Abstract
In most of the developed countries social marketing has been a well accepted concept in the non-profit arena. But in India and other developing countries where there is real need in various undisturbed social issues, the concept is not at all clear and is confined to only few family planning programmes. ‘The lack of definitional clarity and consensus is seen as a hindrance to the evolution of the discipline’ (McDermott et al., 2005). Basically this article will try to see the in sight of social marketing in various theoretical and conceptual settings. Though the social marketing approach has been developed from commercial marketing, it is a holistic approach from many disciplines from other social sciences like marketing, psychology, sociology, mass communication and economics. It is basically an art to explore new ways of analyzing problems and solving them effectively. This approach is still a debatable issue and often many of us view this approach as a matter of suspicion and argue how ‘profit motive marketing’ comes in the vicinity of non-profit? Here we have attempted to explore the social marketing framework in the light of different perspectives and theories.
Introduction
Any big change demands an attitudinal and behaviour change of the people or the community. But changing behaviour is a challenging task, as generally behaviours are culturally directed and rigid in nature. Social marketing tries to open up people’s minds and tries to explore the various hidden psychological aspects which have a direct impact on one’s attitude or value system. Social marketing and its relevant interventions can be helpful in identifying different key points for designing programmes meant for handling issues of social concern. Marketing is often viewed as a matter of suspicion, especially by the non-profit sector for being profit oriented. It is being criticized for being materialistic and also for creating an unnecessary demand for products which are hardly asked for by the customer. But these criticisms are often led by misconceptions. Social marketing ‘uses traditional marketing techniques combined with sociological and psychological concepts for changing target behaviours, focusing on actions with a positive social value’ (Skumatz and Freeman, 2012). Traditional marketing is usually meant for maximization of profit without much bothering about its impact in the long run. But social marketing borrows everything from marketing except its core motive of escalating profit. It tries to alter the attitude of people by investigating the psychology of the people and other determinants influencing them.
Social Marketing and its Relevance in Social Change
‘Social Marketing is the application of commercial marketing technologies to the analysis, planning, execution and evaluation of programmes designed to influence the voluntary of target audiences to improve their personal welfare and that of society’ (Andreason, 1995, p. 7). It utilizes concepts of market segmentation, consumer research, idea configuration, communication, facilitation, incentives and exchange theory to maximize target group response (Kotler, 1975).
Traditionally organizations and government agencies used to seek either an educational or policy approach to influence mass behaviour through public announcements. They believed that they were well aware of the targeted people’s problems and the services needed for solving those. But, unfortunately, by just educating and informing people about some facts and figures, especially in emotion-based decisions, people are less likely to accept the change. And often knowledge does not lead to action and may not be sustainable in the long run. Thus it will be wrong to assume that targeted people will perceive the risk the same way as the policy makers and will choose the behaviour which is appropriate for them. Maibach (2003) outlined a broad matrix ‘the Continuum of Change Mechanisms’ to determining when social marketing was best suited to being involved in a social change campaign. He assumed education, law and social marketing were various approaches to deal with different levels of change. Education is appropriate for enhancing the knowledge of people and providing them with requisite information about an issue. It expects the rest to be done by the individual themselves and its stops there itself. Thus the educational approach will fit best if the targeted people’s perception towards the behaviour is positive, benefits are easily articulated and any other alternative is non-existent. The legislative approach enforces law or threats for behaving in an undesired way and is best suited when people are strictly resistant to the desired behaviour, or the situation is complex, unmanageable and there is the lack of supportive environment. To decide which approach will best fit one needs to analyze a few factors like the target market attitude towards the desired change, the level of easiness in communicating the benefits of the desired behaviour to its customers, the level of competition which needs to be faced to bring a desired change, etc. Thus the social marketing approach will be the best approach in situations where people are indifferent towards the desired outcome, benefits are not clearly visible, there is the existence of little specific competition and where focus needs to be given on voluntary change. Again Stetson and Davis (1999) stated a few situations in which social marketing might be appropriate. First, when a new product and its usage are already known to a population, for example, when a desire for contraception exists, social marketing can publicize the availability of new methods. Second, when a practice has negative images associated with it and demand or acceptance is to be created. Third, when commercial interests (cigarettes or infant formula sales) are to be confronted, that is, de-marketing of those harmful products.
Again it is very important to understand what type of change can be brought with social marketing. Levy and Zaltmal (1975) emphasize a six-fold classification of change sought in social marketing. First, based on two dimensions of time (short-term and long-term change); and second, on three dimensions of level in society (micro-, group and macro-level). The approach is suited to both the individual and community level of change.
Evolution of Social Marketing
Wiebe (1952) challenged, ‘Why can’t you sell brotherhood and rational thinking like you sell soap? It was then that the concept evolved without labelling it as ‘social marketing’. Many of them then appreciated and criticized this idea. Fox and Kotler described the evolution of social advertising (where only mass media has been used) into social communication (where personal selling and personal relations, and mass media has been used) and finally to social marketing (Fox and Kotler, 1980). Social marketing is a much broader approach than earlier as it uses all the marketing tools and techniques besides the techniques of social advertising, social communication. By the late 1960s, such marketers as Richard Manoff started applying the full range of marketing techniques to nutrition and other health education campaigns (Manoff, 1985). In 1967, with the Nirodh condom project, the first nationwide contraceptive social marketing programme was introduced in India with the initiative of the Ford Foundation. During the 1960s and 1970s the approach has been widely used in the health sector. It was in 1971, that the potential of marketing was fully realized to address various social issues by Philip Kotler and Gerald Zaltman, who had first introduced ‘social marketing’ as a new discipline. They were inspired with the tool of marketing in the non-profit sector. In the late 1980s Health promotion campaigns began applying social marketing. The early notable developments took place in Australia and they include the Victoria Cancer Council developing its Anti-Tobacco Campaign, the SunSmart campaign for anti-skin Against Skin cancer. Craig Lefebvre and June Flora (1988) started using social marketing to promote public health in communities (Lefebvre and Flora, 1988). In 1989, The Transport Accident Commission’s (TAC) Australia: Tackling drink-driving campaign in Australia. In 2000, the American legacy foundation’s Truth campaign in the US to prevent smoking (The NSMC Big Pocket Guide). In 2007, the United Kingdom government announced the development of its first social strategy for all aspects of health promotion. In India, AIDS control programmes broadly use the system with professionally trained social workers. In 2007, the UK government announced the development of its first social strategy for all aspects of health promotion (Ezeji, 2012). Likewise both strategic and operational use of social marketing was becoming very popular in several other countries and was adding new milestones in the non-profit arena. Maldives’ ‘YES’ social marketing campaign designed to address the career counselling programme (Arulmani and Abdulla, 2007); Chicago’s childhood obesity programme, ‘The 5-4-3-2-1 Go!’ campaign (Evans, 2008) and the US VERB campaign for promoting physical activity among children. Some of the organizations have played an important role in nurturing this concept. In 2005, the University of Stirling (The Institute for Social Marketing, ISM) was the first university to start research in social marketing theory and practice. In 2007, Middlesex University became the first university that started offering a post-graduate programme in Health and Social Marketing. July 2011 marked the 40th anniversary of social marketing. After passing more than four decades the future ahead seems long for social.
