Understanding “Place” in Social Marketing

Abstract

Critiques of the social marketing literature have suggested the place strategy is a key component within the 4 Ps of the marketing mix that simultaneously has been misunderstood and underutilized. This study sought to conduct a systematic review of the peer-reviewed literature to better understand how place has been conceptualized and operationalized over multiple decades. Application of inclusion criteria resulted in a sample of 84 articles published from 1988 to 2015 representing work in 20 different countries in North America, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. Content analysis showed that almost half (46.4%) of the descriptions of place strategies operationalized the component by including at least one element of placing messages within communication channels or information delivery such as print, interpersonal, traditional broadcast, or digital. The heavy emphasis on communication channels and information delivery contrasts sharply with definitions of place that thought leaders have offered historically. Results revealed that authors from the United States especially have a tendency to operationalize place as message placement. Discussion speculates on why conceptualization and operationalization have diverged and considers the implications for clarity within the field of social marketing as a whole.

Keywords

place strategy social marketing marketing mix channels

Among the guiding principles of social marketing, the marketing mix stands out as one of the most fundamental. Indeed, it is typical for social marketers to begin an article with a definition of social marketing followed by a listing and explanation of the four elements of the marketing mix, or the 4 Ps—product, price, place, and promotion. While social marketers may consistently list the four parts of the marketing mix, they often fall short in explaining how they used the 4 Ps in their social marketing initiative to plan and implement an effective strategy to change behavior or if they used the entire marketing mix. Leaders in social marketing have pointed out that planners will sometimes skip over the product, place, and price elements and head straight for the promotional strategy perhaps because the creative aspects of promotions are appealing to planners (Lee & Kotler, 2015) or perhaps because “marketing” leads straight to advertising in the minds of many planners (Andreasen, 2002; Hastings & Lowry, 2010).

When Kotler and Zaltman (1971) published their seminal article on using marketing tactics to bring about social change, they discussed place as being the provision of distribution and response channels. They explained that promotional materials may motivate someone to action, but the campaign may fail if “clear action outlets” are not suggested or places to acquire the product are not presented (p. 9). As the field developed in the years after Kotler and Zaltman’s groundbreaking work, leaders in social marketing defined place as “locations at which necessary products or services could be obtained” (Andreasen, 1995, p. 22), and “how services and products are made easily accessible to consumers” (Smith, 1998, p. 15). A frequently used current definition is from Lee and Kotler (2015), “Place is where and when the target audience will perform the desired behavior, acquire any related goods, and receive any associated services” (p. 315).

As social marketing has matured, two critiques about place have emerged in the literature. One is that social marketers sometimes confuse place as where the promotional materials appear (communication channel) instead of where and how the product is made available (the product location or the distribution channel; Edgar, Volkman, & Logan, 2011; Smith, 1998). Lee and Kotler (2015) made this point explicitly when they said, “It is important to clarify and stress that place is not the same as communication channel [Lee and Kotler’s emphasis], which is where your communications will appear (e.g., brochures, radio ads, news stores, and personal presentations)” (p. 316). The reason why it is important not to confuse communication channels with marketing or distribution channels is that there are often plenty of messages telling the target audience what to do but not enough offerings for how to do it and where to do it (Smith, 1998). Place occupies a unique niche in the social marketer’s toolbox: It addresses the physical barriers (access to) and psychological barriers (making the location appealing) that must be overcome by the target audience as they try to do the behavior. Place delivers the bundle of benefits that is promised by the product, made attractive by the price, and encouraged by the promotions (Thackeray & McCormack Brown, 2010). The place element in a social marketing initiative may be the key element of the marketing strategy because easy availability of the goods and services gives a strong advantage over the competition (Strand, Rothschild, & Nevin, 2004).

The second critique that social marketers have made about place is that it is often underutilized (Daniel, Bernhardt, & Eroğlu, 2009; Lotenberg, 2010), which is ironic because in commercial marketing, place, or distribution of the product, is often viewed as the most important part of the marketing mix (Maibach, Rothschild, & Novelli, 2002). One reason place may be underdeveloped is that place development is secondary to development of a brand, if a branding strategy is the basis of the campaign (Huhman, Price, & Potter, 2008). This was the case for VERB, a campaign in the United States aimed at encouraging tweens to be physically active. VERB planners used the first year to build a strong brand and then took VERB to the community level, where the VERB brand could be used to drive tweens to places to be physically active in their communities. However, full implementation of the community-level initiatives was curtailed when funding ceased (Huhman & Berkowitz, 2014).

