Adjunct Professor
Rebekah Russell-Bennett

Professor Russell-Bennett’s work is situated within the social marketing domain and in particular social services provided by government and non-profit organisations where she facilitates the design of innovative services to improve wellbeing, the environment and society. Her contribution to the field of social marketing has been recognised by being the inaugural elected National President of the Australian Association of Social Marketing (2009-2014) and service on editorial boards of key journals.  Rebekah is a leader in shaping the debate and impact of social marketing in this country and extending innovating examples for other countries. She was recognised in 2019 by The Australian as the top Australian researcher in the field of marketing (most citations in the top 20 journals in the field). She is the coeditor of the Journal of Service Marketing where she has quadrupled the impact factor of the journal since 2014 when she took over.

Translational impact
Prof Russell-Bennett has made substantial research and translational impact in the field of social marketing (behaviour change) and is the #1 transformative service researcher in Australia. . She improved electricity consumption in low-income households by 12.3% through a field experiment using gamification as part of a large-scale commonwealth government project (e.g., Journal of Business Research 106:377-387, Journal of Social Marketing 8:2-23, Psychology and Marketing, Vol 34: 394-409).  She was an expert witness in two parliamentary enquiries on the use of technology in health programs and the development of a state health promotion agency in 2015 and 2016 where many of her recommendations were adopted (Qld parliamentary inquiry into the Health Promotion Interventions Using Telephone and Web-based Technologies, Qld parliamentary inquiry into the establishment of a Queensland Health Promotion Commission). She trialled a world-first two-way automated text service to support new mothers in breastfeeding with the Australian Breastfeeding Association resulting in an 8% improvement in exclusive breastfeeding compared to women in the control group. (BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth 14:374-385).  She worked with Breastscreen Queensland (Queensland Health) to increase the level of market (customer) orientation amongst radiographers to improve the screening rates of eligible women (ch. in Social Marketing: Why Should the Devil have all the Tunes? A few more tunes 2nd ed).  She conducted multiple studies on blood donor/non-donor behaviour over several years and provided recommendations for improving marketing communication and service delivery to increase repeat donations (Service Industries Journal 37:657-660, Journal of Business Research 99: 157-166). She designed a gamified education program on moderate drinking for teenagers and in a randomised control trial funded by the ARC which improved alcohol knowledge and attitudes towards reduced drinking (Journal of Nonprofit and Public Sector Marketing, Vol 27; 105-128  Journal of Business research 68: 2155-2163). She has also contributed internationally to the development of the social marketing field in her role as immediate past president of the Australian Association of Social Marketing.

Russell-Bennett is a thought leader by being amongst the first to apply services thinking  in the domain of social marketing and to introduce social marketing frameworks to the services marketing literature.