Relevance of Different Perspectives in Social Marketing
These 12 perspectives or dimensions are selected after reviewing the literature on various social marketing concepts, approaches, theories and practices. It has been understood that studying social marketing from different perspectives mentioned in the article needs to be emphasized for making these concepts holistic ones. The effectiveness of all social marketing programmes depends on how efficiently and comprehensively it can be implemented by considering all the aspects of change. While reviewing those we found some of the common key factors which have played a major role in making those programmes successful. On the basis of those factors we have tried to understand social marketing in different dimensions, such as, the behaviour-change perspective, customer-oriented knowledge, exchange, communication, competition, segmentation, cost effectiveness, ethical, sustainability, strategic marketing mix, formative research based and theory oriented.
The above perspectives will help us in understanding the approach and its various relevant theories more profoundly. Thus each perspective or dimension can play an important role towards bringing change and cannot be overlooked.
Importance of Various Social Marketing Perspectives and their Inter-linkages
The perspectives which have been identified in this article are strongly interconnected with each other as they all play an important role in making any programme successful, which we have tried to discuss here.
Behaviour-change Perspective
The ultimate mission of every social marketing programme is to bring behavioural change. It tries to encourage people to adopt a clear, specific, measurable action and not just propagation of knowledge. A programme will be successful if target audiences can successfully adopt the new change in their lives and can maintain it in the long run. Thus it is a very important perspective for bringing a specific change.
The behaviour-change perspective is very much interlinked with customer-oriented knowledge perspectives. In order to motivate people to adopt a behavioural change, a social marketer needs to understand his customer’s lives and mindset first. In this regard one should have all the requisite information about the target people, for example, what is their problem, what motivates them, what are the barriers, who can influence them more, their past experiences, their social and cultural norms, demographic information, etc.
Customer-oriented Knowledge
This perspectives ensures that one has all the necessary information about the targeted people because without that information a social marketer cannot formulate any effective strategy nor can he/she offer a solution for the existing problem. Often many good programmes fails due to insufficient knowledge about the target audience.
This has a strong interconnection with formative research-based perspectives, behaviour-change perspective, etc. Social marketing generally deals with very complex issues in the society, for example, prevention of HIV, anti-smoking programmes, promoting of small savings, etc. Collecting information related to these complex issues is a big challenge in social marketing because often people hesitate to answer these personal questions. Thus an effective formative research is very important in order to get both quantitative and qualitative information. Any loopholes in the research may mislead the social marketer with wrong information about the target customer.
The exchange perspective helps in designing attractive incentives/offers for the target customer by considering what they value most. It focuses on maximizing the perceived benefits and minimizing the perceived cost.
This perspective has a strong connection with the strategic marketing mix perspective, the competition perspective, customer-oriented knowledge, etc. For example, let us consider how the exchange perspective is related to the strategic marketing mix perspective. Price strategy is an important aspect in the strategic marketing mix perspective. The exchange perspective helps in formulating a best-price strategy in any social marketing programme. Exchange perspectives focus on maximizing benefits and minimizing the barriers or price (both monetary and non-monetary cost). Thus it maintains a balance by considering the affordability of the people and maintains product value among the customers.
Communication Perspective
The communication perspective plays a very crucial role in reaching to the target people and conveying right message to them at the right time. It helps in bridging the gap between the social marketer and the targeted people. It helps in clearing their doubts and increases participation.
It is interlinked with the strategic marketing mix perspective, segmentation and the customer-oriented knowledge perspective. For example, let us see the interconnection with the strategic marketing mix perspective. Promotion is one of the p’s in the strategic marketing mix. The communication perspective uses various promotional methods for popularizing the offering and its benefits. It uses various elements of promotion, for example, social advertising, edu-entertainment and sales promotion tools.
Competition Perspective
The competition aspect is very complex but very important in social marketing. Here, the competition perspective tries to reveal various factors that compete for the audience’s time and attention. It tries to minimize the competition by increasing attractive incentives or offerings.
It has a strong interconnection with the exchange perspective, strategic marketing mix, etc. For example, if we check its interconnection with the exchange perspective we will find competition and its impact on the target customer can be reduced if one perceives incentives very appealing. If perceived benefits appear smaller then perceived cost then one faces huge competition.
Segmentation Perspective
Segmentation plays a very important role in order to serve the audience better. Based on some homogeneous characteristics one can be offered a customized product or service which will satisfy him or her better.
This perspective is linked with the customer-oriented knowledge perspective. Customer oriented knowledge will help in segmenting different people on the basis of some common characteristics. Thus a customized strategy can be made for a particular segment of people.
Cost-effective Perspective
The cost-effective perspective is another crucial dimension in social marketing. Social marketing generally has limited resources for carrying out its programmes. It always tries to control its cost and make use of locally available resources, utilizes people’s time and effort, goes for partnership with other parties having similar motives, etc.
This perspective is inter-related with other perspectives like the strategic marketing mix perspective. Product decision is one of the major decisions in the strategic marketing mix. Social marketing usually promotes socially beneficial products which are less expensive and can be easily available. On the basis of their availability of resources they need to plan for their various strategic marketing mix decisions, for example, how much they will spend on the product, pricing decisions, that is, whether or not any fee will be charged, how much money will be spend for channel distribution, for promotion, etc. Thus we can see, besides strategic marketing mix, it is also related to the communication perspective and the exchange perspective.
