Diversity & My study by Joshua Lunsford

Diversity & My study
by Joshua Lunsford

My project involves researching bicycle-sharing programs for the University of Oklahoma and/or the city of Norman through the theory of Social Marketing. I will be interviewing decision makers of existing bicycle-sharing programs domestically and internationally. I will also be conducting a content analysis of bicycle-sharing programs that have been implemented, including those that have ceased.

The subject of diversity is central to my research project. Social marketing is defined as “a process that applies marketing principles and techniques to create, communicate, and deliver value in order to influence target audience behaviors that benefit society (public health, safety, the environment, and communities) as well as the target audience” (Kotler & Lee, 2008). So, it will inherently be as diverse as the society that the marketing program is placed. (Photo: http://en.wikivisual.com/index.php/Image:Bicycle_two_1886.jpg)

A bicycle-sharing program, and any social marketing program, would look to include a completely diverse range of users - rich and poor, old and young, male and female, and so on. Subjects for my research will only include those that have started a bicycle-sharing program. So, it will be selective in its scope. However, the impact of potential users will be wide-ranging.

The intended users of a bicycle-sharing program may be less diverse if it becomes limited to just the university setting. Some of the existing bicycle-sharing programs have been implemented in a university setting. If that were the case in my project, the research would still be limited, and the potential users would also then be limited to the university population. Most of the existing bicycle-sharing programs, however, are implemented in a region or city where users are defined as anyone within that region or city. Some of those programs, like the Smartbike program in Washington, D.C., are limited to credit card users, which would disenfranchise the citizens who were unable or unwilling to obtain a credit card. The bicycle-sharing program in Berlin requires a user to text message a particular number to obtain a key-code to unlock the bicycle. This demands that a user not only have access to a cellular phone, but also a text messaging plan of some sort.

My project will take ideas from each of the bicycle-sharing programs and attempt to eliminate any reason for potential users to not access the program. The reason for the bicycle-sharing program is multidimensional, but one of those dimensions is to bring members of the university community and city of Norman together.