Dwindle the swindle

• Main Authors: Chang, Reis Kai Lin, Teo, Felicia Yu Qian, Tew, Xuan Na, Yuan, Chenyue
• Other Authors: Kang Hyunjin
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2021
• Subjects: Social sciences::Communication::Promotional communication::Communication campaigns
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/147210
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This paper presents “Dwindle the Swindle”, a communications campaign that aims to raise vigilance against e-commerce scams in Singapore. The campaign targets young adults aged 21 to 30 who shop on two-sided e-commerce platforms. E-commerce scams, usually fraudulent transactions that take place on two-sided e-commerce platforms, result in monetary loss and/or the compromise of personal information. Our formative research found that our target audience’s perceived susceptibility towards e-commerce scams was low. Furthermore, although they were aware of the various measures that they could adopt to avoid getting scammed, they were still unable to spot e-commerce scams. Guided by the Protection Motivation Theory (PMT), the campaign aimed to increase vigilance against e-commerce scams through primarily enhancing perceived susceptibility, self-efficacy and behaviour intention. To achieve our objectives, we formulated our big idea: To sensitise our target audience to e-commerce scams by humanising the experience of falling victim to one. We did so by evoking an emotional connection to the issue, while educating them on the fact that they can be a victim of e-commerce scams too. Some key tactics include scam experience videos, targeted “scam” ads, a livestream session and an e-commerce scam quiz. A post-campaign evaluation measured our output and analysed our post-campaign results and our impact objectives. Results showed that the campaign successfully increased threat and coping appraisals with most output objectives achieved. The paper also discusses the campaign’s advantages, limitations, sustainability as well as advice for future scam campaigns.