Ethical Perspective
Social marketing always values ethical considerations in dealing with every issue. It tries to consider and reveal all the possible impacts of its programmes. Just for fulfilling their mission they cannot manipulate their customers. It tries to ensure that programmes will not do any harm in any way.
This perspective is directly linked with behaviour-change perspectives. Social marketing promotes behavioural change but it should analyze all the pros and cons of that behaviour so that it does not have any negative consequences in the long run. Otherwise the social marketing programme will fail in the future.
Sustainable Perspective
Sustainability is another important dimension in maintaining a positive change in the long run. A successful social marketing programme ensures that people are empowered with requisite shills and are capable in maintaining them even after end of the programme.
This perspective is strongly linked with the ethical perspective. A social marketing programme is concerned with its ethical issues in the programme so that it will be appreciated and sustainable in the long run. Any programme which tries to deceive and manipulate people in order to achieve their goal cannot become sustainable in the long run.
Strategic Marketing Mix Perspective
This dimension is considered to be a key indicator for making a programme successful and competitive. An effective programme is possible if all the p’s can be rightly blended in tune with their specific target audience.
This perspective has a strong inter-connection with customer-oriented knowledge perspective, communication, exchange, etc. Based on relevant customer information one can structure an effective strategy for encouraging people to adopt a change.
Formative Research Perspective
This perspective is very important in gathering all the requisite information about the customer. The whole planning process will be based on this research. Without research if one attempts to structure a programme for targeted people, it will not be social marketing but something else.
This perspective is strongly related with the customer-oriented knowledge perspective, strategic marketing mix perspective, etc. Formative research is used for gathering all the complex facts and other information about the target customer. It is only after formative research that all the plans and strategies are to be made. Any defect in the research may mislead the social marketer with the incorrect information about the target audience.
Theory Oriented Perspective
Social marketing is a holistic approach and it is mainly because of its theories borrowed from various disciplines. It adopts well-tested psychological and behavioural theories for better understanding the target audience and also for formulating effective strategies for different target customers.
This perspective is interconnected with the customer-oriented knowledge perspective, the strategic marketing mix perspective, etc. After getting all the facts and relevant information about the target customer one needs to identify the requisite theory which will best fit that situation.
Various Perspectives of Social Marketing
In this section we will try to discuss each perspective and the related theories under each perspective.
Behaviour-change Perspective
A change can be possible if the attitude of the people can be changed. Social marketing works for behavioural change which ‘is the bottom line in any social marketing design and evaluation of interventions’ (Andreason, 2002). Social marketing not only tries to promote good behaviour, but also disapproves wrong behaviour if needed. Thus social marketers strategically choose key behaviour that needs to change in order to achieve a specific outcome (Andreason, 2006). Social marketing is the application of commercial marketing concepts and tools to influence the voluntary behaviour of target audiences. Thus understanding audiences is very crucial. McClelland focuses that lack of motivation can resist any new change. Human beings are more rational and individual’s personal accomplishment for a desired outcome can provoke a person to change his or her behaviour. To effect change both benefits and barriers connected with the behaviour are analyzed and then modified. Benefits can motivate people to adopt the new behaviour and barriers can discourage them. Social marketers try to reduce the barriers and increase the facilitators to behaviours that improve the quality of life. Again an individual behaviour cannot be changed all of a sudden, rather it needs to go step by step. Thus it ‘can be divided into actionable and measurable stages, phased over time’ (Hastings, 2007). Social marketing tries to motivate an individual to move towards the next stage of change until one reaches to the final stage of change. According to Wiebe (Tapan, 2007) ‘the target audience will adopt the change, when five conditions are fulfilled which are force or motivation, direction, mechanism, adequacy and compatibility’.
Stage Theories of Change/Transtheoretical Model
Prochaska and DiClimente’s stages of change theory helps in understanding how change process proceeds phase by phase over a timely fashion. Theory depicts that people do not change their attitude all at once; rather it is a stepwise process based on ones readiness to adopt change. There are five stages of change. They are: pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action and maintenance.
Triandis’ Theory of Interpersonal Behaviour
The theory depicts that human is an outcome of certain factors like habits, intention and facilitating conditions. Facilitating conditions influences either in positive or negative way. Triandis writes ‘the presence or absence of facilitating conditions’ (Darnton, 2008) determines ones behavioural choice. For instance, without drugs, no drug use. Thus, for changing behaviour one needs to be facilitated with requisite resources. Thus availability of resources and facilitating conditions are important in a social marketing programme. The theory can be used as a framework for empirical analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the component factors in different kinds of situations and especially identifying what facilitating factors can motivate a person to adopt a behaviour. The theory depicts that for changing one and for predicting his future and past experiences, habit plays an important role.
Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA)/Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB)
TPB (Ajzen, 1991) theory is considered as an extension of the TRA theory (Werner, 2004). The theories assume that individuals are rational in considering their actions. Their decisions are influenced by the available information. An individual behaviour is a function of one’s intention to perform that behaviour. And intention is influenced by two attributes. The first one is the person’s favourable or unfavourable attitude towards the behaviour. The second one is their perceived social norms, that is, social influence or social pressure. TPB added a third determinant of intention called ‘perceived control’ based on which person can predict whether the change is easy or harder to control (adopt). There is also a similar concept like perceived control which is called self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is defined as person’s belief in their ability to enact the change successfully. And this can be narrated by an equation:
When the change is perceived to be ‘good’, and ‘approved by the family and friends’ and ‘easier to adopt’ then there is a chance of a favourable intention to adopt the change and the reverse can cause an unfavourable intention to change. Both the theories have some limitations in predicting (Werner, 2004). Some of the limitations are: intention determinants are not just limited to attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control (Ajzen, 1991). Another limitation is that there may be a substantial gap of time between assessment of intention and the actual being assessed (Werner, 2004) and intention might change over time and situation. The theories predict that ‘individuals do not always behave as predicted by those criteria mentioned above’ (Werner, 2004). The theory says in order to effect persuasion, one needs to identify the factors underlying different behaviours so that an effective message can be designed ‘to alter the target audiences primary beliefs’ (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1981). The theory can guide social marketers in predicting the target groups intention towards his both old behaviour and a new behaviour. It explains how sustainable attitudes or new behaviour contradicts with ones old or unsustainable behaviour.
