Abstract
Purpose This paper aims to reinforce the arguments for applying the social support concept in social marketing. Design/methodology/approach This paper aims to conceptually outline the potential positive contribution of social support for social marketing practice as a tool to induce behavior change. Findings This paper focuses on the philosophical principle of social exchange, highlights the consumer-centered perspective of social marketing, which implies the natural evaluation of the social networks of influence and support and presents social support as a mechanism to induce long-term behavior change. Research limitations/implications No empirical (qualitative or quantitative) investigations were used to test the application of the concept in practical interventions. Practical implications This paper provides significant insights for intervention developers that can be used to program and theoretically justify future social marketing interventions applying the social support concept. Social implications Empirical research concluded for a positive relation between social support and human health and well-being. Thus, increasing the use of the concept in social marketing can serve to attain these social goals. Originality/value The concept of social support has gained considerable interest in the areas of behavioral medicine and health psychology. Despite such interest, it is still not clear how it can be approached in social marketing as there is a lack of conceptual literature discussing social support from a social marketing perspective, the number of social marketing interventions operationalizing the concept is limited and, till date, no research has focused in comprehensively establishing a theoretical rationale to operationalize the concept in social marketing.
Highlights
Outside the domain of social marketing, a mechanism that has been extensively used in the health area consists in enhancing the social support networks of individuals (Baptista, Alves, & Pinho, 2020a)
This paper provides significant insights for intervention developers that can be used to program and theoretically justify future social marketing interventions applying the social support concept
4.4 Madres para la salud we provide an example of a cultural sensitive, community-based, social marketing intervention that operationalized the social support concept for behavior change, named Madres para la Salud (Keller et al, 2011; Keller et al, 2012; Keller et al, 2014)
Summary
Outside the domain of social marketing, a mechanism that has been extensively used in the health area consists in enhancing the social support networks of individuals (Baptista, Alves, & Pinho, 2020a). The relational regulation theory reports a main-effect model, in which social support is considered to improve health, irrespective of whether people are under stress, through relational influences, relationship stability or socially rewarded roles (Lakey & Orehek, 2011).The stress and coping theory, referred to as the “stress-buffering” model, has been thoroughly developed and become dominant in social support research (Barrera, 1986; Lakey & Orehek, 2011; Baptista et al, 2020a). More recently and studying an online support group for weight management, Parkinson, Schuster, Mulcahy, and Taiminen (2017) showed how vulnerable consumers experience transformative services which are consumer-dominant to overcome their vulnerability, by creating safe third places, to receive social support and concluded that transformative services have the capacity to optimize their services to enable vulnerable consumers to co-create social support
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