Another reason place may be underdeveloped is because the barriers to behavior change for the place element involve infrastructure or complex environmental changes that are difficult and expensive. For instance, Lee and Kotler (2015) cited the city of Los Angeles’ multiyear project to increase bicycle usage as an excellent example of a campaign that incorporated a clearly defined place strategy by installing 56 miles of bicycle paths, 119 miles of bicycle routes, and 348 bike lanes. The initiative serves as a great model for making it easier for citizens to use their bikes, but it was an extremely resource intensive project both in terms of time and money to restructure the environment.

Given the extant observations about place in the literature and the anecdotal evidence about the challenges with this particular strategy’s application, we believe a close examination of how social marketers think about place and the reality of how it is being used or not used in social marketing interventions is warranted. Existing critiques might be valid, but they have been based primarily on general impressions of the field rather than on a rigorous empirical analysis. One example in the literature where researchers have attempted to conduct a broader analysis of place strategies beyond a single topic area was the work done by Luca and Suggs (2010), where they conducted a systematic literature review of social marketing interventions that reported outcome evaluation results within a limited number of topic areas: nutrition, physical activity, diabetes, smoking, sexually transmitted infections, HIV, heart disease, and cancer. Their search resulted in the identification of 17 unique interventions meeting their criteria. Within their findings, they listed very brief descriptions of the 17 place strategies (as well as strategies for the other three elements of the marketing mix) and noted that the most common were using locations frequented by the target audience, relying on existing distribution channels and making locations more appealing. Although Luca and Suggs provided insight and a strong groundwork for future work, their overall analysis of the place strategies lacked detailed explication.

For the current study, our goal was to conduct a broad-based systematic review of the social marketing literature across all topics that provides an in-depth analysis of description and implementation of place strategies. Our work was guided by the following three research questions:

Research Question 1: When describing social marketing interventions, what conceptual definitions of place have scholars and practitioners offered within the peer-reviewed literature?

Research Question 2: How do conceptual definitions of place within specific publications match the definitions of place articulated within seminal works by thought leaders in the social marketing field?

Research Question 3: How have scholars and practitioners operationalized the use of place strategies in the peer-reviewed literature for specific interventions?

We also wished to examine how place has been described across the globe. Although social marketing principles were first delineated by American scholars with the appearance of Kotler and Zaltman’s (1971) pioneering article, the framework has been adopted by practitioners and academics throughout the world. Evidence for increased global interest has been especially robust in the last decade with the launch of the International Social Marketing Association and the debut of the biannual World Social Marketing Conference. With the widespread application of social marketing, we wondered whether ideas about place have varied by the locale of the intervention. Thus, we also posed a fourth research question:

Research Question 4: Do descriptions of place strategies differ within the peer-reviewed literature depending on the geographic location of the intervention?

Method

Search Strategy

To identify appropriate literature, we searched the same databases that other systematic reviews of the social marketing literature have used (see e.g., Luca & Suggs, 2010, 2013). These included Google Scholar, Cochrane Library, Wiley Interscience, Science Digest, PsycInfo, PubMed, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, Communication & Mass Media Complete, LISTA, Social Services Abstracts, Sociological Abstracts, ABI/Inform, Emerald Management Xtra, and JSTOR. We used the search terms social marketing, marketing mix, and place. In addition, we reviewed the bibliographies of other specialized social marketing literature reviews (e.g., Evans et al., 2014; Gordon, McDermott, Angus, & Stead, 2006; Luca & Suggs, 2010, 2013; Schmidt, 2013; Stead, Gordon, Angus, & McDermott, 2007; Sublet & Lum, 2008; Truong, 2014; Yoder & Murphy, 2012). We then conducted a word search of each article available online in both Social Marketing Quarterly and the Journal of Social Marketing, which are the two journals devoted specifically to the publication of the practice and research of social marketing. The initial search produced over 720 articles.

Selection Criteria

We conducted the search primarily over a 6-month period, and the last date that we checked databases for final inclusion was March 23, 2015. For time frame, we included any literature after 1971 when Kotler and Zaltman first introduced the term social marketing to the community of scholars and practitioners in their seminal work. For inclusion in the final sample, the article had to appear in a peer-reviewed publication and be written in English. The article had to describe either the implementation of a social marketing initiative or the collection of formative research data from a specific population for the planning of a social marketing initiative. For the latter category, we only included articles that also outlined a specific social marketing plan based on the data the authors collected. Articles also had to clearly identify a place strategy that was specifically labeled with the terms “place” or “placement.” We downloaded the PDF files of the articles that we identified as possibilities for inclusion and did an electronic search on the word “place” in each one.