The Health Belief Model
The Health Belief Model has identified some of the factors which influence an individual’s decision of participating in heath programmes meant for preventing and curing a serious disease. These factors are perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived benefits, perceived barriers and cues to action. The individual will be ready to act if they perceive that they are susceptible to the existing problem which can have serious consequences in the future and they also perceive that by adopting corrective action they will benefit. Adopting a new behaviour is an easier task with minimum effort or perceived barriers (both monetary and non-monetary cost) (Lefebvre, 2000). To analyze on what basis an individual prefers or rejects a programme is determined by some factors like demographic factors, educational attainment, peer group pressure, fear of rejection by their friends and society and social recognition. The Health Belief Model also talks about expected-value variables. Here, a value variable is defined as one’s perception about the severity of a problem and the expectancy variable means the perception of benefits minus the costs needed for acquiring the recommended behaviour or treatment. The product of these two is a disposition to act.
Consistency Theories
Consistency theories depict that man always seeks consistency, tries to balance and harmonize one’s belief system. One cannot tolerate imbalances for a long time and tries to resolve inconsistencies. This imbalance or disturbance becomes a motivator for behavioural change, provided one is exposed to some useful information for solving that problem. In this condition they are more likely to accept the change. Persuasive, attractive messages can act as a mode for communicating useful information and can help in reinforcing one’s motivation towards the change. And in case one is not convinced with the message, even he can be persuaded slowly provided if he likes the source of the message, for example, a favourite personality conveying the message. Thus the choice of the source is an important decision. The two important consistency theories of attitude change are Fritz Heider’s ‘Balance Theory’ (1946) and Charles Osgood and Percy Tannenbaum’s ‘Congruity Theory’ (1955).
Bandura’s Social Learning Theory/Social Cognitive Theory
Albert Bandura’s theory is one of the influential theories of learning and development. Social cognitive theory asserts that providing information alone is not sufficient to change behaviour, rather sustainable behaviour change requires the skills to engage in the behaviour and the ability to use these skills consistently even under difficult circumstances (Bandura, 1973). Again, sometimes, in spite of requisite capability and skill one cannot perform as well as expected. The reasons may be lack of self-confidence or faulty self-knowledge that one possesses. They may not have a clear idea of how much effort they need to put, for how long to sustain it and also how to correct misconceptions. In this situation an individual’s self-belief that their present actions can bring the desired outcomes can became a motivation to face the challenges in acquiring the behaviour. Theory termed this self belief as ‘Self-efficacy’ which can influence one’s choice of and the courses of action they make. Individuals form their self-efficacy by interpreting information from various sources (Pajares, 2002) According to Bandura (1986), there are four sources which affect self efficacy. Mastery experience which one gains from one’s own past experiences and tries to generalize with one’s present situation. Vicarious experience can be learnt from observing others. It is appropriate for the people who does not have sufficient past experience and are uncertain about the future. This vicarious learning permits individuals to learn a novel behaviour without undergoing the trial and error process of performing it. It keeps them from risking costly and potentially fatal mistakes (Pajares, 2002). Social persuasion which can also contribute to successful performance if the heightened appraisal is within realistic bounds (Bandura, 1986). Physiological states; a good physiological state can enhance one’s self-efficacy. Treatments that eliminate emotional arousal (like fear, threats, pain) to subjective threats heighten perceived self-efficacy with corresponding improvements in performance (Bandura, 1986). Thus the theory can be useful in providing the requisite knowledge, skill and can boost one’s self-efficacy by adjusting one’s environment.
Field Force Analysis
Kurt Kelvin in his ‘Field Force Analysis’ highlighted that any change involves three important phases like de-freezing the old undesirable behaviour, freezing and re-freezing the new recommended behaviour. The theory can be applied to overcome any resistance towards change. One must also identify both driving and restraining forces associated with the behaviour. When driving forces are equal to restraining forces it is called an equilibrium state. This equilibrium or current level of performance can be enhanced by maximizing driving forces and by minimizing restraining forces.
Customer-oriented Knowledge Perspective
This is again a very important dimension in social marketing. The customer is king in social marketing. The motto of any social marketing programme is to solve the problems of target audiences. In order to serve them better one must know all the irrelevant information regarding the customer.
It is interlinked with other perspectives, for example, formative research is very much interlinked with it. Formative research can help social marketers in finding all the information regarding the customer. An effective formative research can help in getting the right information or knowledge about the customer and accordingly all the strategies need to be made.
A social marketing programme is customer-centred and visionary (The Baldwin Group, 2001) and tries to acquire more knowledge about potential clients like their personality, attitude, behavioural pattern, economic status, social influence, and their social and cultural norms (Ampt, 2003). The success of each programme depends on the level of interest and involvement of the customer into the programme. And if beneficiaries do not perceive the services as good then whole programme will fail. Thus knowing and understanding them is very crucial. Social marketing tries to the explore level of knowledge of the target audience and identify the knowledge gap, if any. With this requisite information, a well-suited customized product can be offered as well as an appropriate message can be structured in an acceptable or feasible way to the appropriate people (Favin and Griffiths, 1992). One of the criticisms of social marketing campaigns is that many times they have a tendency to be top–down, still treating the individual as a person to be persuaded and changed according to criteria established by outsiders (Fraser and Restrepo-Estrada, 1998; Melkote and Steeves, 2001). Again Fraser and Restrepo-Estrada (1989) criticize that it can only deal with the symptoms and not the root causes or structural causes of situations. Structural causes mean what exactly customers perceive about the problem rather than what social marketers think, for example, social marketers may think smokers are prone to lung cancer and it is a serious addiction. On the other hand, a smoker may think if he does not smoke, his friends may reject him.
ServQual Model
Customers generally have an attitude to evaluate the quality of a service or programme and try to compare the service they experienced with the service they expected. And when these two mismatch, a gap or loophole arises. Parasuraman et al. (as cited in Ramaswamy and Namakumari, 2002) provide a reliable methodology for measuring customer satisfaction. To ensure and deliver a high quality of service it identifies five gaps which cause a failure in service delivery. It seeks to measure perceived service quality on the basis of five parameters like tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy. The model propounds that there are five kinds of gaps, which together contribute to the problem relating to the service quality and service delivery.
