Social Marketing 1
Social Marketing 1
Social Marketing 1
http://mtq.sagepub.com/
Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
Additional services and information for Marketing Theory can be found at: Email Alerts: http://mtq.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://mtq.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Citations: http://mtq.sagepub.com/content/3/3/293.refs.html
articles
Abstract. The history of social marketing has similarities to the growth and maturity of human beings from its birth in the 1960s through its present status as a respected discipline. After an extended childhood grappling with varying definitions and applications, the 1990s saw a breakthrough in concept and practice by focusing on behavior change. Despite the growth in the number of textbooks, practical guides and infrastructure, the field has many unanswered challenges that ought to be addressed if it is to continue its maturation and achieve wider respect. Key Words behavior change best practices diffusion health knowledge transfer social change social marketing
Social marketing in the 21st century has achieved wide awareness and adoption as an innovative approach to social change. Its status has evolved over four decades, which have seen confusion about the fields scope, significant shifts in focus and eventual evidence of maturity along several dimensions. However, a recent evaluation of the fields current status suggests some important barriers to future growth (Andreasen, 2002). Understanding of how we got to this situation offers perspective on those challenges and possible solutions. While metaphors are often tortured frameworks for understanding historical phenomena, it is useful to think of the growth of social marketing over the past 40-plus years as paralleling the formative years of a person. The field has had its infancy and adolescence and one could argue that it is just now entering early maturity. As with humans, each of these stages has reflected important conflicts and the early maturity phase can still be seen as time where identity needs to be affirmed and a future career trajectory established.
1470-5931[200309]3:3;293303;038365
293
This oft-cited article did not sit well with the scholarly establishment at the time. Luck and Bartels argued that the broadening of marketing was taking the field well beyond where it properly belonged because marketing obviously only involved markets and this meant buying and selling (Luck, 1969). Broadening the field, they asserted, would divert attention from critical issues and encroach on other disciplines (Luck, 1969). Kotler and Levy responded that marketing was about transactions, not just market transactions (Kotler and Levy, 1969). Bartels, a marketing historian, stated that this debate suggested that the field was facing an identity crisis and needed to decide whether marketing was defined by its technology (the Kotler-Levy position) or by the class (or classes) of behaviors towards which it was directed (the Luck position) (Bartels, 1974; cf. Kotler, 1972). Because Kotler saw marketing as a technology, he and his colleague Gerald Zaltman explored what it would mean to apply the technology to social issues
294
where, they suggested, it could be called social marketing (Kotler and Zaltman, 1971). Thus, the new field was given a name! This period of initial academic thinking and attempts at definition caused two kinds of confusion that would plague the field of social marketing for the next two decades. First, it tended to confuse practitioners about three potentially distinct topics nonprofit marketing, social marketing and socially responsible marketing. Second, the definition that Kotler and Zaltman proposed for social marketing made it common to confuse it with just plain social advertising, public relations or, most simply, mere education.
Childhood
Growth of social marketing, except within the world of family planning, was relatively slow until the mid-1980s. Marketing academics in the United States shifted their social focus elsewhere, becoming caught up in what has been called the dark side of the marketplace problems of consumer exploitation, discrimination against disadvantaged consumers (Andreasen, 1975), inadequate market regulation, environmental degradation and the like (Wish and Gamble, 1971). During this period, collections of essays on social marketing appeared (Fine, 1981, 1990), but they tended to conflate the many possible meanings of the term. The first textbook by Kotler and Roberto did not appear until 1989. Practitioners were held back in diversifying their applications, in my view, by the early association of social marketing with the marketing of (relatively simple, straightforward) products. Indeed, the most common use of the term in the 1970s and 1980s was in referring to contraceptive social marketing programs,1 where the transaction not only involved products but also happened to involve money payments, albeit very small, by customers a form of transaction that would assuage early critics like Luck and Bartels. It might be suggested that this was not unlike a child venturing out into the wider world doing what he or she knows best! Unfortunately, this early focus precluded other organizations and agencies from seeing social marketing as applicable where there was not a sale or no product changed hands. The limited expansion was, I have argued, also partly attributable to the original definition of social marketing of Kotler and Zaltman (1971). As restated later, Kotler and Roberto (1989: 24) said:
The term social marketing was first introduced in 1971. . . . Since then, the term has come to mean a social change technology involving the design, implementation, and control of programs aimed at increasing the acceptability of a social idea or practice in one or more groups of target adopters.
