Page 211 - The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

CHAPTER EIGHT

Empirical Generalizations for

Social Marketing

George R. Franke

All empirical research is intended to have implications for more than the
specific respondents, measures, settings, time frames, and other study
characteristics that produce the available data. Generalizations can be
made with more confidence when consistent results are found in multiple
studies by different authors in varied settings using alternative research
procedures (Barwise, 1995). Good empirical generalizations help research-
ers, managers, and policy makers understand the potential effects of mar-
keting or regulatory actions on social welfare. For example, knowing
consumers’ average responses to price changes—that is, their price elastic-
ity of demand—allows forecasts of the health and revenue effects of taxes
on fatty foods (Mytton, Gray, Rayner, & Rutter, 2007), sugar-sweetened
beverages (Andreyeva, Chaloupka, & Brownell, 2011), and cigarettes
(Levy, Chaloupka, & Gitchell, 2004).
This chapter focuses on empirical generalizations provided by meta-an-
alytic summaries of research streams relevant to social marketing. Meta-
analyses compile and analyze effect sizes, which quantify the magnitudes of
the relationships between variables or the differences between groups
(Cooper, Hedges, & Valentine, 2009; Franke, 2001). In addition to provid-
ing norms for average effect sizes, a meta-analysis can show the robustness
of such generalizations in terms of how many studies and observations
underlie the average and how variable the effects are across studies. The
analysis may also reveal moderators that systematically increase or decrease