Application of the inclusion criteria resulted in a final sample of 84 articles that were published from 1988 to 2015¹ and covered a wide range of topics representing interventions in 20 different countries.² We created a database and, along with the article reference information, we also recorded the geographical intervention site, description of place strategy from the text, and any definition of place the authors used. For the latter variable, we also noted if the authors referenced another publication for their definition.

Coding Procedures

To make sense of the data, we relied on content analysis, which is “a research technique for making replicable and valid inferences from texts (or other meaningful matter) to the context of their use” (Krippendorff, 2013, p. 24). Content analysis has been used extensively in the communication-related disciplines. The two variables that required in-depth coding were the operational descriptions of the place strategies that authors offered in all 84 articles meeting the inclusion criteria and the conceptual definitions of place that a subset of the authors included.

For the descriptions of the place strategies, the two lead authors first reviewed the strategies of all 84 articles together to identify patterns and possible categories. An example of a place strategy description from an article by Meyer et al. (2004) on enrolling families in the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) in Ohio was “Successful counties attempted to make enrollment more attractive by extending the places where consumers could obtain the product. Applications for CHIP were made available at a wide variety of alternative, nontraditional sites, including schools, health departments, and health provider offices” (p. 100). The lead author then developed a formal codebook that the other authors reviewed and edited. Because so much emphasis within strategies was placed on variations in message placement and access, we created multiple versions of those variables. For example, we differentiated among different types of communication channels and information delivery (i.e., print, interpersonal, traditional broadcast, and digital), and we differentiated among access to tangible goods, programs, services, and to a process for enrollment/commitment. The final coding categories, explanations of the categories, and examples appear in Table 1. A strategy could receive multiple codes. For example, an article might have described a place strategy that included information about both the placement of messages within a print channel as well as access to the physical location of the program. Of the 84 articles, 39 (46.4%) of them had multiple codes.

Table 1.

Place Strategy Coding Categories, Explanations of Categories, and Examples.