This definition made it difficult for those in areas like health communication, diffusion or health education to understand how social marketing was in any important way different from what they were already concerned about and doing (Hastings and Haywood, 1991, 1994; Hill, 2001).2 If social marketing had a
295
goal of increasing the acceptability of a social idea, then how was this different from the many programs based on communications and education that were the goals of health educators and communicators? The Kotler-Zaltman definition also made it hard to distinguish social marketing from socially responsible marketing where the issue was: how could marketers change consumer attitudes so that they would treat the environment or minorities better and how could commercial marketers be induced to desist from evil practices? This confusion is evident in Lazer and Kelleys definition in their 1973 readings book, Social Marketing:
Social marketing is concerned with the application of marketing knowledge, concepts, and techniques to enhance social as well as economic ends. It is also concerned with the analysis of the social consequences of marketing policies, decisions and activities. (p. ix; emphasis added)
This definition helped distinguish the field from its disciplinary competitors i.e. it was not about education or attitude change except to the extent that this would lead to the intended influence on behavior. This positioning of behavior as the bottom line of social marketing had other benefits. It made it clear that the ultimate criterion of effectiveness is behavioral influence although, as Hornik has recently reconfirmed, such influence is often extremely hard to detect and attribute to precise causes (Hornik, 2002). In practical contexts, this new definition allowed various team players to see their role as contributing in various ways to this ultimate goal and not fighting each other over which way is best. On the scholarship side, the focus on behavior change directed researchers and thinkers toward more intensive evaluation of various behavior change theories and models and the creation of testable propositions around them. The evolving behavioral science conceptualizations and research then fed back to practitioners as frameworks around which they could craft and integrate program elements. A third benefit of the new definition was that it made clear where social marketing stopped and when other approaches were more appropriate. Rothschild, for example, carefully distinguishes marketing as a clear alternative to education and the law. In simple terms, he argues that education may be all one needs in simple social situations where information alone will achieve the desired ends
296
(e.g. putting babies on their backs to prevent SIDS). Alternatively, where consumers are extremely reluctant to act or reluctant to act if others are allowed to avoid the behavior then the appropriate intervention is the law. Social marketing covers everything else (Rothschild, 1999). Fourth, this new definition made clear the intersection between social marketing and socially responsible marketing. To the extent that, by the latter term, one means behavior that is socially responsible and one is focused on making this behavior happen, then this is the proper domain for social marketing. However, if one is merely concerned with documenting abuses or arguing policy, then this is not where social marketing is relevant or useful. The final benefit is that it makes clear how social and commercial marketing are similar and why there ought to be few barriers to adopting virtually all concepts and tools from the commercial sector to social marketing. A moments reflection will make clear that the ultimate measure of success for commercial marketers is the influence of behavior sales, repeat patronage, favorable word of mouth, cooperation in joint marketing ventures, etc. As Sergio Zyman argues: if what you do does not move the needle, you are not being a good marketer (Zyman, 1999). Thus, approaches to generating sales ought in principle to generate desirable social behaviors.
Early maturity
There is considerable evidence that social marketing has now moved beyond adolescence into some kind of early maturity. For example, on the conceptual and theoretical side: Several general textbooks have been published (Andreasen, 1995; Kotler et al., 2002) along with several specialized social behavior marketing books (Siegel and Doner, 1998) and workbooks (Weinreich 1999). Chapters devoted to social marketing are now included in nonprofit marketing textbooks (Andreasen and Kotler, 2003; Sargeant, 1999) and health communications readers (Glanz et al., 1999); A journal entirely devoted to the area, the Social Marketing Quarterly, was founded in 1994. There are now three annual social marketing conferences, one of which is now in its eleventh year. One of these conferences produced a frequently cited collection of papers (Goldberg et al., 1997). Social marketing centers have been established in Scotland, Canada, and Poland as well as at several sites in the US and social marketing training programs have been held in several parts of the world. The Social Marketing Institute was established in 1999 Several summaries of best practices are now finding their way into the scholarly and practitioner literature (Alcaly and Bell, 2000). There is now a book devoted to social marketing ethics (Andreasen, 2001a).
