As health communication social marketing usage and applications: Approach to HIV / AIDS in Turkey pursuant to health belief model

Social marketing is a process that involves all what is covered by the very definition of traditional marketing, plus strategies for addressing social stakeholders, encouraging and improving social partnerships, and establishing and extending policies on services to be offered and conduct of activities necessary for reassuring sources of funding to the projects of concern. This approach, in turn, is one that intends a change in behaviour, depending on the target group and major problem and not a social marketing or sales or publicity campaign. This thesis study concentrates on social marketing campaigns and approaches of NGOs focusing around HIV. It investigates whether or not, and if positive, to what extent the NGOs of Turkey employ the Health Belief Model as a tool for communicating on health and social marketing, and if, this model retains the power and capacity to make changes in behavioural patterns among members of the society, with proper inclusion of differences in social marketing practices based on different campaign examples from the world and Turkey, within the refined context of HIV. The study is framed around the following two questions of basic research: Do NGOs succeed in delivering the impact that is supposed to cause a behavioural change as expected through the social marketing techniques they already have adopted and been implementing to prevent and detect AIDS/HIV? Do the methods adopted and followed by NGOs and private sector organisations according to the Health Belief Model encourage people to use condoms?