Social Marketing Theory

The focus of this paper is to present a summary of Social Marketing Theory. The first section of this paper will present a brief explanation of the origins and background explaining where social marketing actually came from. The next section will provide the key concepts of this theory followed by a section on the strengths and weaknesses it has. The following section will include an application of the key concepts of the theory to a Focus Group and Community Wellness Project. The final section of the paper will draw conclusions and summarize social marketing.

This section will briefly trace the development of the Social Marketing. More than half a century ago a notorious question was asked, "Why can't you sell brotherhood like soap?" (Storey, Saffitz, & Rimon, 2008, p. 435). From that moment on social marketing had a huge impact on a number of health programs. Advertisements for social change programs demonstrated improvement of wellbeing communication and value among people to make healthy behavioral choices (Storey et al., 2008, p. 436). This showed the public how successful advertising could be. Social marketing, commercial, marketing, and health education all have a different take home message. For instance, social marketing is looking for behaviors, attitudes, norms, values, and the consumer self image to be addressed. Commercial marketing directs its focus on purchasing behaviors and attitudes towards products, while health education looks for knowledge, attitude, skills, and practice of skills to be addressed. The social marketing definition itself came from two individuals who were in marketing and business, rather than social psychologists. They defined it as, "a social influence technology involving the design, implementation and control of programs aimed at increasing the acceptability of a social idea or practice" (Story et al., 2008, p. 436). Social marketing is all about advertising principles, selling ideas, attitudes and behavior to audiences and the society as a whole.

This section will identify and explain the five key concepts of the social marketing which are: focus on behavior, prioritizing consumers benefits, maintaining an ecological perspective, determining marketing mix with the four Ps, and using audience segmentation. The first key concept focus on behavior is important in the sense that social marketing's objective is to influence behavior. It is all about the use of the product, rather than promoting the actual product or service. The use usually presents the benefits of the product (Story et al., 2008, p. 439). The second key concept is prioritizing a consumer benefit, which looks at, "properly focusing on the benefits of the consumer and not on the benefit of the organization marketing the product or the service," (Story et al., 2008, p. 439). It is important to note that consumers may also benefit from commercial advertising, marketing campaigns and producers' stockholders. The third key concept is maintaining a market perspective. This social marketing perspective follows the concept of the market itself. The three market perspectives are consumer orientation, communication of information, and competition. Each one of these perspective focuses on a different aspect of the consumer. Consumer orientation looks at the consumer needs and desires. Communication of information tells consumers the availability of a product, the cost, the use, the benefits, and where to purchase the product. The competition perspective tracks down the ideas, priorities, and choices a consumer has towards a product (Story et al., 2008, p. 440). All these things help set social marketing apart from other useful messages. The next key concept to social marketing is determining marketing mix with the four Ps. The Four Ps are: product, price, place and promotion. Each one of these "draws attention to different aspects of the market environment" (Story et al., 2008, p. 440). The last key concept to social marketing is using audience segmentation. This is the "identification of relatively homogeneous subgroups and