Social Marketing and Societal Marketing
by
Charles Lamson
Phillip Kotler and Sydney Levy (Kotler and Levy, 1969; Kotler, 1972) argued for an extension of marketing into non-economic areas such as public services, the arts and religion. They argued that these areas could benefit from the marketing concept too and felt that social marketing should become part of the marketer's repertoire. Seymore Fine (1981) produced the first comprehensive text on the subject where he discussed the marketing of energy conservation and road safety campaigns. Kotler et al. (2002) have defined it as:
Social marketing is the use of marketing principals and techniques to influence a target audience to voluntarily, accept, reject, modify or abandon a behavior for the benefit of individuals, groups or society as a whole.
Kotler and his colleagues argue that social marketing is similar to the marketing of products and services in. Thus, social marketers appeal to a target audience to accept a new behavior, e.g. to modify current behavior by recycling goods; to reject a potential behavior, e.g. through anti-smoking and drug campaigns aimed at children and to encourage people to place chewing gum in wastebaskets rather than spitting it onto the street; or to abandon a behavior, such as foregoing smoking in restaurants. Since the mid 1990s, there has been an explosion of social marketing in the UK, with government funding a range of health promotion, drunk-driving, anti-drug, anti-racism and anti-domestic abuse campaigns among others.
The legacy of 1960s America had a profound impact on definitions of the marketing concept. Reading between the lines, it seems as if Kotler (1972) believed that one of the reasons behind the turmoil in the US in that decade was because marketing principals had not permeated sufficiently into society. In this view even social marketing was not enough to cure society's ills; what was needed was societal marketing. By this, Kotler meant that the marketing concept should be extended to all organizations. The conventional wisdom was that if someone does not pay for something, i.e. if it is not an economic transaction, then it is not really the province of marketing. By contrast to this, Kotler contended that not only should marketing be applicable to all organizations, economic or not: it should reflect the organization's attempt to relate to all its stakeholders, not just customers. Through the development of the generic marketing concept, by reorienting the marketing concept to reorganize societal needs, it was argued that marketing could recover its worth to society. These concerns are reflected in Kotler's more recent formulations where marketing is defined as:
A social and managerial process by which individuals and groups get what they need and want by creating and exchanging products of value with others.
(Kotler, 1991)
In addition to the focus on social aspects it should be noticed that the above definition is more neutrally framed than those earlier formulations of marketing discussed in earlier posts, which implicitly assumed a managerial perspective. Now consider the following definition which accentuates the societal dimension where marketing is conceived of as being:
A societal process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating, offering and freely exchanging products and services of value with others.
(Kotler, 2000)
The development of 'social' marketing by Kotler caused a stir in the marketing academy. However, a decade later much of the anger had gone out of the debate, with Kotler winning the day. This did not mean that all controversy had died down. Laczniak et al. (1979) were prescient in noting that, while the notion of social marketing was fascinating, it could open a Pandora's box, releasing ethical and social problems reflecting the concerns of those outside the discourse of marketing;
For example is it in the best interests of society for politicians increasingly to rely upon individuals skilled in advertising and marketing to tailor their campaigns? Is it proper that marketing research methods are used to determine which issues appeal to various constituencies and how these often conflicting views can be optimally incorporated into the party platform without alienating many voters? Is it beneficial that image studies shape the candidates external appearance? - that copywriters and public relations people stage appealing television speeches and appearances for the candidates? - that politicians are sold like soap?
(Laczniak et al., 1979)
*SOURCE: FUNDAMENTALS OF MARKETING, 2007, MARILYN A. STONE AND JOHN DESMOND, 37-38*
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