Page 116 - Social Norms Survey

creates a strong sense of ambivalence about changing. The ambivalence can

cause some people to stay in this phase for months or even years.
3. Preparation/Determination—people start making small changes to prepare for a

larger life change.
4. Action—people begin taking direct action in order to accomplish their goals.

5. Relapse—In any behaviour change, relapses are a common occurrence. When
this happens, individuals might experience feelings of failure, disappointment, and

frustration.
6. Maintenance—successfully avoiding former behaviours and keeping up new

behaviours.

An additional phase was recently added called “Termination/advocacy/transcendence.”
According to Cherry, “this ‘new’ stage is the continuation of any behavior change and

includes the understanding that returning to old habits or behaviors would ‘feel weird’ and
that former problem behaviors are no longer perceived as desirable.

Cherry further states that this stage can also have an element of advocacy: “This sort

of advocacy plays an important part in helping move other people along the behavior
change path and needs to be encouraged and supported.” Although she notes that

relapse can happen during this phase, it should be seen as a learning opportunity
rather than as a setback or failure, “to help strengthen coping strategies and support

mechanisms.”

Phase 1
In developing and implementing the social marketing campaign, there must be

awareness of other social marketing campaigns that are perhaps being implemented at
the same time by other programmes for similar audiences. Content online is staggering

and users have access and exposure to extensive messaging. The CSJP initiative will need
to avoid message conflicts, confusion as well as message overload. Research indicates

that Information Overload (IO) can affect younger users, especially because they “are
too much involved in media and information multitasking, they pay less attention to

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