Marketing Assignment: Good Health and wellbeing

Question

Task: For this assessment, each student will be analysing two news articles for tutorial discussion and submission on two separate weeks (3 & 5). The emphasis is on identifying the marketing implications for the events or incidents described in the article.

Students are required to choose ONE of the news articles (from the list below) that focuses on one of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) and write marketing implications of the news. The first two tutorial weeks are designed to discuss how to analyse the sample news articles that focuses on UNSDGs. Specific questions that students need to answer include:

(1) Which of the UNSDGs does the new article relate to?
(2) Who are the important stakeholders?
(3) What potential marketing issues can be identified from the article?
(4) How would you respond to these issues and why?
For the last question students are required to include minimum of 5 references for each submission. This is an individual assessment with a maximum word limit of 1000 for each article analysis.

Answer

Relation of the Article with UNSDGs Goal
Under the United Nations Sustainable Development goals, there are a total of 17 goals. After analyzing the article written by Cogdon, (2020) it can be seen that the third goal of UNSDGs. The third goal illustrates "Good Health and wellbeing". The article is all about the impact of having pets on children's health. The reason behind establishing a link between the article and this 3d goal of UNSDGs is its targets for improving children's health status. Within this goal there is a target that explains preventing the rate of deaths of newborns and children below 5 years of age by 2030 (United Nations. 2020). The goal further targets to reduce substance abuse and to improve the mental stability of the teenagers. The article overall is directly linked to this 3rd goal of UNSDGs. The article has found certain tremendous facts regarding the positive impacts on children's mental and physical health. The article explains that children having pets usually have higher self-esteem, a higher level of confidence, and it also increases the empathy and trust of the kids. In the physical health perspective Dr. Hayley Christian from the University of Western Australia and the Telethon Kids Institutehas mentioned that children having pets are more active than the children who don't have pets. From a mental perspective, the doctor has also found that children aged between 5 to 7 years who have pets, usually have less emotional problems and they face fewer behavioral issues with other children. Children having pets are also better in sharing their opinions, emotions and cooperating with their parents, teachers and other children. The link between the 3rd goal of UNSDGs and this article has been established because this article is promoting the aspect of improving the mental and physical health of children just like the UNSDGs goal.

Important Stakeholders
Stakeholders are very important for this article. The article talks about the importance of having pets for children's mental and physical wellbeing. Within this article several stakeholders are influenced by this article. The main stakeholder of this article is the writer, that is Mr. Kamahl Cogdon. Through this article he is promoting the importance of pets towards improving the mental and physical health of the children. In this condition of COVID-19 pandemic most of the people are staying at their houses, and it has become a serious issue for parents to keep their children mentally and physically active. Due to the lockdowns the children are not able to play outside their houses and their social interactions have significantly reduced as well. This is making them frustrated and mentally weak.

The second major stakeholder of the article is the parents who are facing issues due to their children's physical and mental inactiveness. The article is delivering an impactful solution to those parents. The article is telling them to consider pet adaptation to keep their children mentally and physically active. Dr. Hayley Christian is another major stakeholder in this article. Here the doctor has provided a significant amount of relevant information regarding the benefits of having pets on the mental and physical health of the children.

Potential Marketing Issues
From this article one marketing issue has been found. Marketing means making the audienceaware of something, it can be a product, service or fact as well. The article is exceptionally promoting the benefits of keeping pets. Due to the lockdown situation, a huge portion of the parents across the globe are facing issues in handling their children (The New Indian Express. 2020). The pandemic has restricted all kinds of social gatherings and meetings in most of the countries, and this has also restricted the children to go outside for several purposes. As the children get stuck in their own houses their physical and mental activeness reduced significantly (Thakur, et al., 2020). In such a situation there are so many articles regarding what the parents should do to improve their children’s mental and physical activities. There are very few articles that have considered the aspect of pet adoption like this article. The marketing problem here is the governments, or the NGOs are not promoting the importance of pet adoption to handle mental and physical issues of the children in the global platform. There are so many pieces of evidence which reflect that people are abandoning their pets like dogs, cats, birds, in the fear of Covid-19 transmission through those animals (Chen, 2020). They do not know that pets like dogs and cats are not able to transmit COVID-10 to human bodies. So, it is very important to create awareness of these events.

My Response to the Issues
My response will be very clear. I will use all of my social media platforms to create awareness regarding the benefits of pet adoption for the children's mental and physical health and pets cannot transmit COVID-19 to human bodies (Tritama, & Tarigan, 2016). I will write an official letter to the governments by suggesting them to promote awareness of these two specific areas (Ye, et al., 2020). I will also urge the NGOs to deal with pets to organize campaigns in different areas and promote how children can receive mental and physical support from the pets (Westerhoff, et al., 2018). I will share this article as much as possible in both the offline and online platform. I will make a print out of the article and share it physically with my known person, and I will ask them to share this information further (Singh, et al., 2020). I will personally arrange a campaign in the local community where I will discuss how the pets are not able to transmit the Covid-19 virus (Kohls, et al., 2017).

I am very much interested and keen in creating more awareness about the facts of coronavirus-pandemic and how it is impacting the mental and physical health of the children. In my campaigns, I will also discuss facts and figures regarding the ability of the pets to reduce the mental and physical instability of the children. My perception is very clear about this topic. I want to aware as many people as possible about the positive sides of pet adoption and how the parents can solve their issues with managing their children during the lockdown period. ?

Reference
Chen, C. (2020). Delhi Pet Owners Are Abandoning Their Pets & Strays Face Cruelty Due To COVID-19. Retrieved from https://www.whatshot.in/delhi-ncr/delhi-pet-owners-are-abandoning-their-pets-strays-also-face-cruelty-due-to-covid-19-c-21729

Cogdon, K. (2020). Pet Power. Retrieved from https://www.pressreader.com/australia/daily-mercury/20200610/281887300542050
Kohls, E., Coppens, E., Hug, J., Wittevrongel, E., Van Audenhove, C., Koburger, N., ... & Hegerl, U. (2017). Public attitudes toward depression and help-seeking: impact of the OSPI-Europe depression awareness campaign in four European regions. Journal of affective disorders, 217, 252-259.
Singh, J.B., Chandwani, R. and Kumar, M., 2018. Factors affecting Web 2.0 adoption: exploring the knowledge sharing and knowledge seeking aspects in health care professionals. Journal of Knowledge Management. Thakur, K., Kumar, N., & Sharma, N. (2020). Effect of the Pandemic and Lockdown on Mental Health of Children. The Indian Journal of Pediatrics, 1-1.
The New Indian Express. (2020). Parents struggle during lockdown. Retrieved from https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/kerala/2020/apr/11/parents-struggle-during-lockdown-2128503.html
Tritama, H. B., & Tarigan, R. E. (2016). The effect of social media to the brand awareness of a product of a company. CommIT (Communication and Information Technology) Journal, 10(1), 9-14.
United Nations. (2020). #Envision2030 Goal 3: Good Health and Well-being. Retrieved from https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/envision2030-goal3.html
Westerhoff, L., Sheppard, S. R., Iype, D. M., Cote, S., & Salter, J. (2018). Social mobilization on climate change and energy: An evaluation of research projects in British Columbia, Canada. Energy research & social science, 46, 368-380.
Ye, X., Zhao, B., Nguyen, T. H., & Wang, S. (2020). Social Media and Social Awareness. In Manual of Digital Earth (pp. 425-440). Springer, Singapore.