Week 12: Responsible Consumerism Advocacy

 Assalamualaikum w.b.t,

   This post will be the reflection on the 12th week of classes for MKTG 4312 (Responsible Consumerism). In week 11, my assignment groupmates and I visited CAP to interview the members on their advocacy over the years. Therefore in week 12, during class time, we had a sharing session with Prof. Suhaimi on the things that we learned when we visited CAP. 

   In this week's chapter, we learned topics that relate to CAP. The first part of the chapter talks about the practicality and pragmatism of advocacy. To have an effective advocacy experience, the organization should be affordable, accessible, appropriate, and available. Organizations that give off an 'exclusive' vibe might deter consumers from accepting advocacy from the organization. Pragmatism is about the practicality, sensibility, and realism of the advocacy. To successfully advocate, a firm should be aware of its target audience and adjust its ways accordingly.

   The next part of the chapter is on referral and social capital. Social capital is the network of relationships between people in a society. It is important to nurture the relationships between people of a society for the society to function well. Referral is the act of recommending a good or service to other people. In the context of advocacy, referrals can be used to recommend a method or an advocate. For example, during our visit to CAP, Dr. Jayabalan (a member of CAP), had given us his email for us to contact him regarding advocacy programs. Through this, we have created a social network with Dr. Jayabalan and he has the potential to be our referral in the future. 

    The last part of the chapter is on promotion and engagement. As Prof. Suhaimi said in previous classes, we should look at advocacy as marketing. As with marketing goods and services, we should have a strategy to promote according to our target market. Engaging with our target audience is important to create a feeling of relation between us. The promotion strategies can be reviewed in the reflection for week 5.

Thank you for reading! What do you think is a good way to promote advocacy?