297
On the practice side: Social marketing approaches have been adopted by a wide range of US federal agencies, most prominently the U.S. Department of Agriculture (5-a-Day program) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as state and local governments and a significant number of nonprofit organizations (see examples at www.social-marketing.org). UNAIDS has recently invoked social marketing as a primary tool in their fight against the AIDS disease and the World Bank is regularly conducting distance learning sessions using social marketing concepts. Requests for proposals for social change programs at federal and state levels and by nonprofit organizations now frequently require social marketing components and evidence of social marketing capabilities. A number of major consulting organizations, most prominently Porter Novelli, Academy for Educational Development, and Prospect Associates, have emerged as leading social marketing consultants abetted by a growing number of smaller consultancies, such as Equals3, and the Sutton Group. Major advertising and public relations organizations such as Fleishman-Hillard, Burson Marsteller, and Ogilvy Mather now claim specific social marketing capabilities. Senior executives with social marketing in their titles have begun to appear. Interest in social marketing has grown significantly beyond North America and the UK, with particularly innovative work going on in Australia and New Zealand (Donovan, 1999; Donovan and Owen, 1994; Stannard and Young, 1998). The social marketing listserver maintained by the Social Marketing Institute now has over 950 participants.
298
Make as dramatically clear as we can when and where one should use social marketing to achieve social change as contrasted to other approaches including education, communications, the law, community mobilization, and so on. We need to make our distinctiveness increasingly sharp and consistent. Understand better and then advocate how we can complement other approaches to social change. For example, community mobilization requires that people take action, that resources be accumulated, that community leaders voice approval, and so forth. All of these involve behavior and it is here where we ought to be players in bringing about the changes that will make this broader approach work. Similarly, laws dont come about without someone writing a piece of legislation, others voting for it, and authorities enforcing it. And programs emphasizing education and communications often require partnerships and the donation of free services, media space and time, and research assistance. All of this requires action and this is our domain! The assumption that commercial sector concepts and tools ought to migrate seamlessly to social marketing is, in point of fact, just an assumption. Scholars and researchers need to explore more carefully and extensively the conditions under which transfer is both possible and potentially easy (Andreasen, 2001b). Many writers such as Bloom and Novelli (1981) have argued that social marketing is different in important ways.4 What are the barriers to concept transfer? Do we even know what concepts work once they arrive? What adaptations need to be made to facilitate adoption? Given our unique challenges, we should be bolder about suggesting ways in which social marketing lessons can be transferred back to the private sector. We should not think of ourselves as the little brother or sister but, rather, a special offspring that has much to teach the parent. I would argue that we have a grander vision of what marketing is all about we see it as behavior change and it may or may not involve products and services. Conventional wisdom in the private sector is that it is all about generating commercial transactions preferably at the cost to competitors. Would it not expand the potential influence of marketers if senior management saw them as important talents to be brought in whenever the corporation wants to influence the behavior of others e.g. their own personnel, stock analysts, franchisees, channel partners and so forth? Finally, researchers and practitioners alike need to double their efforts to build and test models to understand and guide what we do. There are a great many challenges. Let me suggest a few that I have considered and sometimes proposed (see Andreasen, 1994): We glibly treat behavior as a monolithic concept. Yet, it is clear that not all behaviors are alike. Starting something is different from stopping something. Starting something alone (stopping abuse, getting a flu shot) is one thing; starting something involving others (dieting, family planning, AIDS protection) is different. What are these differences and parallels and how do these behavior traits affect the models we use to understand and then influence them? How ought we segment markets to achieve greater effectiveness and efficiency
299
and does this differ in systematic ways depending on the behavior in question? When and how do ethical issues impact segmentation decisions i.e. should one spend limited resources on ready-to-change targets if such segments are not the poorest, most desperate members of a society? A critical step in behavior change is the step between contemplation and action. Yet we have limited knowledge about the potential triggers to such action. We have studied readiness-to-change but know little about how to convert that to initial action. Is this a cognitive issue, a matter of accumulated time or are there social dynamics that are sometimes the propellant? There is what might be called a starting change bias in the field. We are most attentive to the challenges of getting someone to begin to do something. This is often how we keep score. But in a great many important social domains, it is repeat behavior or the maintenance of behavior that is ultimately critical to success. Getting someone to stop smoking or stop abusing another person or animal or start to exercise and diet is often a great accomplishment. Yet, we know that a huge proportion of starters are drop-outs. How do we maintain change? What models are appropriate? Is it just a matter of rewards? Is it necessary to induce further change in the maintenance stage if the target is not to be bored and defect? Early adulthood is a time where a person experiences a marvelous confluence of maturity and self-confidence, a limited history of mistakes and a wide world stretching out ahead to conquer. But we in social marketing must be conscientious and diligent if the field is to reach its full potential. There are important roles for all of us academics and practitioners alike to keep the young field learning and testing its environment and growing into middle age!