Francis Buttle (1996) highlighted three criticisms of this model: perception and expectation are very subjective, and thus not good measures and the measures in the model are not necessarily the right things to be measured. Nyeck et al. (2002) reviewed 40 articles that made use of the SERVQUAL measuring tool and revealed that few researchers concern themselves with the validation of the measuring tool. In spite of these criticisms, the model is a useful tool in various service sectors like education, banking, health, etc., and remains the most complete attempt to conceptualize and measure service quality (Nyeck et al., 2002). Thus the theory stresses on reducing these gaps or differences which influences the consumer’s entire perception of service quality and helps in improving service quality.
Stage Theories of Change/Transtheoretical Model
Prochaska and DiClimente’s stages of change theory helps in understanding how to target social marketing campaigns to various groups of people. A human being does not change his perception all of a sudden; rather it is a stepwise process and ‘identifies various categories of people on the basis of their readiness to adopt a change’ (Lefebvre, 2000). Based on their willingness to change, the target population can be fit into five stages. They are: pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance and termination. The appropriate strategy needs to be linked with each group in order to motivate each group to move to the next stage. For example, in the pre-contemplation stage people are not aware of the issue and need awareness for pushing them forward to the next stage, called the contemplation phase. In the contemplation phase, people need different strategies, as here people are more concerned about the problem and interested in changing their wrongdoing.
Exchange Perspective
The exchange perspective is very important. In order to motivate people one should make some attractive and appealing offers. A person will adopt a change happily if he is offered a product or if the change is very attractive. Social marketing emphasizes the voluntary exchange of costs and benefits between two or more parties (Kotler and Zaltman, 1971). It tries to exchange positive values, benefits and opportunities with its beneficiaries. ‘Social marketing gives efforts in understanding what customer value most and accordingly services needs to be offered to the intended audiences. Some may prefer short-term benefits and some may prefer long-term benefits’ (National Social Marketing Centre, 2011). Thus costs needs to be minimized by increasing the incentives so that customers can be attracted with the new service. Again there are two type of rewards associated with behaviour–intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. Intrinsic motivation is one’s inner desire to adopt change. Extrinsic reward is an incentive or gift associated with new behaviour. Some are motivated by intrinsic rewards and some by extrinsic rewards.
Exchange Theory
A change will only occur if the marketer can offer a reward that equals or exceeds the perceived sacrifice involved in making the change (Worth, 2012, p. 253). The theory argues that the major force in interpersonal relationships is the satisfaction of both parties’ self-interest and when they realize that they are going to get a fair return out of this deal. The voluntary exchanges are elicited by offering benefits that are valued (Novelli, 1990). Like commercial marketing, social marketing also charges some price from their customers for their offered products or services. But price here may not be always monitory; rather it may be a non-monetary price like time, physical and cognitive effort, lifestyle, psychological factors and social contacts (Lefebvre and Flora, 1988) associated with the people. Unlike commercial marketing, here the concept of exchange is a complex phenomenon, as benefits associated with the offered product may not be seen clearly; rather it is more intangible in nature and generally they are not liked by the target audiences. Andreason (2006) explains, most effective rewards are those that are immediate, personal, reflective of audience values, better than competitive rewards, credible and positive; and rewards are more effective than threats.
Thus the theory tries to identify the key motivation of the consumer and their perception towards the offered benefits. It tries to asses which benefits are most important to them or what incentives can encourage them to adopt the change. It helps in cost–benefit analysis of the new so that effective strategies can be made in order to make the offer more attractive and appealing.
Communication Perspective
Sometimes good programmes fail due to loopholes in communication with the right people. Often they are not aware of the product or services and their availability. Social marketing tries to promote socially beneficial ideas, practices and products, and tries to influence the target audience in order to make behavioural change easier. It tries to use various ‘sophisticated communications techniques including focus groups, survey research and individual interviews’ in order to reach to their audiences. They try to inform people about the product through an attractive message. For this sometimes people’s ability to recall the right answers are taken as a reliable indicator that the messages have been properly received by the audience (according to Srinivasan (1992) as cited in Stetson and Davis, 1999). Social advertising plays an important role in social marketing, and banners, billboards and brochures are often used in promoting their products. Thus media intervention can also play an important role in this regard, if chosen rightly. Social networking sites and blogs are now becoming popular among the youth and in the near future will be an emerging trend in the non-profit sector, especially for reaching to the masses. But one of the criticism of social marketing is that for some it is the same as mass advertising (Wisner, 1987) and here communication is one-way, it does not include the ‘consumer’ and feedback is not possible (Wisner, 1987).
Roger’s Diffusion of Innovation Theory
Roger’s diffusion of innovation theory emphasizes on popularizing an innovation (desired change) among the target groups. Resources in the non-profit sector are limited. Thus the emphasis of the theory is on segmenting the whole target population into five types of groups based on their willingness to change. Initially both efforts and resources should not be wasted on those groups who are not willing to change or who are not determined to change. Rather these resources should be used efficiently on the people who can be convinced easily. Marketers need to first identify and communicate with the ‘innovator’ and ‘early adopter’ groups as it is easy to convince them compared to the other groups. These innovators can again become opinion leaders who consequently can influence their followers, peer groups and neighbours, who come under the next category, called the early majority who can share their positive experience. The theory also emphasizes on certain important attributes like relative advantage, compatibility, trialability, communicability and risk, which can determine the success or failure of a programme.
Wilbur Schramm Model of Communication
The communication process operates within a particular framework of cultural rules and expectations to which one belongs. Wilbur Schramm (1954) emphasizes on ‘field of experience’, or the ‘psychological frame of reference’ in the communication process which refers to the type of attitudes which the sender and receiver maintain towards each other. It is due to the fact that both sender and receiver have their own cultural background. Their level of knowledge towards a matter may also differ. The same message may be interpreted differently in different cultures and in different settings. And if both sender and receiver are from different cultural backgrounds, having huge differences in their knowledge level it may be assumed that there is hardly any cohesion between each one’s field of experience. And due to this huge gap between the sender’s and receiver’s field of experience there is a chance of confusion and miscommunication. Thus more the uniformity in their field of experience, the more is the chance of effective communication. Thus theory suggests minimizing these gaps and creating uniformity in their field of experiences. Different strategies could be adopted for reducing this gap, for example, regular meetings can be conducted, training can be provided, feedback can be taken, the original message can be translated through their respective local languages.
