AIDS and community‐based organizations: the marketing of therapeutic discourse

Abstract

This article explores the meanings of societal marketing in the context of AIDS community‐based organizations (CBOs). Studies have investigated the practice of relationship marketing in for‐profit businesses, but we have yet to understand fully the practice of relationship marketing in the vast and socially important not‐for‐profit or philanthropic sectors that practise societal marketing. Four ways in which therapeutic or “revivalist” discourse is cultivated and appropriated by clients are elaborated: reproduction of community, the use of metaphor, encouraging reflexive self‐development, and tangibilizing grief. Implications for customer intimacy and relationship marketing in the societal marketing sector are elaborated.