Notes
1 At this writing, the website for DKT International, which describes itself as a social marketing organization, has a table of Social Marketing Statistics. However, the table lists only Contraceptive Social Marketing Programs. 2 Ironically, it was the public health community that would soon become very important to the growth of the field in the 1990s. 3 Strictly speaking, it is about influencing behavior not necessarily changing it. That is, many social marketing programs are preventive in character in that they seek to have target audiences not do something (smoke, do drugs, abuse others). However, the term behavior change has come to be accepted shorthand for the truer broader definition. 4 I have noted in speeches that one of the ways in which we are often different is that, if we are successful, nothing happens! This is true, for example, of immunization or family planning programs. Consider how daunting this challenge would be for a commercial marketer eager to move the needle selling a product with no obvious benefits!
300
References
Alcaly, Rina and Bell, Robert (2000) Promoting Nutrition and Physical Activity Through Social Marketing: Current Practices and Recommendations. Sacramento, CA: University of California Davis Center for Advanced Studies in Nutrition and Social Marketing. Andreasen, Alan R. (1975) The Disadvantaged Consumer. New York: The Free Press. Andreasen, Alan R. (1993) Presidential Address: A Social Marketing Research Agenda for Consumer Behavior Researchers, in Michael Rothschild and Leigh McAlister (eds) Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 20., pp. 15. Salt Lake City, UT: Association for Consumer Research. Andreasen, Alan R. (1994) Social Marketing: Definition and Domain, Journal of Public Policy & Marketing 13(1): 10814. Andreasen, Alan R. (1995) Marketing Social Change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc. Andreasen, Alan R. (ed.) (2001a) Ethics in Social Marketing. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Andreasen, Alan R. (2001b) Intersector Transfer of Marketing Knowledge, in Paul N. Boom and Gregory T. Gundlach (eds) Handbook of Marketing and Society, pp 80104. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Ltd. Andreasen, Alan R. (2002) Marketing Social Marketing in the Social Change Marketplace, Journal of Public Policy & Marketing Vol. 21, No. 1 (Spring): 313. Andreason, Alan R. and Kotler, Philip (2003) Strategic Marketing for Nonprofit Organizations (6th Ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Bartels, Robert (1974) The Identity Crisis in Marketing, Journal of Marketing 38: 736. Bloom, Paul N. and Novelli, William D. (1981) Problems and Challenges in Social Marketing, Journal of Marketing 45(2): 7988. Donovan, Robert J. (1999) Targeting Male Perpetrators Of Intimate Partner Violence: Western Australias Freedom From Fear Campaign, in Charles B. Weinberg and Robin J.B. Ritchiee (eds) Fifth Innovations in Social Marketing Conference. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia (CD Rom). Donovan, Robert J. and Owen, N. (1994) Social Marketing and Mass Interventions, in R.K. Dishmane (ed.) Advances in Exercise Adherence (2nd Edition), pp. 24990. Champaign, Illinois: Human Kinetic Books. Elliott, Barrie J. (1991) A Re-examination of the Social Marketing Concept. Sydney: Elliott & Shanahan Research. Fine, Seymour (1981) The Marketing of Ideas and Social Issues. New York: Praeger. Fine, Seymour (ed.) (1990) Social Marketing: Promoting the Causes of Public and Nonprofit Agencies. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Glanz, Karen, Lewis, Frances Marcus and Rimer, Barbara K. (eds) (1999) Health Behavior and Health Education (2nd edition). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. Goldberg, Marvin, Fishbein, Martin and Middlestadt, Susan (eds) (1997) Social Marketing: Theoretical and Practical Perspectives. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Harvey, Philip D. (1999) Let Every Child Be Wanted: How Social Marketing Is Revolutionizing Contraceptive Use Around the World. Westport, CT: Auburn House. Hastings, Gerard and Haywood, A. (1991) Social Marketing and Communication Health Promotion, Health Promotion International 6(2): 13545. Hastings, Gerard and Haywood, A. (1994) Social Marketing: A Critical Response, Health Promotion International 69(1): 5963.
