Why do they stay? Drivers of blood donor loyalty: a relationship and social marketing perspective

Abstract

The shortage of blood is a global phenomenon that affects a country's healthcare system. In the face of global blood shortage, challenges resulting from insufficient blood donations and the scarcity of loyal blood donors, social marketers must address this pertinent issue. Blood collection organisations in South Africa are struggling to meet the demand for blood products, which has an adverse effect on the healthcare system. The donation of blood is a form of prosocial behaviour, and blood collection organisations rely on the goodwill of a few individuals who voluntarily donate blood without remuneration to sustain their blood supply. Therefore, blood donors play a fundamental role in the blood collection process and are key contributors to the blood collection organisations’ efforts to achieve a sustainable supply of blood to meet healthcare requirements. Despite the limited number of existing blood donors, repeat blood donation is not always achieved. Blood collection organisations have cited this as an issue, as the average donation rate for active blood donors is one to two donations per year, which is less than the desired frequency of regular blood donation. This study aimed to gain insight into blood donor loyalty behaviour and propose a framework for social marketing practitioners and blood collection organisations to use in the promotion of a change among blood donors from single to repeat donation behaviour. The study emphasises the importance of relationship marketing in social marketing to foster donors’ loyalty towards blood donation. By extension, this research seeks to understand blood donor loyalty behaviour and critically review the influence of socio- psychological and relationship marketing constructs on donors’ loyalty behaviour. The integrated conceptual model proposed in this study provides a framework that will guide social marketing practitioners in implementing suitable social marketing strategies that focus on building sturdy and long-term relationships between loyal blood donors and blood collection organisations. The pragmatist research philosophy guided the research, and a simple convergent triangulation mixed methods research design was used. Quantitative and qualitative data collection was conducted concurrently, with a separate analysis of results and a merging of the research findings to interpret and compare results. For the quantitative phase of the study, an online self-administered survey was used to collect data from blood donors who had donated blood in the past 5 years. A total of 658 valid responses were collected. The quantitative data analysis entailed descriptive statistics, which were used to describe frequencies, mean scores and standard deviation. This was followed by partial least square structural equation modelling, used to test the hypothesised relationships proposed in the conceptual model. The study used an integrated model; thus, a nested model approach was vii used to test the model’s predictive power with the addition of constructs. The results showed that the final model had greater predictive power. The results indicated that from the socio- psychological variables, guilt, pride, facilitating conditions and habit had a positive and significant influence on intention to continue behaviour. With regard to the relationship marketing constructs, customer satisfaction and service quality positively and significantly influenced the intention to continue the behaviour. Attitudinal loyalty had the greatest influence on behavioural loyalty, followed by the intention to continue behaviour. Customer satisfaction had the greatest influence on attitudinal loyalty, and behavioural loyalty had a greater influence on word of mouth. For the qualitative phase of the study, semi-structured interviews were conducted online with active blood donors (who had donated in the past 5 years), using Microsoft Teams. A total of 18 participants were successfully interviewed. Qualitative data analysis was conducted using the qualitative data analysis software, ATLAS.ti. Thematic data analysis was performed and resulted in the emergence of six key themes for the study. The themes presented in the findings were (1) factors driving blood donation, (2) social influence on blood donation behaviour, (3) commitment and trust, (4) factors hindering blood donation, (5) donor experience with blood donation and (6) donor concerns and recommendations. In the interpretation of findings, there was corroboration of information, and the qualitative findings provided insight on some of the quantitative findings. The study makes a significant scholarly contribution to blood donation literature, particularly in the area of blood donor loyalty behaviour. From a social marketing perspective, the study contributes aspects that can be used to influence the prosocial behaviour of blood donation and understand the drivers of blood donor loyalty. Recommendations from this study will assist practitioners in blood collection organisations to develop relationship marketing and donor- retention strategies that are informed by empirical research, which is needed in the field of social marketing practice. In this regard, recommendations have been provided based on the key findings of the study.