the data. Frequencies, percents, mean scores and standard deviations indescriptive statistics were calculated. Cronbach?s alpha coefficients were computed todetermine the reliability of the sub-scales. Exploratory factor analysis was used toexamine the underlying dimensions of attitudes towards organ donation. To analyzehypothesis between factors and variables, t-test, correlation and One-Way ANOVAwere used.The findings indicate that there was generally a favorable attitude toward organdonation. The students were willingness to donation. The findings also indicate thatknowledge level, attitude, donation experience, gender, age have an impact on organdonation willingness. The results of the study have significant implications as to howorgan donation campaigners interpret knowledge, attitudes and organ donationwillingness. Managerial and research implications can be formulated based on theseresults.