301
Hill, Railton (2001) The Marketing Concept and Health Promotion: A Survey and Analysis of Recent Health Promotion Literature, Social Marketing Quarterly VII(1): 2953. Hornik, Robert (ed.) (2002) Public Health Communication: Evidence for Behavior Change. Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Kotler, Philip (1972) A Generic Concept of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Vol. 36 (April): 4654. Kotler, Philip and Levy, Sidney J. (1969) Broadening the Concept of Marketing, Journal of Marketing 33: 1015. Kotler, Philip and Roberto, Eduardo (1989) Social Marketing: Strategies for Changing Public Behavior. New York: The Free Press. Kotler, Philip and Zaltman, Gerald (1971) Social Marketing: An Approach to Planned Social Change, Journal of Marketing 35: 312. Kotler, Philip, Roberto, Eduardo and Lee, Nancy (2002) Social Marketing: Strategies for Changing Public Behavior. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Lazer, William and Kelley, Eugene J. (eds) (1973) Social Marketing: Perspectives and Viewpoints. Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin. Luck, David J. (1969) Broadening the Concept of Marketing Too Far, Journal of Marketing 33: 5355. Maibach, Edward and Cotton, D. (1995) Moving People to Behavior Change: A Staged Social Cognitive Approach to Message Design, in Edward Maibach and Roxanne Louiselle Parrott (eds) Designing Health Messages, pp 4164. Newbury Park: Sage Publications. Manoff, Richard K. (1985) Social Marketing. New York: Praeger Publishers. Prochaska, James O. and DiClemente, C.C. (1983) Stages and Processes of Self-Change of Smoking: Toward an Integrative Model of Change, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 51: 3905. Rothschild, Michael (1999) Carrots, Sticks and Promises: A Conceptual Framework for the Management of Public Health and Social Issue Behaviors, Journal of Marketing 63(4): 2437. Sargeant, Adrian (1999) Marketing Management for Nonprofit Organizations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Siegel, Michael and Doner, Lynne (1998) Marketing Public Health: Strategies to Promote Social Change. Gaithersburg, MD: Aspen Publishers, Inc. Stannard, Sue and Young, Joan (1998) Social Marketing As a Tool To Stop Child Abuse, Social Marketing Quarterly IV(4): 648. Weinreich, Nedra Kline (1999) Hands-On Social Marketing: A Step-by-Step Guide. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Wiebe, G.D. (195152) Merchandising Commodities and Citizenship on Television, Public Opinion Quarterly 15: 67991. Wish, John R. and Gamble, Stephen H. (eds) (1971) Marketing and Social Issues: An Action Reader. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Zyman, Sergio (1999) The End of Marketing as We Know It. New York: Harper Business.
302
Alan R. Andreasen is Professor of Marketing at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University and Executive Director of the Social Marketing Institute. Dr. Andreasen is a specialist in social marketing, consumer behavior and marketing strategy, particularly in the application of marketing to nonprofit organizations, and the market problems of disadvantaged consumers. He is the author or editor of sixteen books and numerous monographs and reports. His most recent books are: Strategic Marketing in Nonprofit Organizations (6th ed.) coauthored with Philip Kotler of Northwestern University (Prentice-Hall 2003), Marketing Research That Wont Break the Bank (Jossey-Bass 2003), Marketing Social Change (Jossey Bass, 1995), and Ethics in Social Marketing (Georgetown University Press 2001). He has also published over 100 articles and conference papers on a variety of topics and serves on the editorial boards of several major journals, as well as being an internationally known educator and marketing consultant. Address: McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University, 37th and O Sts. NW Washington, DC 20057, USA. [email: [email protected]]
303