Special Issue on Macro-Social Marketing

Abstract

Macro-social marketing is where upstream actors use social marketing within a systems approach to societal change (Domegan 2008; Kennedy and Parsons 2012). A macrosocial marketing approach is appropriate for such thorny, ‘‘wicked’’ problems as obesity, climate change, indigenous disadvantage, smoking cessation, and land degradation (Commonwealth of Australia 2007). These types of problems require system-wide interventions as they have a multitude of inter-related mitigating and sustaining factors. Not only are they hard to define, but they are constantly changing. Thus, they become the responsibility of both the traditional downstream actors as well as upstream actors. Federal, state, and local governments, along with communities, institutions, and individuals may need to be part of a long term macro-social marketing plan to create such society-wide change (Kennedy and Parsons 2012). This special issue of the Journal of Macromarketing will consider macro-social marketing. This goes beyond single campaigns for individual behavior change. This is a relatively new area in the literature and many areas of development are possible. Manuscripts could examine the use of macro-social marketing for systemic change, government sponsored social marketing and the ethical ramifications of social marketing. How social marketing relates to sustainability, development, quality of life and history could also be considered. Empirical, conceptual and theoretical contributions are invited on (but not limited to) the following topics: