The Marketing Book 5th Edition

IndividualLevel

e.g.goals,aspirations,self-efficacy,

education,symbolic needs,skills

Desiredbehaviour

Socialmarketing objectives

Independentenvironmentalimprovements

(2) (3)

(1)

(4)

Immediate

Environment

e.g.peers,family,

significant others,

localcommunity,

workplace

Wider SocialContext

e.g.societalnorms,

culturalsymbolism,

policy, legislation,

socialand economic

conditions

Social marketing 703

behaviour change. For example, the risk of
certain birth defects can be prevented by
increased consumption of folic acid during the
very early stages of pregnancy. As the defects
may occur before the mother has suspected a
pregnancy, encouraging increased consump-
tion of folic acid presents a challenging behav-
iour change problem for the social marketer.
One solution is the addition of folic acid to
staple foodstuffs, e.g. bread, a measure that
would reduce risk without difficult behaviour
change.

Departures from commercial marketing

The previous section highlighted the common
features of social and commercial marketing,
and showed that this leads to broadly similar
strategic processes. However, there are also
important differences between the two approa-
ches. Specifically, in social marketing:

 The products tend to be more complex.

 Demand is more varied.

 Target groups are more challenging to reach.

 Consumer involvement is more intense.

 The competition is more subtle and varied.

These differences have an important impact on

the ways in which social marketing plans are

implemented. The remainder of this section

will look at the differences between social and

commercial marketing in more detail. The

subsequent sections will then examine the

influence they have on the use of the two key

marketing tools: segmentation and the market-

ing mix.

The products are more complex

The marketing product has traditionally been

conceived of as something tangible – a physical

good which can be exchanged with the target

market for a price, and which can be manipu-

lated in terms of characteristics such as packag-

ing, name, physical attributes, positioning and

so on. As marketing has extended its scope

beyond physical goods, marketers have had to

grapple with formulating product strategy for

less tangible entities such as services (see

Chapter 23 in this volume for a discussion of

the characteristics of services; Woodruffe, 1995).

In social marketing, the product is extended

even further from the tangible to encompass

ideas and behaviour change. Figure 27.4 illus-

trates the different types of social marketing

product.

Under behaviour, Kotler and Roberto

(1989) distinguish between adoption of a single

act (having a cholesterol check) and adoption of

a sustained practice (changing one’s diet). A

further distinction could be made between

adoption of a new behaviour (taking up jog-

ging), desistence from a current behaviour

(giving up drinking), and non-adoption of a

future behaviour (not taking drugs). In practice,

the behavioural objective may be some combi-

nation of these. So, for example, a driving

Figure 27.3 Addressing the context of social
marketing – four types of social marketing activity