Coding Category	Category Explanation	Example
Placing messages within a communication channel or information delivery (interpersonal)	Change agent (CA) verbally delivers the message/information to the target audience (TA) directly through face-to-face interaction or through a telephone call	Communicated messages through lay health educator outreach, health care provider referrals, and word of mouth (Richert, Webb, Morse, O’Toole, & Brownson, 2007)
Placing messages within a communication channel or information delivery (print)	CA delivers the message/information through print material such as a brochure, poster, booklet, or billboard	Placing promotional materials (i.e., posters and brochures) in health care providers’ offices (Cates, Diehl, Crandell, & Coyne-Beasley, 2014)
Placing messages within a communication channel or information delivery (traditional broadcast)	CA delivers the message/information via broadcast such as TV, radio, or public address system	“Radio appeared to be the best ‘place’ to promote the ‘product’ of stigma reduction” (Rimal & Creel, 2008, p. 126)
Placing messages within a communication channel or information delivery (digital)	CA delivers the message/information through a digital electronic medium such as the Internet, e-mail, text messaging, social media, or a DVD	“Reaching audience through the Internet, mobile devices, and marketing information provided through health care providers and college campuses” (Antonishak, Kaye, & Swiader, 2015, p. 3)
Placing messages within a communication channel or information delivery (other)	CA delivers message/information through unspecified channels or through means not included in other categories	Divided place into 2 categories of personal media and nonpersonal media (Black, Blue, Kosmoski, & Coster, 2000)
Access to a tangible good	Focuses on providing an opportunity for the primary TA to secure for free, through purchase, or try a tangible good at convenient locations. Tangible good must be some physical product the TA has to have in order to engage in the prescribed behavior. Category could also refer to instances where the CA describes creating new distribution channels to make sure that the tangible good reaches the TA	Making insecticide-treated nets available in marketplace, kebeles, and health institutions (Aleme, Girma, & Fentahun, 2014)
Access to a program (physical location)	CA makes it easier to participate in a program by providing more convenient access by offering the program in a location near to where the TA lives or works, or by providing it at a place that is a reasonable travel to distance, or the CA offers transportation to the program	“Classes held in location convenient to public transportation or at union hall” (Menzel & Shrestha, 2012, p. 732)
Access to a program (psychological comfort)	CA provides a place for the program that is familiar to the TA and where they will feel a sense of psychological comfort	“Churches also were selected because they are viewed as trusted social and community resource points that have many qualities (support, safe environment, leadership, organizational structure, etc.) that make them appropriate partners for delivery of health education interventions” (Rivera, Lieberman, Rivadeneyra, & Sallas, 2010, p. 11)
Access to a program (other)	CA provides access to program in ways not specified in other categories	“Employment program was positioned within a section of the ministry … best equipped to deploy the program” (Arulmani & Abdulla, 2007, p. 88)
Access to a service (physical location)	CA makes it easier to receive service by providing more convenient access by offering the service in a location near to where the TA lives or works, or by providing it at a place that is a reasonable travel to distance, or the CA offers transportation to the service. A service is a procedure or activity that the CA or secondary audience performs on or for the TA. The procedure or activity is something that the TA typically does not have the resources, skill, or capacity to do without expert assistance. A service is different from a program in that it goes beyond information/education	Providing sexually transmitted disease testing centers across the country (Sundstrom, 2012)
Access to a service (other)	CA provides access to service in ways not specified in other categories	Offered breast and cervical cancer screening services within a nurturing, caring environment (Brown et al., 2000)
Access to enroll/commit	CA develops a mechanism that provides a convenient opportunity for the TA member to enroll formally in a program or declare an intention to engage in the prescribed behavior. The strategy is not about making actual participation in the program easier. That is, this is not about creating moments for the TA member to receive the content of the program. This strategy happens before the program itself. Articles can also be categorized into this program that are about providing access to a formal declaration of intent to change behavior. The strategy is about the declaration itself and not access to the actual product	Provided a place for participants to sign [a commitment form that they will start wearing a helmet] (Ludwig et al., 2005)
Identification of physical location for prescribed behavior	Providing the TA with specific options for physical locations to perform the prescribed behavior. These are instances where the TA members are capable of engaging in the behavior on their own. Can be an instance where the CA is helping the TA see an existing location “with new eyes” or informing the TA about locations of which they were not previously aware. Different than the communication channel categories in that channels should be used when the authors describe the placement of a message within a channel as a place strategy in and of itself	Emphasized that breast-feeding can be done anywhere; there is freedom to go as you please; you have greater choice in how to live your life with the new baby (Whitelaw, Smart, Kopela, Gibson, & King, 2011)
Guidance about access to secondary audience/partner	CA is not directly providing access for the primary TA but place strategy articulated is for the CA to provide guidance to a secondary audience and/or partner on how to provide access opportunities to the primary target. Only used when the description of the place strategy includes this intermediary approach	VERB campaign provided guidance to campaign partners to ensure that sufficient points of purchase (i.e., opportunities to engage in physical activity) were available and accessible in their communities (Bretthauer-Mueller et al., 2008)
Other	Strategy fits into no other category	Giving parents the opportunity to read a brochure about pediatric cancer at the time when they are emotionally prepared (Note. the emphasis in the description of the place strategy was on the appropriate emotional place rather than the communication channel; Murphy, Sawczyn, & Quinn, 2012)

To assess the quality of the explanation of strategies and reliability of the application of the codes, the two lead authors independently coded a random sample of 20% (n = 17) of the 84 place strategy descriptions. We used Scott’s pi as the statistic to assess intercoder reliability for the codes (Scott’s pi = .74).³ For the codes within the sample for which there was disagreement, the two lead authors reviewed discrepancies together and reached final decisions about the appropriate codes after discussion. The consultation also resulted in minor refinement to some of the codes. The first author then coded the remaining 80% (n = 67) of the strategy descriptions, consulting with the second author in cases when he was indecisive about how a strategy should be coded.

For coding the conceptual definitions of place the articles offered, we followed a similar procedure for creating the codebook. An example of a conceptual definition of place from an intervention to help parents and caregivers of children with asthma better identify symptoms was “The product should be offered in a convenient place where people are thinking about the issue, are likely to notice the information, and are likely to act on it” (Briones, Lustik, & LaLone, 2010, p. 862). The final coding categories, explanations of the categories, and examples of definitions appear in Table 2. Of the 84 articles in our sample, less than half of them (46.4%, n = 39) included a formal definition of place. Because there was far less text to code (i.e., only 39 articles included a definition and the definitions rarely exceeded one or two sentences), the two lead authors independently coded all of the definitions instead of a random sample and compared results. Similar to the place strategies, definitions could also receive multiple codes. Of the 39 definitions we coded, we gave multiple codes to 16 (41.0%). The reliability coefficient was at an acceptable level (Scott’s pi = .84; Krippendorff, 2013; Potter & Levine-Donnerstein, 1999). Again, we discussed points of initial disagreement and arrived at a final code.

