upport After Abortion and Burger King Have Something in Common
What does Burger King and Support After Abortion have in common? It’s not that they both enjoy burgers, however tempting that answer may be.
The answer is that they both utilize consumer research to understand their audiences, to hone services and products, and to ultimately deliver what people want, or in the terms of healing from an abortion experience, what people truly need.
People want to heal from an abortion decision
Janine Marrone is the Board President at Support After Abortion who has an extensive background in consumer research. When Support After Abortion was in its infancy stages of development, they began learning about what kinds of healing programs were available for people who have had an abortion experience in South Florida where they were located.
“The demand for healing was beyond our local scope,” Janine observed. “We had these programs but not necessarily a lot of demand so it was clear it was a marketing problem or a product problem, where the programs we had were not appealing to the people who needed them.”
Using her consumer industry background, she knew they needed consumer research to size it, to understand the market and modify the product around the demand. Otherwise, they were going to be subject to an endless number of biased opinions.
What is consumer research?
Most any company will use consumer research to understand their consumer base and figure out the best marketing for those products.
“We wanted to pull a sample that looked like America and then pull sample questions based on that sample size,” said Janine.
This is where Burger King and Support After Abortion cross paths. When Burger King launched their plant-based Impossible Burger, they likely did a significant amount of surveys and consumer research to understand their consumer base – where is their target market, what age, gender, and income level are interested in this burger. And they did exactly this. They rolled out the Impossible Burger in dozens of areas around a large town in the Midwest, gathering data on who was buying it, how old they were, what gender they were, where they lived, etc.
In a similar way, Support After Abortion commissioned consumer research when they realized they needed to understand who was impacted by an abortion decision. They sought out a sample of people who had personal experience of an abortion and talked directly to them.
What does consumer research have to do with abortion?
Support After Abortion ultimately did four different consumer research studies, all done anonymously, speaking to both men and women about their experience with abortion. The first two studies focused on women and the second two focused on men. It was through the fourth study that Support After Abortion found the most compelling data that indicated men were extremely impacted by a personal abortion decision.
“Many men in the study wanted to talk about pregnancy loss and miscarriage,” said Janine. “We ended up talking to 100 men who had experienced abortion directly and had remarkable findings. Our culture tells us men don’t care about abortion, that they encourage abortion – our study shows that couldn’t be further from the truth. Men are adversely affected by abortion and are interesed in gaining healing from abortion. They are not not necessarily encouraging abortion at the rate our culture would lead us to believe.”
Men are looking for healing resources
At Support After Abortion, we are developing new curriculms to help men heal from abortion with clinical experts as well the findings from our in-depth consumer research. We are aiming to get at both the heart and mind of a man who has experienced abortion. We currently have extensive content to help men who are wanting to explore healing from past abortion wounds at our website.
For those who work in healing ministries and for those men who don’t know where to turn for help after an abortion experience, Support After Abortion is hosting experts like Janine Marrone at the Unraveling Roots of Men’s Trauma conference and her presentation is available to watch online. We’ll be exploring this issue of culture telling men they don’t need healing from abortion, as well as others that are overlooked when it comes to men healing from abortion trauma. They need to connect to their emotions in order to start healing and connection to feelings isn’t always easy for men.
If you or someone you know has been impacted by abortion, you are not alone. Call or text our confidential hopeline at 844-289-HOPE (4673). Women, this is your call: if your partner, male loved one or friend has had an abortion, visit us at www.supportafterabortion.com to learn how to create a safe space, and create dialogue so more men can receive hope and healing after abortion.