Hirokawa and Scheerhorn Model of Group Decision-making
The Hirokawa and Scheerhorn (1986) model of group decision-making assesses how groups make their decisions and which factors can lead to poor decisions. It also stresses on how individual group members influence decision quality. The group’s judgements are based on some issues like: (a) the nature of the situation under consideration; (b) the objectives and values which need to be achieved by the decision; and (c) the positive and negative consequences of other possible decisions. They explain about the five factors responsible for poor group decisions. They are: (a) incorrect perception about the situation; (b) incorrect choices of goals; (c) incorrect judgments of the positive and negative aspects of alternatives; (d) incorrect choice of an information base; and (e) incorrect reasoning from an information base.
Competition Perspective
The competitive factors are hidden and abstract in nature in social marketing (The Baldwin Group, 2001) unlike profit marketing where competition is easy to identify and visible. Social marketing uses the concept of competition to attract the attention of the target audience towards the desired outcome. Competition can be both internal and external. In internal competition one needs to compete with target audience’s pleasure or satisfaction, enjoyment associated with the unhealthy, for example, addiction, fear of risk-taking or psychological resistance that can directly affect a person’s choice. External competition comes from outside parties who directly promote negative behaviours especially from the corporate sectors such as tobacco companies who do not want to decrease their sales and likewise they do not want their consumers to change their habit of smoking. Another can be friendly competition between other non-profit organizations that share similar motives and needs, especially in terms of attracting sponsors or donors for financial assistance. ‘(The) best way is to cooperate and coordinate efforts’ (Klopper 2006) of the parties who have similar needs and a similar mission.
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
The theory postulates that when a consumer adopts a behaviour by rejecting another, the very decision creates a psychological tension, conflict or imbalance in his/her mind termed as ‘dissonance’. The tension is proportional to the implications and complexity of the decision. According to Festinger (1957), the theory of cognitive dissonance says a person having two inconsistent views will feel a sense of internal conflict or dissonance which will prompt him/her to change his/her views, for example, a man who does not exercise but is aware of the fact that it can make him unfit and unattractive among his peer group. Realizing the degree of risk associated with his decision, he will try to reduce the dissonance by starting to exercise. On the other hand, he may again justify his decision by thinking that many people have lived a long life without exercise. In this situation he will try to justify himself with the available facts and will try to reject the fact which does not support his decision. Thus creating a dissonance towards an unhealthy lifestyle can be a good strategy for social marketing.
Segmentation Perspective
Traditional social agencies believe in serving everyone and it is believe to be unethical to serve some groups and exclude other groups. With this view they try to make a common appeal for all, but fail to get the right message to the right audience. Thus, identifying the right audience based on some of their homogeneous characteristics is a very crucial task. Strategies must be tailored to suit the needs, wants and behaviour of the targeted people (Kotler and Roberto, 1989). Thus emphasis needs to be given on dividing people into different homogeneous groups based on some common characteristics like demographic, psychographic (for example, attitudes, interests, values, lifestyles, opinions) or behaviouristic variables (for example, benefits sought, user status, use rate, loyalty status, readiness to change). Thus segmentation can be helpful in understanding their motivational facts and fears so that the right strategy can be made for solving their problem.
Cost-effectiveness Perspective
Often small organizations are deprived of the benefits of extensive resources and professional expert assistance. They faces challenges of limited budgets, less-experienced staffs, insufficient support, etc. Social marketing is a cost-effectiveness approach and needs to manage ‘often with very limited resources’ (Lefebvre and Flora, 1988), especially with small funds. It engages non-financial resources to achieve change like using people’s time and skills, or mobilizing community leaders and networks) (Reynolds, 2012). Channel analysis can provide them a cost-effective way to reach the target audience.
Like profit-making companies, social marketing cannot spend resources lavishly. According to Dr Jay Bernhardt (as cited in The National Social Marketing, 2010), commercial marketers spend billions to move the needle a few percentage points, to achieve a very small change in market share, but they still see this as an enormous success. Social marketers spend far less, but are expected to do much more.
According to Doug McKenzie-Mohr (The National Social Marketing Centre, 2010) it is a challenge for social marketing to do formative research with a small budget. According to James H. (The National Social Marketing, 2010) it is also a challenge to secure sufficient funds to create and implement the intervention.
Ethical Perspective
Social marketer cannot manipulate an individual for bringing a change – initially hiding those unpleasant facts from him/her so that they will adopt the new behaviour very easily. Social marketers may think that if a person is exposed to those hidden facts he may reject the new behaviour. But this can never be justified on ethical grounds.
Let us discuss some of the criticism in this perspective. Non-profit organizations that use the social marketing approach get too involved in its marketing aspects and they often overlook the core humanitarian mission. Another criticism is that it tries to control large number of people by indirectly creating pressure on them to change their earlier view. They perceive that controlling people is morally wrong. Thus they term social marketing ‘as social reengineering and therefore they disapprove of it as it is considered anti-democratic and an offence against human rights’. It has been also criticized for power imbalances or the power differential existing between the government or organization conducting the campaign and the intended audience (Brenkert, 2002). It is potentially unethical in giving power to one group in order to influence another (Fox and Kotler, 1980). The powerful group who can resist political or government power tries to impose its values on weaker group. It promotes the paternalistic attitude of a western society towards other culture. The ethical dilemma in social marketing can confuse one. ‘In some cultures having many children is a security for the parents in their old age’ (Andreason, 1995) and considers them as assets and not a burden. And these complex culturally sensitive issues are not socially acceptable in some religions. Another criticism of social marketing is that it can have a negative impact on the society in the long-term perspective. The impact of social marketing campaigns that try to lower child mortality in developing countries might result in increasing the number of the older generation and could also cause big constraints of resources, high unemployment, poverty and civil disobedience (Salmon, 1989). Thus social marketing should analyze and reveal both the intentional and indirect consequences of the campaign towards the society and its people.
