Public Relations and Social Marketing

PUBLIC RELATIONS AND SOCIAL MARKETING 4(1+3)

Lesson 8 : Concept and Philosophy of Social Marketing

History

Social marketing began as a formal discipline in 1971, with the publication of "Social Marketing: An Approach to Planned Social Change" in the Journal of Marketing by marketing experts and Gerald Zaltman. However, earlier, social marketing had already been used as a tool for birth control in India, where a persuasion based approach was favored over a legislative approach.
Craig Lefebvre and June Flora introduced social marketing to the public health community in 1988, where it has been most widely used and explored. They noted that there was a need for "large scale, broad-based, behavior change focused programs" to improve public health (the community wide prevention of cardiovascular diseases in their respective projects) and outlined eight essential components of social marketing that still hold today. They are:

1. A consumer orientation to realize organizational (social) goals.
2. An emphasis on the voluntary exchanges of goods and services between providers and consumers.
3. Research in audience analysis and segmentation strategies.
4. The use of formative research in product and message design and the presenting of these materials.
5. An analysis of distribution (or communication) channels.
6. Use of the—utilizing and blending product, price, place and promotion characteristics in intervention planning and implementation.
7. A process tracking system with both integrative and control functions.
8. A management process that involves problem analysis, planning, implementation and feedback functions.