Table 2.

Coding Categories for Definitions of Place, Category Explanation, and Examples.

Coding Category	Category Explanation	Example	(n = 39), # (%)
Distribution channel or other method of getting the product or other components of the initiative to the target audience (TA)	Focuses on getting the product, program, or other components to the TA. May describe the distribution point or channel as a place or may describe channels of distribution as a process or act of getting the product, program materials or service to the TA. May use the term “channels of distribution” or other more general term that means methods or ways of getting the product (or other component) to the TA. Does not include channels of information. Definitions may include attributes of the distribution place or process such as making the product easier to acquire or making the behavior or service easier to access	“Involves placement or distribution of the product” (Pounds et al., 2014, p. 14)	10 (25.6)
Physical location of a product	Specifies where a product will be used, offered, or accessed. The definition may not specify what the product is, but the term product is used. Attributes of making the product attractive, appealing, easy to access or convenient may be included	“where the product is used” (Panzera et al., 2013, p. 922)	11 (28.2)
Physical location of doing a behavior	Concerned with where the end user will do a behavior. May specify attributes such as convenience, attractiveness, accessibility, ease of doing the behavior, or may refer to when the TA is doing the behavior	“place represents the location where the target audience will perform the desired behavior” (Tan et al., 2010, p. 727)	9 (23.1)
Physical location of accessing a program or services or intervention	Focuses on a program or services being offered to the TA. Definition may include making the program easier to access, more convenient, attractive, or more top-of-mind to the end user	“where the programme will operate” (MacAskill et al., 2008, p. 253)	7 (17.9)
Locations where an exchange takes place	Uses the term “exchange” and typically does not specify what is being exchanged. It could be assumed that the authors are drawing from exchange theory and meaning a place where a bundle of benefits is being accepted despite the costs involved, which can, in turn, mean simply doing the behavior or using the product	“where the exchange takes place and/or the target behavior is practiced” (Bryant et al., 2001, p. 235)	2 (5.1)
Communication channel or information delivery	Specifies (a) the process of placing messages in a communication channel, (b) the channel(s) of communication itself as the place strategy, or (c) the physical location where information is available as the strategy. The definition may specify where the product or program is advertised. It may also specify what is being placed such as product messages	“the channels used to reach priority populations with product messages where they live, work, play, and receive their health care services” (Gallivan, Lising, Ammary, & Greenberg, 2007, p. 73) “place can refer to the ideal location where consumers can obtain information about the product” (Burroughs, Peck, Sharpe, Granner, & Bryant, 2006, p. 2)	9 (23.1)
Unspecified mechanism for making entity more convenient for the target audience	Emphasizes making something more convenient. Can specify that the entity is a product, a specific behavior, exchange, program, or service, but the definition provides no information about how convenience is achieved	“making it easier or more appealing to engage in the behavior” (Abercrombie, Sawatzki, & Lotenberg, 2012, p. 55)	4 (10.3)
Nonphysical location for a product, behavior, program, or service	Includes or implies a non-physical location, such as an emotional state or a communication device (phone), or digital space	“… emotional mindset the targeted audience may be in where the product would be delivered or received” (Murphy, Sawczyn, & Quinn, 2012, p. 115)	1 (2.6)
Other	Definition is too brief, unclear or non-specific to code it in one of the above categories	“life path points” (Ramaprasad, 2005, p. 46)	5 (12.8)

Note. The total number of codes sums to greater than the 39 articles coded because some definitions received more than one code.

Results

To answer our first research question, we coded the definitions of place offered by 39 of the 84 articles in our sample. Table 2 shows the results in the rightmost column. The four most common elements used within definitions were physical location of a product (28.2%), distribution channel or other method of getting the product or other components of the initiative to the target audience (25.6%), the physical location of doing a behavior (23.1%), and communication channel or information delivery (23.1%).

