Smoking Cessation Interventions Based on Social Marketing Principles: A Review

Abstract

Addiction is one of the social issues and problems which causes endangering the health of individuals of a society. One of the approaches which nowadays have mostly attracted attentions is to use the social marketing principles for Smoking Cessation. The aim of this study is to investigate the studies conducted on the smoking cessation interventions which have used social marketing principles. This study had a systematic search which conducted in March 2015. Key words such as quit smoking, stop smoking, smoking cessation, and social marketing were searched in Pubmed,Scopus,and Web of Science database. Totally, 120 articles were extracted. After investigating and eliminating duplicate articles, 16 articles remained for being reviewed.Two reviewers screened the selected studies independently and differences were resolved by discussion. The results indicated in terms of social marketing principles, only three articles followed all social marketing principles. One article had all these principles, but in the section of marketing mix, price and place were not mentioned. Six articles had considered five principles in conducting their own studies. In general, the principle of competition was more neglected in most of articles and in case of marketing mix, including price, product, place, and promotion, in some of the articles, only some of the components of marketing mix were used. The approach of social marketing can have important role in improving the smokers’ or even non-smokers’ awareness and being effective in changing their attitudes. Particularly social marketing studies which had used online methods or mass media such as TV had more success because public access to them was simpler. One of the important deficits seen in most of studies on smoking cessation was the lack of complete observance of all social marketing stages, and the factor of competition and marketing mixes had received less attention.