Leading AIDS charity London Lighthouse wanted to produce a consumer-driven guide on safer sex for people with HIV/AIDS, but research with the target audience revealed that they had no need for sex education. After all, most of the respondents had acquired HIV through unsafe sex and were perfectly capable of learning from their own mistakes.
However, at a more subtle level the prospect of a leaflet was welcomed for three reasons. First, it could provide reassurance that people with HIV/AIDS were not alone, that other people were struggling with the same problems. Second, it would bring formal recognition and legitimacy: if you have a leaflet written for you, you at least exist; you are a significant subgroup of society. Third, it would acknowledge that it is acceptable for positive people to think about having sex – a particularly important point, given that most other AIDS messages imply that acquiring HIV is the end of the world.
These perceptions fundamentally changed how Lighthouse viewed the leaflet, and in this way the target audience influenced its context, purpose and very existence.
Source: Hastings (1994).
marketing does not occur unless there are two or more parties, each with something to exchange, and both able to carry out commu- nications and distribution.
(p 4) Exchange is defined as an exchange of resources or values between two or more parties with the expectation of some benefits. The motivation to become involved in an exchange is to satisfy needs (Houston and Gassenheimer, 1987).
Exchange is easily understood as the exchange of goods for money, but can also be conceived in a variety of other ways: further education in return for fees; a vote in return for lower taxes; or immunization in return for the peace of mind that one’s child is protected from rubella.
Exchange in social marketing puts a key emphasis on voluntary behaviour. To facilitate voluntary exchanges, social marketers have to offer people something that they really want.
For example, suppose that during the develop- ment of a programme to reduce teenage preva- lence of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) by encouraging condom use, research with the target finds that they are more concerned with pregnancy than STDs. The social marketer should consider highlighting the contraceptive benefits of condoms, rather than, or at least as well as, the disease prevention ones. In this way, consumer research can identify the bene- fits which are associated with a particular behaviour change, thereby facilitating the vol- untary exchange process.
Long-term planning approach
Like generic marketing, social marketing should have a long-term outlook based on continuing programmes rather than one-off campaigns. It should be strategic rather than tactical. This is why the marketing planning function has been a consistent theme in social marketing definitions, from Kotler in 1971 to Andreasen in 1995.
The social marketing planning process is the same as in generic marketing. It starts and
finishes with research, and research is con- ducted throughout to inform the development of the strategy. A situational analysis of the internal and external environment and of the consumer is conducted first. This assists in the segmentation of the market and the targeting strategy. Further research is needed to define the problem, to set objectives for the pro- gramme and to inform the formulation of the marketing strategy. The elements of the social marketing mix are then developed and pre- tested, before being implemented. Finally, the relative success of the plan is monitored and the outcome evaluated.
Figure 27.2 shows a social marketing plan produced for a road safety initiative. With minimal changes it could just as easily be applied to baked beans.
Moving beyond the individual consumer
Social marketing is not only concerned with influencing the behaviour of the individual consumer, but also the broader social, cultural, structural and policy influences on health and social behaviour (e.g. Hastings et al., 1994b, 2000; Lawther and Lowry, 1995; Lawther et al., 1997; Murray and Douglas, 1988; Smith, 1998).
Defining the role and scope of social marketing in this broader way is important, as the discipline’s detractors often misperceive ‘mar- keting’ as little more than advertising and persuasion (e.g. Buchanan et al., 1994; Vanden Heede and Pelican, 1995; Wallack et al., 1993).
For example, Wallack et al. (1993) have criti- cized social marketing for its inability to inter- vene at the level of ‘the social and political environment in which decisions that affect health are made’, and for the assumption that
‘power over health status evolves from gaining greater control over individual health behav- iours’ (Wallack et al., 1993, p. 24). However, when it first emerged, social marketing was conceived to constitute a much broader remit than individual behaviour change. Levy and
Situation Analysis
Market segmentation and targeting
Set objectives
Marketing mix:
– Product – Price – Promotion – Place
M A R K E T / C O N S U M E R R E S E A R C H Formulation of strategy
Implementation
Monitoring and evaluation
Zaltman (1975) suggested a sixfold classifica- tion of the types of change sought in social marketing, that incorporate three levels: (i) the micro level (the individual consumer); (ii) the group level (group or organization); and (iii)
the macro level (society). This perspective also permitted short- and long-term forms of behav- iour change (see Table 27.1).