Our second research question focused on how definitions of place articulated within published articles matched those definitions offered by thought leaders in the social marketing field. For the 16 articles that cited a source for the definition, two bodies of work of prominent figures in the field of social marketing received half of the citations. The work of Philip Kotler and Nancy Lee and colleagues was cited in four definitions. Various works by Alan Andreasen also received four citations for definitions.⁴ In these cases, authors who cited a specific source adhered to the original source closely—defining place as where the target audience would access the product and related goods or services or where the target audience would engage in the behavior.

Table 3 shows the results for the third research question that focused on how place strategies have been described within the literature. The five most commonly used characteristics were placing messages within a print communication channel or information delivery (28.6%), providing access to the physical location of a program (21.4%), providing access to a tangible good (16.7%), digital communication channel or information delivery (14.3%), and providing physical access to the location of a service (11.9%). One quarter of the place strategy descriptions (25.0%) were coded solely into one of the communication channel/information delivery categories (i.e., interpersonal, print, traditional broadcast, digital, or another form of communication channel/information delivery); almost half (46.4%) of the strategy descriptions included at least one element of a communication channel/information delivery.

Table 3.

Place Strategy Coding Categories Results.

Coding Category	All (N = 84)	Non-US (n = 30)	United States (n = 54)
Coding Category	# (%)	# (%)	# (%)
Placing messages within a communication channel or information delivery (interpersonal)	9 (10.7)	1 (3.3)	8 (14.8)
Placing messages within a communication channel or information delivery (print)	24 (28.6)	3 (10.0)	21 (38.9)
Placing messages within a communication channel or information delivery (traditional broadcast)	8 (9.5)	3 (10.0)	5 (9.3)
Placing messages within a communication channel or information delivery (digital)	12 (14.3)	0 (0.0)	12 (22.2)
Placing messages within a communication channel or information delivery (other)	6 (7.1)	1 (3.3)	5 (9.3)
Access to a tangible good	14 (16.7)	11 (36.7)	3 (5.6)
Access to a program—physical location	18 (21.4)	5 (16.7)	13 (24.1)
Access to a program—psychological comfort	4 (4.8)	0 (0.0)	4 (7.4)
Access to a program—other	8 (9.5)	4 (13.3)	4 (7.4)
Access to a service—physical location	10 (11.9)	5 (16.7)	5 (9.3)
Access to a service—other	3 (3.6)	1 (3.3)	2 (3.7)
Access to enroll/commit	6 (7.1)	2 (6.7)	4 (7.4)
Identification of physical location for prescribed behavior	8 (9.5)	3 (10.0)	5 (9.3)
Guidance about access to secondary audience/partner	9 (10.7)	3 (10.0)	6 (11.1)
Other	4 (4.8)	1 (3.3)	3 (5.6)

Note. The number of codes in each column sums to greater than the number of articles coded because some strategies received more than one code.

The final research question asked about how descriptions of place strategies have differed by geographical location of the intervention. Of the 84 articles in our sample, 54 of them described work done in the United States, and 30 came from 19 different countries in North America, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. Small cell sizes prevented us from using inferential statistics, but the reader can see the comparisons in Table 3. A few comparisons do stand out, especially for variations in the communication channel/information delivery categories. For example, 14.8% of the U.S. articles described place as an interpersonal channel/information delivery, while 3.3% of non-U.S. articles did so; 38.9% of U.S. articles talked about print communication/information delivery as a place strategy, and 10.0% of the non-U.S. articles did the same; and 22.2% of U.S. articles described a digital channel/information delivery as the place strategy, but no non-U.S. articles did so. In total, 32 (59.2%) of the U.S. articles included at least one type of communication channel/information delivery to describe place, while 7 (23.3%) of the non-U.S. articles did so. The other pattern of note related to access to a tangible good. More than a third (36.7%) of the non-U.S. articles included this element in describing the place strategy, while 5.6% of the U.S. articles did so.

Discussion

When the two lead authors first discussed the possibility of pursuing this project, we decided to focus on place based on perceived trends within the literature as well as anecdotal observations through real-world experiences participating in social marketing campaigns in the field. Both lead authors also are full-time faculty members who have taught social marketing courses. We have witnessed in the classroom how place often is the most difficult social marketing principle for students to grasp and to apply consistently and accurately. Our a priori conclusions led us to believe that something was amiss with this P of the marketing mix and that we as a field have landed in a confusing “place” (pun intended). After analyzing our data, we believe that the results support our initial supposition that conceptual and operational confusion surrounds this strategic element. Although basic definitions of place presented by leading scholars have been reasonably constant in scope and focus, the same is not true within the body of literature describing actual interventions. Our data revealed noticeable variation in how the place landscape has been painted.

