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Societal marketing

The societal marketing concept is an enlightened marketing concept that holds that a company should make good marketing decisions by considering consumers' wants, the company's requirements, and society's long-term interests. It is closely linked with the principles of corporate social responsibility and of sustainable development.The concept has an emphasis on social responsibility and suggests that for a company to only focus on exchange relationship with customers might not be suitable in order to sustain long term success. Rather, marketing strategy should deliver value to customers in a way that maintains or improves both the consumer's and the society's well-being.

Most companies recognize that socially responsible activities improve their image among customers, stockholders, the financial community, and other relevant publics. Ethical and socially responsible practices are simply good business, resulting not only in favorable image, but ultimately in increased sales.

Early papers on the topic include those by William Lazer[1] and by Philip Kotler and Sidney Levy.[2] The Journal of Marketing presented a comprehensive discussion of societal marketing in July, 1971.

Societal marketing should not be confused with social marketing. The societal marketing concept was a forerunner of sustainable marketing in integrating issues of social responsibility into commercial marketing strategies. In contrast to that, social marketing uses commercial marketing theories, tools and techniques to social issues.

Social marketing applies a “customer orientated” approach and uses the concepts and tools used by commercial marketers in pursuit of social goals like Anti-Smoking-Campaigns or fund raising for NGOs.

History of social marketing

Social marketing began as a formal discipline in 1971, with the publication of "Social Marketing: An Approach to Planned Social Change" in the Journal of Marketing by marketing experts Philip Kotler and Gerald Zaltman.

Craig Lefebvre and June Flora introduced [verification needed] social marketing to the public health community in 1988, where it has been most widely used and explored. They noted that there was a need for 'large scale, broad-based, behavior change focused programs' to improve public health (the community wide prevention of cardiovascular diseases in their respective projects), and outlined eight essential components of social marketing that still hold today.

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They are:

A consumer orientation to realize organizational (social) goals

An emphasis on the voluntary exchanges of goods and services between providers and consumers

Research in audience analysis and segmentation strategies

The use of formative research in product and message design and the pretesting of these materials

An analysis of distribution (or communication) channels

Use of the marketing mix - utilizing and blending product, price, place and promotion characteristics in intervention planning and implementation

A process tracking system with both integrative and control functions

A management process that involves problem analysis, planning, implementation and feedback functions

Speaking of what they termed "social change campaigns," Kotler and Ned Roberto introduced the subject by writing, “A social change campaign is an organized effort conducted by one group (the change agent) which attempts to persuade others (the target adopters) to accept, modify, or abandon certain ideas, attitudes, practices or behavior." Their 1989 text was updated in 2002 by Philip Kotler, Ned Roberto and Nancy Lee.In recent years there has been an important development to distinguish between 'strategic social marketing' and 'operational social marketing'.

Much of the literature and case examples focus on 'operational social marketing', using it to achieve specific behavioural goals in relation to different audiences and topics. However there has been increasing efforts to ensure social marketing goes 'upstream' and is used much more strategically to inform both 'policy formulation' and 'strategy development'.

Here the focus is less on specific audience and topic work but uses strong customer understanding and insight to inform and guide effective policy and strategy development.

1.What is Social marketing?

It is the systematic application of marketing, along with other concepts and techniques, to achieve specific behavioral goals for a social good.

Social marketing can be applied to promote merit goods, or to make a society avoid demerit goods and thus to promote society's well being as a whole.

For example, this may include asking people not to smoke in public areas, asking them to use seat belts, or prompting to make them follow speed limits. Although 'social marketing' is sometimes

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seen only as using standard commercial marketing practices to achieve non-commercial goals, this is an over-simplification.

The primary aims of 'social marketing' is 'social good', while in 'commercial marketing' the aim is primarily 'financial'. This does not mean that commercial marketers can not contribute to achievement of social good.

Increasingly, social marketing is being described as having 'two parents' - a 'social parent' = social sciences and social policy, and a 'marketing parent' = commercial and public sector marketing approaches.

Beginning in the 1970s, it has in the last decade matured into a much more integrative and inclusive discipline that draws on the full range of social sciences and social policy approaches as well as marketing.

2.What is social marketing?

Social marketing is an approach used to achieve and sustain behaviour goals on a range of social issues.

While definitions vary, three key elements commonly appear:

Its primary aim is to achieve 'social good' (rather than commercial benefit), with clearly defined behavioural goals.

It is a systematic process phased to address short, medium and long-term issues.

It uses a range of marketing techniques and approaches (a marketing mix). In the case of health-related social marketing, the ‘social good’ can be articulated in terms of achieving specific, achievable and manageable behaviour goals for improving health and reducing health inequalities.

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What are its key features?

The following features and concepts are key to understanding social marketing. We have incorporated these into our ‘customer triangle’ model and benchmark criteria.

Customer orientation - A strong customer orientation, with importance attached to understanding where the customer is starting from, their knowledge, attitudes and beliefs, and the social context in which they live and work.

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Behaviour and behavioural

goals - A clear focus on understanding existing behaviour and key influences upon it, alongside developing clear behavioural goals. These can be divided into actionable and measurable stages, phased over time.

Theory - Using behavioural theories to understand human behaviour, and to build programmes around this understanding.

Insight - Gaining a deep understanding and insight into what moves and motivates people.

‘Exchange’ - Use of the ‘exchange’ concept – understanding what is being expected of people, and the real cost to them.

‘Competition’ - Use of the ‘competition’ concept. This means understanding factors that impact on people and compete for their time.

'Intervention mix' and 'marketing mix' - Using a mix of different interventions or methods to achieve a behavioural goal. When used at the strategic level this is referred to as the 'intervention mix'. When used operationally it is described as the 'marketing mix'.

Audience segmentation - Clarity of audience focus using segmentation to target people effectively.

What are the key stages involved?

Social marketing has a number of key stages. The diagram below summarises these in our Total ProcessPlanningmodel.

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Most of these stages will be familiar to anyone involved in project or programme development. However, we highlight the importance of the scoping stage, which needs to drive the process. The primary concern here is with establishing clear actionable and measurable behaviour goals to ensure focused development across the rest of the process.

The effectiveness of social marketing rests on whether it is possible to demonstrate direct impact on behaviour. It is this feature that sets it apart from other communication or awareness-raising approaches, where the main focus is on highlighting information and helping people to understand it.

This model is being developed further by the NSMC to provide practical support and tools to enable those applying this approach.

Why is social marketing important?

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The government White Paper, Choosing Health, set out a commitment to improve the nation’s health by helping people to make healthier choices. Along with the Wanless Report, it recognized that encouraging positive health behaviour (and related behaviour change), can be complex and challenging. To achieve this requires sustained and coordinated action across sectors and at all levels.

While awareness-raising approaches to health communication are important, it is increasingly recognized that these on their own are unlikely to achieve the improvement in health and reduction in health inequalities required in the government's PSA targets.

Social marketing was, therefore, specifically highlighted in the white paper as an important and under-used approach that had real potential to enhance and make a significant contribution to both national and local work.

"The cross-government white paper therefore announced the commissioning of a major review of social marketing and work on establishing the first national social marketing strategy for health."

This focus on social marketing recognizes that while there have been some important and positive examples of social marketing work in this country, we have not been fully realising the potential of the approach. And in relation to some countries (such as Canada, America and Australia), we are under-developed in this area.

Now that the white paper commitment has been achieved and our independent review report it’s our health! Has been produced, the Department of Health has accepted the basis of its findings and is working on its strategic response to implement its recommendations. One part of this will be agreeing resources and a new work programme for the NSMC to follow up and help build capacity and skills in social marketing across the country.

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