708 The Marketing Book
unsocial behaviours. The most obvious exam-
ples are the tobacco and alcohol industries.
In summary, therefore, social marketing
differs in a number of ways from commercial
marketing. These differences have a big impact
on implementation, and the next two sections
look specifically at how this is manifested in
segmentation and the use of the marketing
mix.
Segmentation in social marketing
The particular characteristics of social market-
ing create a number of barriers to segmentation
and a need for specialized segmentation criteria
(see also Chapter 10). These phenomena are
discussed in turn.
Barriers to segmentation in
social marketing
Despite the importance of segmentation, many
social marketing programmes employ ‘undif-
ferentiated target marketing’ (Andreasen, 1995,
p. 174), treating the target group as a relatively
homogeneous mass for whom a single strategy
is developed, or adopting relatively basic seg-
mentation approaches based on simple demo-
graphic variables such as age or gender (see
Chapter 10). This limited application of seg-
mentation is attributable to a number of
factors:
Ambitious objectives. Social marketing is typically
concerned with ambitious objectives (e.g.
reducing incidence of dental caries) which
involve targeting very large populations (e.g. all
parents of children under five).
The operating environment. Social marketing
organizations are much more subject to
political and policy demands than commercial
organizations. A national body may be required
by statute to deliver a programme to the
whole population, or it may be local public
health policy to target an initiative at a whole
population subgroup (for example, in the UK
mammography screening programmes are
required to target all women over 50). In this
environment, it is difficult for a social
marketing organization to concentrate
resources on specific market segments even
where this would increase the likelihood of
effectiveness.
Culture. There may be cultural and
philosophical resistance to the idea of
segmentation (Bloom and Novelli, 1981) – for
example, it may be seen as unethical for a
health professional, in offering a product to
one particular market segment, to withhold it
by implication from another. Alternatively,
segmentation on the basis of need can lead to
accusations of discrimination and
stigmatization.
Resources. Finally, social marketing organizations
may lack an understanding of the potential of
more sophisticated segmentation approaches,
the information on which to base such
approaches, or the skills and resources to
implement them (Andreasen, 1995; Currence,
1997).Some of these barriers are surmountable, par-
ticularly those in the fourth category. Social
marketers can acquire better understanding of
the potential and uses of segmentation, and as
social marketing evolves, lessons learnt will
disseminate through the field, as in commer-
cial marketing. Useful segmentation case stud-
ies such as the 5-a-Day initiative to promote
fruit and vegetable consumption (see Case 4)
and the American Cancer Society’s campaign
to promote mammography screening, which
utilized sophisticated database information
(Currence, 1997), are already contributing to
this.
In addition, social marketers may have
access to other valuable – and free – databases
themselves. For example, in the UK, health
promoters may be able to use the National
Health Service patient register, either on its
own or combined with additional information
of the sort outlined in Case 4.