Abstract
Aims:Through the review of relevant literature this study illuminates the concepts of social marketing and breastfeeding. It specifically discusses the positioning of the link between social marketing and breastfeeding within different fields of study and develops a theoretical framework that tries to bridge the gap between those disciplines.Method:Various electronic databases were used and through systematic selection 11 scientific articles were identified that this literature review is based on.Results:The review indicates that the relationship between social marketing and breastfeeding is complex. There are indications that this relationship is being investigated within three distinct fields of research: psychology/education, public health and marketing. Depending on the research field the emphasis is put on either breastfeeding or social marketing as well as on the other concepts that were discovered to be of importance within this relationship. Namely, group and individual demography as well as behaviour were revealed to be important elements of the link between social marketing and breastfeeding.Conclusions:Based on the results this study concludes that a more multidimensional view on the relationship between the concepts under study is needed since the focus of previous studies is very one-sided and limited to just one element when all elements should be integrated equally.
Highlights
Health promotion work aims at enabling and empowering an individual, a community or an organization to find the strength and control to take action to improve their life situation and their health (WHO, 1986, 2005, 2009)
By using Social marketing (SM) as a key term the author of this paper was guided by the idea that researchers using the term have been doing so in full awareness of its inherited differences from narrowly defined advertising campaigns and/or health promotion campaigns, which several practitioners sometimes confuse with SM (Stead & Hastings, 1997)
A geographical limitation was not considered as relevant since it would not have resulted in a satisfying amount of research literature for the purpose of this paper though it was acknowledged that a geographical/ethnical/cultural focus could be of interest in future studies that focus on either BF e.g. BF among Hispanics or SM e.g. use of SM technique in Europe
Summary
Health promotion work aims at enabling and empowering an individual, a community or an organization to find the strength and control to take action to improve their life situation and their health (WHO, 1986, 2005, 2009). Social marketing (SM) has currently emerged as a popular tool in health promotion, being given special attention in recent public health literature. This popularity is based on reasonable evidence that carefully managed SM programmes can be very effective (Andreasen, 2006; Bryant, 2010; Grier & Bryant, 2005; Nutbeam, Harris, & Wise, 2010; Stead, Gordon, Angus, & McDermott, 2007). Many public health professionals still have an incomplete understanding of SM (Hill, 2001; McDermott, 2000) that is dominated by the criticism that SM focuses too much on individual behaviour rather than on the underlying environmental and social causes of the problem it addresses (Donovan & Henley, 2003; Grier & Bryant, 2005)
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