|
Social Marketing
Social marketing originates in response to the pressures of the
political climate in the 1960’s to attend to social issues
and to the creation of nonprofit organizations that utilizes marketing
as an effective tool (Elliott, 1991). Social marketing derives from
theories of consumption and human behavior, and from the disciplines
of marketing and advertising. It consists of placing into practice
standard techniques such as market segmentation and formative research
to promote social behavior. One of the definitions of social marketing
states that it is “the adaptation of commercial market technologies
to programs designed to influence voluntary behavior of target audience
to improve their personal welfare and that of the society of which
they are a part” (Andreasen, 1994).
Social marketing mirrors advertising campaign objectives, which
consist of making a product visible, with public awareness of its
benefits and costs. The emphasis should be on changing behavior,
more than the diffusion of ideas or altering attitudes. Changing
behavior is the core of social market, for some of its theorists,
and is what distinguishes it from education and propaganda. In the
United States it is used in a myriad of public information campaigns
such as smoking cessation, seat belt use, and drug and alcohol issues,
among others. In developing countries social marketing is utilized
to promote breast-feeding, immunization programs, family planning,
etc. (Waisbord, 2001).
Comparing social marketing with marketing, accusations of manipulation
and deceit are some of the criticisms of this approach. Some of
the criticism is also directed towards the utilitarian ethical model
implemented by social marketing, where the end justifies the means
(Buchanan, Reddy, & Hossain, 1994).
Advocates of social marketing rebutted these arguments stating that
the methods utilized are not intrinsically good or bad and that
judgment should be subject to the goals they are suppose to achieve.
They also contest the notion that campaigns have the ability to
manipulate people, which they say is unfounded. According to social
marketing proponents, the fact that campaigns need to be tailored
according to the local socio-cultural and moral values, along with
the resistance encountered by some campaigns, attest to the inability
of audience manipulation by the campaigns (Waisbord, 2001).
Because social marketing subscribes to the ‘trickle-down”
approach of transmission of information it is highly criticized
by participatory theorists. They argue that the social marketing
approach excludes the community from the discussion and that their
goal is to persuade people to engage in behaviors that were previously
defined to them (Beltrán, 1976). Answering these criticisms,
social marketing theorists respond that the utilization of input
from targeted audiences coming from focus groups and in-depth interviews
represents the emphasis on the consumer and not on the experts (Novelli,
1990).
|
