Development of Public Sports Using Social Marketing Concepts and Technologies in Iran: A Grounded Theory Approach

Social marketing plays a key role in understanding the behavioral change of the target audience, placing health awareness in them, and ultimately achieving benefits. Therefore, the purpose of this study, which was carried out at the request of Tehran Municipality, is to develop public sports using social marketing concepts and technologies in Iran. A qualitative approach is used, and this study is applied in terms of purpose and exploratory in terms of type. Through in-depth semi-structured interviews, we developed and validated a conceptual framework with the grounded theory method. The statistical population includes marketers, experts, and specialists in the field of public sports using social marketing, of which 14 people were selected by purposeful sampling and participated in this study. The number of samples follows the rule of saturation. To analyze the data, the method of open, axial, and selective coding was used. The findings show that concepts were identified in the form of a central category, 16 main categories and 98 sub-categories and over 300 concepts or codes. Finally, the paradigmatic model of the development of public sports using social marketing was presented.