Sustainable Perspective
Effective social marketing is an essential tool for better understanding your local population and empowering your community to manage their own health and meet the government’s vision. Social marketing promotes sustainable lifestyles. ‘Sustainability as one of social marketing biggest challenges’ (Andreason, 1995), which ‘results from continuous programme monitoring and subsequent adjustment to changes occurring in the audience and environmental condition’ (Lee et al., 2011). For that follow-up and maintenance is important. A successful social marketing programme ensures sustainability of the programme and its permanent impact on the life of people even after finishing the programme.
Strategic Marketing Mix Perspectives
The foundation of social marketing are the ‘P’s of marketing’. The success of any programme depends on how one can strategically and efficiently use these p’s in their respective problems. Apart from product (service), place, price and promotion, social marketing mix adds some P’s of its own (Weinreich, 2011). They are public, partnership, policy, purse strings and process. These marketing mix tools are the most effective tools for making a programme successful.
A brief description of these mix are:
Product
Social marketing ‘products refer to the actual programme being planned and implemented’ (McKenzie and Smelter, 1997; Weinrich, 1999) and can be the behaviour which one wants the target audience to adopt. The product may fall anywhere along a continuum ranging from physical products (for example, smoke detectors), to services (for example, medical examinations), to a practice (for example, breast feeding, eating a heart-healthy diet) or more intangible ideas (for example, environmental protection) (Weinreich, 2011, p. 14). A good product should have some of the requisite attributes such as product variety, quality, design, features, brand name, packaging, size, warranty and returns (Kotler and Keller, 2007). In commercial marketing, marketers have control over their product and they can conveniently adjust product features such as name, concept, positioning and packaging. But in social marketing, control over the product, like adoption of a healthier lifestyle, is difficult. Thus they have less chance to shape and manipulate their product in order to make it catchier. Here structuring the product concept is a brainstorming task. According to Iain Potter (The National Social Marketing Centre, 2010), one of the challenges towards social marketing is to alter its intangible offerings like hope, threat, support, information and persuasion, etc., into a tangible product. Here direct benefits of the product are not clear. Profit marketer tries to focus on the products which are more demanding among their consumer but non profit marketer focuses on complex issues which are driven by their missions and values that are at the heart of their existence (Worth, 2012) and not usually demanded by target people.
Price
Here, price refers to the cost or pain the target audience has to take for giving up his old behaviour. Price can be both financial (transportation cost which one needs to pay for availing the service) and non-financial (time, effort, old habits, feeling of embarrassment which one experiences while performing the recommended action). By determining through research what the target audience considers to be the price of performing the action, marketing mix can be designed to minimize the costs so that they do not outweigh the perceived benefits (Weinreich, 2011, p. 16). Thus benefits need to be enhanced more than perceived costs so that the product can become more appealing to the people and chances of trial and adoption of the action will be more. The social marketer tries to charge a nominal fee and tries to maintain a balance between the concept of affordability and perception of value. In conventional marketing normally only the customer pays for the goods and services. But in social marketing both clients and donors partly or fully pay for the services offered.
Place
A service offered in convenient place can give a better experience to the people than an inconvenient place. Here place refers to the ‘distribution channel’, that is, where and how the beneficiaries are going to get the offering? Where can the message be exposed to the target audience? It is a strategy to reach the targeted people and to attract them to avail the services. Different attributes need to be taken care of in choosing the right place, such as channels, coverage, assortments, locations, inventory and transport (Kotler et al., 2007).
Promotion
Promotional strategies are needed for better communication with the targeted people. Though it is only a part of a social marketing programme, it is very important. The focus is on motivating people to try and then to continue performing the action. Advertising, public relation, sales promotion, personal selling, edu-entertainment, social media and media advocacy are some of the important methods for conveying the message to the target customers (Weinreich, 2011, p. 18).
Social marketing is service-oriented in nature and thus adds extra p’s apart from the four p’s. These are described as follows:
People/public
To be successful, social marketing programmes often address different audiences. Here public or people refer to both external and internal groups involved in the programme. The target audience are the most important people whose attitude needs to be changed. The secondary audience might be the people who can influence the primary audience, for example, family, peer groups, doctors, etc. Policy makers may be the other group who can create an environment conducive to change or maintenance. Again another group can be the gatekeepers who can control the message. In this category, supervisors, staff and business companies may play an important role.
Partnership
Social and health issues often are so complex that one organization cannot make a dent by itself (Weinreich, 2011, p. 20). Partnership refers to teaming up with other groups in the society having a similar audience. They may have similar goals although not necessarily the same goals. It helps in cutting cost by sharing each other’s resources and this way both can benefit.
Policy
Social marketing can initiate and encourage people to change. But, for sustainable change they should have a supportive and favourable environment. Thus policy is similar to one of the service marketing p’s called physical evidence. Social marketing needs to influence and encourage policy makers to support their programmes. Policy change by top-level bureaucrats can prove to be an effective strategy for creating favourable support in social marketing programmes. For example, various laws, rules and regulations play an important role.
Purse Strings
It reveals how social marketers will generate and create their resources for a particular programme. Most organizations that develop social marketing programmes operate through funds provided by sources such as foundations, governmental grants, donations, etc. (Weinreich, 2011, p. 22). For self-sustenance some may sell a tangible product as a part of their programme.
Process
Social marketing process which starts from analyze, strategic development, programme and communication design, pretesting, implementation and finally evaluation and feedback of the programme. It provides a straightforward framework for programme development that, if followed, ensures that each critical piece occurs at the proper time (Weinreich, 2011, p. 23). According to Nancy Lee (as cited in The National Social Marketing, 2010), one of the challenges towards the social marketing approach is that people who do not have a marketing background may not be comfortable with the social marketing framework, though social marketing tries to encompass people from both marketing and the social sciences. Again convincing them and bringing expertise together from diverse backgrounds is a big challenge. Apart from that, one of the criticisms of marketing is that it is always profit-oriented and cannot be used for a good cause. It is manipulative and vulgar in nature (Fraser and Restrepo-Estrada, 1998). Many think social marketing is used just to repair the damage that commercial marketing has created (Kotler and Roberto, 1989).