Because we speculated that place was being applied irregularly in the literature, we wanted to examine if researchers might also be inconsistent in their definitions of place; that is, we wished to analyze how they defined the concept of place before they then operationalized the strategy in their project or intervention. Fewer than half of the articles we examined included a definition of place. For those that did offer a definition, most provided descriptions consistent with the most widely accepted definitions, but we also saw that a relatively large proportion of definitions focused on some element of messaging. Leaders in social marketing have been emphatic that choosing a communication channel for messaging is not a place strategy, yet almost a quarter of the articles offered a definition that specifically conceptualized place as the process of placing messages in a communication channel, specified the channel of communication itself as the place strategy, or identified the physical location where information is available as the place strategy. This third variation in marrying place with messaging (i.e., defining place as the physical location where information is available) presents a particularly thorny conceptual problem. We saw this with six of the nine definitions categorized as dealing with communication channels or information delivery. Clearly, directly equating place with communication channel is incorrect, but putting information, such as a brochure, about the desired behavior at the location where the consumer will engage in the behavior could be seen as part of the goods and services that are being offered and thus, a legitimate part of the place strategy. For example, Cates et al. (2014) described place as leaving human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine informational materials for parents in the offices of health care providers. We understand how one could make a reasonable argument that having information about the HPV vaccine at the location where the person would engage in the desired behavior is an enhancement of place. However, we have serious reservations about conceptually linking the physical location of available information to place because we think the close connection between communication channels and information materials could lead to further conceptual confusion.

We recommend that authors define place using conceptualizations consistently found in seminal works and, as needed, explain how they are adapting the accepted definitions for their intervention. We also suggest that authors focus their conceptualization of place on the location of where the audience will do the behavior or access the product or the method of distribution of the product. In addition, we recommend the following distinction for the tricky issue of appropriately identifying the placement of informational materials within the marketing mix: Informational materials that are geared to educate, persuade, or otherwise inform about the behavior or the product should be considered part of one’s communication strategy and, thus, be part of the promotion P, regardless of whether they appear at the place where the product is accessed or at a promotional or educational event. Clarity and accuracy are needed. Defining place carefully may dramatically help a planner to develop a better place strategy. This is why the marketing mix is emphasized in social marketing. Development and clear explanation of the 4 Ps help us to be more rigorous and comprehensive in our overall approach.

Despite the examples of what we believe are inaccurate or misleading definitions, we were encouraged by the number of articles that not only gave a clear definition of place but also cited the source of their definition, which was, in most cases, from a well-recognized and respected leader in the field. In addition, the authors’ definitions tended to closely align with that of the original source. Thus, some authors are clearly tapping these authoritative voices.

The results related to the third research question on the actual descriptions of place strategies within specific interventions provide further evidence for why inconsistency and confusion surround this element of the marketing mix. These data take us beyond the conceptual definition and look at how authors frame their place strategy in practice. The results as one would expect showed that interventionists have frequently viewed place as a strategy for reducing barriers and providing access to products in their various forms through services, programs, and tangible goods. However, what stands out the most is the recurrent operationalization of place as the act of introducing messages within communication channels. The pattern is even more glaring than what we see in the data on definitions. In coding the articles, the most frequently used category was the one for placing messages within a print channel, and the fourth most common was placement of messages in or delivering information within a digital channel. Our content analysis approach allowed for multiple codes for the place strategy described in each of the 84 articles, and we found that almost half included some communication channel/information delivery element. Prior to conducting our analysis, we anticipated that an ample number of articles would describe messaging as part of place, but coming close to the 50% mark frankly exceeded what we expected.

This finding triggers concern on multiple levels. First, as previously noted, the recognized leaders in the field of social marketing have offered relatively consistent definitions of the place strategy for over four decades (see, e.g., Andreasen, 1995; Kotler & Zaltman, 1971; Lee & Kotler, 2015; Maibach et al., 2002; Smith, 1998), but not a single one of them has ever suggested that the act of inserting a message within a communication channel or delivering information constitutes place in and of itself. In fact, as cited in our literature review, the authors of the most widely used text in the field unequivocally have stated that place is not the same as communication channel (Lee & Kotler, 2015). Yet when the moment arrives in publications to describe the strategic approach for place, descriptions of aspects of messaging abound in application. When years of reported practice frequently veer in a different direction from the seminal conceptual writings, confusion on the part of those trying to make sense of the principles of social marketing is inevitable. Second, describing place as message insertion or information delivery leads to redundancy with the promotion element of the marketing mix. If place is nothing more than channel implementation and information delivery, then how is promotion distinct? Any astute student of the literature undoubtedly will note this dilemma.

