Social Marketing

Abstract

Social marketing is a subfield of marketing, which is people‐centric and situationally aware, and committed to forming a deep understanding on which to develop a competitive and valued offering to consumers to encourage behavior change. Social marketing includes communication but moves beyond the communication toolkit, to create an environment that induces or supports behavior change, through goods and services, place and pricing strategies. It is time and resource intensive compared to communication alone, and generally requires commitment by partners and stakeholders to succeed. Both social marketing and health communication are applied to improve the health of individuals or communities, and there are instances where either may be considered more suitable than the other. Suitability can be determined by reflecting on the type of social problem and the relevant behaviors, and by considering the demographic and psychological characteristics of the target audience. Use of social marketing and health communication should not be considered to be mutually exclusive – each may be better suited to certain issues, or to particular population subgroups when addressing a social issue. They may also be used sequentially, or together with other behavior‐change strategies to increase the degree of change within a population.