The Formative Research Base
Market and consumer research is very helpful in testing concepts, message content and design, for checking the potential of a new product or service before it is widely disseminated. Jain and Kaur (2004) in their paper have emphasized field surveys and based on the data they make an assessment of the extent of environmental awareness and attitudes prevalent among consumers in India towards green marketing strategies, green ideas and products. Formative research can be utilized to define and test the proposed change strategies, further elaborate audience needs and possible points of resistance to the proposed change strategies, guard against the misappropriation of resources to ineffective or unattractive products (Lefebvre and Flora, 1988). The formative research bridges the communication gap between social marketers and their clients. It can use different methods for doing formative research like focus groups, interviews, surveys, etc. As compared to commercial marketing, in social marketing researchers find it difficult to get accurate primary data especially in some sensitive issues like smoking, sickness, sex and charity, which are associated with individuals deepest fears, anxiety and values. Sometimes people hesitate to answer (Klopper, 2006). People may feel comfortable answering about their brand preference for toothpaste, but the same individual may not like to answer questions about family planning.
Theory Oriented
The discipline of social marketing is a holistic approach integrated from various other fields. Various theories have been adopted in order to do proper planning, designing and implementation of programmes. Various theories like health belief model, theory of reasoned action, social cognitive theory, the transtheoretical model of behaviour change, diffusion of innovations, etc., has been reviewed in this article. These theories have been identified for various situations. In order to segment the target audience, social marketing uses social cognitive theory, the health belief model and the theory of reasoned action (Lefebvre, 2000).
Figure 1 depicts an overview of the social marketing framework and its related aspects. It explains the social marketing process which starts from analysis, strategic development, programme and communication design, pre-testing, implementation and finally evaluation and feedback of the programme (Weinreich, 2010). Analysis has been done both for external and internal environments. The external environment needs to be studied on consumers, donors, existing competition and other socio-cultural factors. Internal analysis has been done from an organization point of view. It tries to study their available resources, financial capability, their short-term and long-term goals, mission and vision. This analysis of the whole environment has been done through formative research. Formative research also helps in pre-testing a programme in order to ensure that target audiences have understood and accepted the message properly. Thus we can relate the formative research perspective with analysis and pretesting which is shown through one dotted line. Consumer analysis will try to asses all consumer oriented facts like their problems, attitude, knowledge, motivational cues, barriers towards the desired change, etc. Thus consumer analysis also helps in segmentation of heterogeneous people into some homogeneous sub-groups based on some of their common features. Thus we can see the inter-relationship of consumers with the consumer-oriented knowledge perspective and segmentation perspective which is shown again using a dotted line. After analysis, emphasis needs to be given on strategy development based on the available information and facts. Here theory and marketing tools are used so that an effective programme and communication strategy can be formulated. A programme will be successful, if all the marketing tools can be effectively used and implemented properly. Thus both theoretical and strategic marketing mix perspective are also associated with this. After the programme is designed it should be properly tested and implemented. Finally implementation of the programme can bring a desirable change among the target audiences. This change process consists of few steps, namely, awareness, interest, attitude and finally decision making or action. Thus the behavioural change perspective explains how a person takes interests towards a new way and takes requisite action in order to adopt it. This is quite similar to the attention, interest, desire, action (AIDA) model. Again here target audience action is linked with organization mission and vision. If the programme is successful this action will be a favourable one and will match the organizational goal, its mission and vision. Again sustainability and ethical perspectives can be related with organization mission and vision as without these the impact of any programme cannot be sustainable in the long run. Both competition perspective and exchange perspective come from the competition and price aspect. The cost-effective perspective is very important as a social marketing programme needs to be monitored and should have control over its resources. Thus this whole process can be justified and analyzed with various perspectives which we have tried to highlight with some oval shaped figures and dotted lines.
Conclusion
To make a social marketing programme successful this approach needs to be implemented systematically and comprehensively. Thus all assumptions and the relative domain of social marketing needs to be assessed carefully in order to fit this approach to a specific setting and to a specific targeted people. This approach is still a debatable phenomenon with its various criticisms and may not be a universal solution to all social issues. The present article tries to review social marketing in a much comprehensive manner. To understand where social marketing can work best, the article tries to explore its relevance in the spectrum of change. Social marketing originated due to the diversification of the marketing discipline in the non-profit sector. Marketing is theory based. It is predicated on theories of consumer behaviour which in turn draw upon the social and behavioural sciences (Novelli, 1990). Here, in this article, we have tried to review various literatures to look back into its history and its applicability in the real world. This article is aimed to illustrate the synergy between the various perspectives of social marketing and under each perspective various related theories and models have been discussed. These theories are integrated from various disciplines like marketing, psychological, communication, etc. These theories have very strong interconnections with behavioural change which is the bottom line of social marketing. Apart from this, these theories can play a major role in formulating various social marketing strategies by adopting various emerging technologies and innovative ideas. They can be used in selecting important programme elements, uncovering the attitude of the target audience towards an issue. For example, the HBM model and also some theories help in formulating customized strategies for motivating different sub-segments of target audiences, for example, stages of change theory, diffusion of innovation. But one may have doubts about the applicability of all these theories. But just for the sake of using all the theories, one does not need to fit all these blindly in all situations, but rather emphasize on analyzing the type of problem, and then focus on the best theory applicable in that situation the situation prevailing in the area first. Walsh et al. (1993) have noted ‘that professional social marketers tend to be broadly eclectic and intuitive thinkers in their use of available theory’. Here we also have to evaluate social marketing from various critique’s points of view due to its strong interconnection with profit-motive ‘marketing’.
People are becoming more technology prone, more exposed to mass media and communication has become easier due to the advances in information technology. In this age of the media, especially due to the popularity of social media and social networking sites, social marketing can play an excellent role in the near future. Sustainability of a non-profit organization depends on how efficiently it can deliver its services in tune with its core mission. Emphasis needs to be given on strengthening the brand value of the organization and relation-building with the audience. Especially for small organizations, it can be an excellent guideline to bring about change. It has been more than four decades for social marketing. The future ahead seems to be long for social marketing both at the operational level (individual behavioural change) and at the strategic level (influencing government’s public health policy). But definitely it has huge potential in solving some issues, particularly those which demand attitudinal change. In a developing country like India this discipline has huge prospects and can be used in solving various social issues like corruption, safe driving, environmental protection, water conservation, health issues and other criminal issues like increasing crime against women (rape cases, acid attacks, domestic violence, etc.). But this concept is still neglected and misunderstood by non-profit marketers. Many of them still misunderstand social marketing as social advertising. They need to realize the potential of marketing and its well-tested tools.