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Social Marketing
Angelika Wilhelm-Rechmann
Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University
South Africa
Social Marketing is more than the development of good marketing slogans or advertisements. It is a comprehensive, goal centered, practice oriented approach to proactively engaging with non-conservationist people that need to be influenced in order to reach conservation goals.
Social marketing is a comprehensive, strategic framework that draws from many other bodies of knowledge (psychology, political sciences, sociology, anthropology, etc.) and offers a logical planning process for projects that aim at reducing the impact of human activity on biodiversity and the environment.
Social Marketing has been defined as “the application of commercial marketing technologies to the analysis, planning, execution, and evaluation of programs designed to influence the voluntary behavior of target audiences in order to improve their personal welfare as well as that of their society” (A.R. Andreasen, 1995).
The fundamental considerations of Social Marketing are:
Consumer orientation
Social marketing puts the “target consumer” (any non-conservationist individuals that need to be influenced to reach conservation goals) at the center of our thinking:
Instead of asking “What is wrong with these people, why don’t they understand the importance of conservation?”, a Social Marketer asks
“What is wrong with us and what don’t we understand about these people that we are incapable of convincing them to behave in a conservation-friendly manner?”. The consumer has a primary and active role in the process
Focus on Voluntary Behavior Change
The bottom line of Social marketing is to convince the target audience to adopt a new, conservation friendly, behavior, not to have more knowledge about nature, to become a conservationist or to adopt the marketers value system. Social Marketing frequently involves awareness raising, education and related approaches, but these serve the ultimate behavior change goal.
It has been shown that information and awareness alone have only little convincing power for the adoption of a more healthy or sustainable lifestyle (e.g. smoking cessation!) and ultimately it is people’s actions that harm biodiversity.
This customer orientation engenders market segmentation (grouping the target audience into sub-sets with similar features) and then tailoring actions tightly to each segment.
Social Objective
The ultimate objective of Social Marketing is to benefit the target person as well as the society and not, as in commercial marketing, the marketer. Ethical considerations are an essential part of the process.
Cost-Benefit orientation
As in commercial marketing, Social Marketing recognizes the fundamental principle that decisions to act are based on considerations of benefits as well as costs. However, the definition of cost and benefit goes far beyond the monetary value and may consist of a plethora of factors like time, social status and pressures, traditions, values, practicality, capability to act etc. ….
Research-orientation
Any activity taken to influence the behavior of the target group is based on a thorough prior assessment of the status quo and of the effect of the planned action.
Research is also conducted to investigate “the competitors”, i.e. alternative behaviors and priorities, their benefits and their costs. Social marketing is thus more comprehensive and more complex than commercial marketing as it concerns changing problematic, high-involvement behaviors, in complex economic and social and political climates, often with very limited resources.
Historical Sketch
Academic discussions about the use of commercial marketing for political and social ends started during the late 1950’s. Kotler and Zaltman coined the term in 1971 in the article “Social Marketing: an approach to planned social change”, (Journal of Marketing, vol 35 no 3).
Social Marketing has been used widely and successfully in preventive health programs, “brown” environmental campaigns and recently also in “green” environmental programs.
How does a Social Marketing project look like?
A Social Marketing Project can usually be divided into three phases:
1. Thorough investigation of the benefits and barriers:
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A situational analysis of the internal and external environment of the consumer is conducted, starting off with a desk top and literature research through to focus groups and individual surveys, a compilation of all relevant factors establishes a clear picture of the elements contributing to the behavior
2. Planning and conducting a strategy to increase the benefits and decrease the costs of the proposed behavior and to create an enabling environment:
- Increase the target group’s perception of the benefits: e.g. provide information, awareness, incentives, make remembering easier, influence norms, provide role models, etc…
- Decrease the target group’s perception of the costs: e.g. make access easier, more pleasant, modify social perceptions, etc…
- Enable the target group to perform the action: e.g. build capacity, empower and give responsibility, remove antagonistic group pressure, etc…
3. Evaluation and Perpetuation of the project:
Easy Access References (see also web sites below):
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McKenzie-Mohr, Doug; Smith, William; 1999. Fostering Sustainable Behavior: An Introduction to Community-Based Social Marketing. New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, Canada
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Andreasen, Alan R., 1995. Marketing Social Change: Changing Behavior to Promote Health, Social Development, and the Environment. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, USA
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