Healthy Eating in The Australian Defence Force: A Segmentation Study

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Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Dept of Marketing
Griffith Business School
Australia has faced the growing problem of overweight and obesity along with other developed countries and almost two thirds of Australians are considered to be overweight or obese (Sturgiss, van Weel, Ball, Jansen, & Douglas, 2017). The surrounding environment encouraging excessive food intake and discouraging physical activity is the main cause for the current overweight and obesity epidemic (Velema, Vyth, & Steenhuis, 2017). Studies show that Australian Military personnel are no exception, even though considered as physically fit, they possess poor dietary habits (Booth & Coad, 2001; Forbes-Ewan, Probert, Booth, & Coad, 2008; Skiller, Booth, Coad, & Forbes-Ewan, 2005) and the occurrence of obesity is similar when compared to the general Australian population (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2010). There is a pressing need for effective programs that can accomplish positive behaviour change to decrease the incidence of overweight and obesity in the Australian Defence Force. Social marketing is a discipline that applies commercial marketing techniques and concepts to improve the welfare of individuals and/or society by centring program design on individuals and an understanding of the environment in which they are located (Gordon, 2011). At its core the planning, analysis, execution and evaluation of social marketing programs is designed to influence the behaviour of target audiences (Andreasen, 2003; Lefebvre, 2013; Rundle-Thiele, 2015). In recent years social marketing has been used to increase healthful eating behaviour, mainly among children and adolescents (Keihner et al., 2011; Rosi et al., 2016; Young, Anderson, Beckstrom, Bellows, & Johnson, 2004), with relatively few interventions focusing on targeting young adults (Carins & Rundle-Thiele, 2014b). Andreasen’s (2002) social marketing benchmark criteria offers a useful guide to specify the extent that social marketing is employed within a change intervention and it includes six benchmarks namely