The importance of moving ‘upstream’ and tackling the contextual influences on health and Figure 27.2 A social marketing plan for road safety
Source: Hastings and Elliot, 1993.
social behaviour is illustrated if we examine the known correlates and predictors of health behaviour. For example, if we examine the issue of tobacco smoking, the evidence base demonstrates that smoking initiation is influ- enced by many factors, of which some may be related to the individual (e.g. gender, age, academic achievements, socio-economic group, personality factors, ethnicity), social factors (e.g. peer group or family) and wider, environ- mental factors (e.g. price of cigarettes, their availability, media portrayal of smoking, tobacco marketing and cultural representation of smoking). Most of these influences are outside the reach of the individual, and while it is possible to intervene to prevent smoking or to encourage cessation, a comprehensive social marketing strategy should also intervene at these other levels. These other upstream strate- gic options may be more cost effective and offer a more constructive, less victim-blaming, approach (Hastings et al., 2000).
Therefore, social marketing campaigns need to address behaviour change at the individual
level, the immediate environment and the wider social context (see Figure 27.3).
Figure 27.3 shows that social marketing interventions can influence the desired behav- iour, either directly (e.g. a smoking prevention campaign aimed at adolescents) or indirectly by either challenging social pressures (e.g. a peer education approach) or by tackling the wider social context (e.g. banning tobacco advertising). In each sphere the same principles of social marketing can be applied. At either the individual, immediate or wider levels, the social marketer’s objective is behaviour change, either of the end consumer or some other key stakeholder, such as families, community groups, policy-makers or the media. For exam- ple, Case 2 shows how social marketing can be used to encourage local authorities and private water companies to fluoridate the water supply, a measure that would have tremendous dental health benefits.
Finally, social marketers can encourage independent environmental improvements to reach their objectives, which involve no
Table 27.1 Types of social change, by time and level of society
Micro level
(individual consumer)
Group level
(group or organization)
Macro level (society)
Short-term change
Behaviour change Change in norms Administrative change
Policy change
Example: Attendance at stop- smoking clinic
Removal of tobacco advertising from outside a school
Banning of all forms of tobacco marketing Long-term
change
Lifestyle change Organizational change ‘Socio-cultural evolution’
Example: Smoking cessation Deter retailers from selling cigarettes to minors
Eradication of all tobacco- related disease
Adapted from Levy and Zaltman (1975).
Individual Level
e.g.goals,aspirations,self-efficacy, education,symbolic needs,skills
Desiredbehaviour
Socialmarketing objectives
Independentenvironmental improvements
(2) (3)
(1)
(4)
Immediate Environment e.g.peers,family, significant others, localcommunity,
workplace
Wider SocialContext e.g.societalnorms, culturalsymbolism, policy, legislation, socialand economic
conditions
behaviour change. For example, the risk of certain birth defects can be prevented by increased consumption of folic acid during the very early stages of pregnancy. As the defects may occur before the mother has suspected a pregnancy, encouraging increased consump- tion of folic acid presents a challenging behav- iour change problem for the social marketer.
One solution is the addition of folic acid to staple foodstuffs, e.g. bread, a measure that would reduce risk without difficult behaviour change.
Departures from commercial marketing
The previous section highlighted the common features of social and commercial marketing, and showed that this leads to broadly similar strategic processes. However, there are also important differences between the two approa- ches. Specifically, in social marketing:
䊉 The products tend to be more complex.
䊉 Demand is more varied.
䊉 Target groups are more challenging to reach.
䊉 Consumer involvement is more intense.
䊉 The competition is more subtle and varied.
These differences have an important impact on the ways in which social marketing plans are implemented. The remainder of this section will look at the differences between social and commercial marketing in more detail. The subsequent sections will then examine the influence they have on the use of the two key marketing tools: segmentation and the market- ing mix.
The products are more complex
The marketing product has traditionally been conceived of as something tangible – a physical good which can be exchanged with the target market for a price, and which can be manipu- lated in terms of characteristics such as packag- ing, name, physical attributes, positioning and so on. As marketing has extended its scope beyond physical goods, marketers have had to grapple with formulating product strategy for less tangible entities such as services (see Chapter 23 in this volume for a discussion of the characteristics of services; Woodruffe, 1995).
In social marketing, the product is extended even further from the tangible to encompass ideas and behaviour change. Figure 27.4 illus- trates the different types of social marketing product.
Under behaviour, Kotler and Roberto (1989) distinguish between adoption of a single act (having a cholesterol check) and adoption of a sustained practice (changing one’s diet). A further distinction could be made between adoption of a new behaviour (taking up jog- ging), desistence from a current behaviour (giving up drinking), and non-adoption of a future behaviour (not taking drugs). In practice, the behavioural objective may be some combi- nation of these. So, for example, a driving Figure 27.3 Addressing the context of social
marketing – four types of social marketing activity
safety initiative may seek both to prevent drivers from drink-driving (desistence) and to encourage them to use a designated-driver system (adoption).
Even where the behaviour change being sought by the social marketer involves a tan- gible object (the third category) such as con- doms, Kotler and Roberto point out that the