Abstract
Purpose This paper aims to explore four disruptions that practice theory makes to traditional social marketing approaches to school physical activity (PA) intervention. Design/methodology/approach The paper draws on existing literature from sustainable consumption, sociology of health and illness and the authors’ experiences working with primary schools in the UK to plan and execute social marketing approaches to PA, targeting interconnected social practices from which PA emerges or fails to emerge. The paper explores a practice-oriented theoretical framing, engaging with calls from interdisciplinary areas for PA interventions to shape the PA emerging from a school’s everyday routines, rather than promote PA participation at an individual level. Findings The paper argues first that a practice perspective would focus on situation research rather than audience research, with practices rather than people as the focus. Second, the purpose of practice-oriented social marketing would be to achieve transitions in practices rather than behaviour change. Third, the planning and management approach of practice-oriented social marketing would account for unintended consequences and complex interconnections between practices. Finally, an evolved evaluation approach to practice-oriented social marketing would take a longer term approach to understand how cultural transitions are emerging. Originality/value This paper contributes to an important stream of critical social marketing scholarship that seeks to advance social marketing away from its individualist routes. It sets an agenda for further research that considers the ontological and practical possibilities for practice informed approach to social marketing.
Highlights
Social marketing remains an important approach for organising and implementing programmes of intervention seeking to shape the way people act, for the betterment of their own and societal health and well-being (Carins & Rundle-Thiele, 2014; Gordon, Zainuddin, & Magee, 2016)
This paper considers the role of practice theory in shaping social marketing as a tool for “policy interventions into the conduct of everyday life” (Cass & Faulconbridge, 2016, p. 1) by exploring how a practice-orientation would disrupt a social marketing approach to school-based physical activity (PA) intervention
This paper has illustrated that practice theory provides a framework for reimagining social marketing with disruptive and innovative implications for school PA intervention
Summary
Social marketing remains an important approach for organising and implementing programmes of intervention seeking to shape the way people act, for the betterment of their own and societal health and well-being (Carins & Rundle-Thiele, 2014; Gordon, Zainuddin, & Magee, 2016). As case study knowledge grew, the definition, scope and domain of social marketing was explored and questioned (Andreasen, 1994, 2002, 2003; Grier & Bryant, 2005) These boundarymaking papers have formed a solid basis for the calls for social marketing to innovate (Rundle-Thiele et al, 2019) and to move beyond the rut of consumer-focussed (downstream) approaches (Lefebvre, 2012), for example, by moving upstream (Gordon, 2013), to take a systems approach (Flaherty, Domegan, Duane, Brychkov, & Anand, 2020), to focus on sociocultural systems (Spotswood & Tapp, 2013; Spotswood, Wiltshire, Spear, Morey, & Harris, 2019) or to overcome barriers at different levels of influence (Fry, Previte, & Brennan, 2017; Wymer, 2011). Duane and Domegan (2019) explore how the scope for social marketing partnerships has progressed, Kennedy and Parsons (2012) explore the effective use of macro social marketing and social engineering and Gurrieri, Gordon, Barraket, Joyce, and Green (2018) draw on activist models of social change to extend the influence of social marketing in social change management
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