The findings, of course, beg the question of how we as a field reached this point. That is, why has the operationalization of place become so frequently tied to communication channels and information delivery when thought leaders rarely if ever have steered the conversation in this direction? One of the reasons may be the unfortunate overlap in words and meaning of “distribution channel” and “communication channel.” In commercial marketing, distribution channel always means getting the product, usually a tangible good, to the consumer. In social marketing, communication is often very central to the product itself—about how and where to sign up for a program or delivering persuasive messages about the health benefits of doing a behavior. For this reason, conceptual and operational slippage may not be so surprising. Moreover, novices in social marketing, as we have observed in our students, especially students from advertising and marketing backgrounds, seem to gravitate to thinking about where to place the messages when asked about place. This may be due to the leap that is needed in social marketing that is squarely on behavior change and beyond advertising’s emphasis on creative promotions. Therefore, place should not be seen as where to place messages, which is a communication promotional issue, but where the behavior is to be performed or where a service or product associated with the behavior is to be accessed by targeted individuals.

The findings related to the fourth research question on geographical location of the initiatives might shed some light on the data related to operationalizing place as the placement of messages within communication channels or information delivery. The results on geography showed that this trend tends to be most pronounced for American initiatives. For example, compared to campaigns from other countries, we saw a greater emphasis on communication channels from U.S. projects for interpersonal, print, and digital communication. An explanation for this finding is not obvious, especially because the most commonly cited thought leaders who have said that place is not about communication channels tend to be American scholars.

One of the reasons for the greater emphasis on communication channels from U.S. projects may be related to our finding that non-U.S. articles appeared more likely to report the details of an initiative with a place strategy focused on providing access to a tangible good. For example, more than a third (36.7%) of the non-U.S. articles in our sample described access to goods such as insect-treated nets in Tanzania (Armstrong Schellenberg et al., 1999), disinfectant to purify water in multiple countries in Africa (Quick, 2003), folic acid supplements in Vietnam (Khan et al., 2005), and healthy food supplies for remote First Nations villages in northern Canada (Majid & Grier, 2010). Very few U.S.-based articles (only 5.6%) reported tangible good-driven initiatives. The difference in emphasis likely is propelled by factors of economic necessity within developing nations or extreme isolation of an indigenous population in an industrialized country like Canada. When the primary goal of interventionists is to deliver a basic good, then the strategy for providing access becomes the obvious way to identify place within the marketing mix.

Limitations

The primary limitation of this study is that our inclusion/exclusion criteria potentially eliminated some excellent social marketing work that featured a place-like strategy that was both innovative and effective. In order to have clear criteria for operationalizing our variables, we decided that articles for inclusion must make precise reference to a strategy either using the word “place” or “placement.” We were surprised ourselves when we discovered that at least a few well-known social marketing initiatives did not meet our label criterion. A prime example is the Road Crew campaign reported by Rothschild, Miller, and Mastin (2006). Road Crew was a very successful intervention aimed at reducing alcohol-related car crashes in Wisconsin, where drinkers were able to arrange a ride for an evening that picked them up at their homes, drove them around from bar to bar as desired, and then safely delivered them at home later that evening. By almost any standard conceptualization within the literature, the intervention team implemented a place strategy by providing a location where it was easier for the target audience to engage in the desired behavior and take advantage of a service. Rothschild and his colleagues described their approach as social marketing in the text of the article and identified some basic principles in a general way, but to our surprise, they never once used the word place nor identified a specific marketing mix using the language of the 4 Ps. Thus, we did not include the article as part of our analysis. We realize that some other worthy examples of social marketing work likely were left out of our study, but the alternative was to try to read the minds of authors and guess as to whether they believed they were using a place strategy. We determined that that approach was neither practical nor methodologically sound.

We also realize that there may exist notable examples of place strategies that have been used in initiatives that have only been described in the gray literature through outlets such as government or foundation reports and organizational websites. Those social marketing programs were not included in this analysis, but a study of those initiatives could be a very fruitful area of investigation going forward.

Future Directions

This analysis of the intricacies of how place has been conceptualized and operationalized in the literature was very revealing and provides direction for how social marketing scholars and practitioners can be more precise going forward so that there is less confusion about how we as a field articulate our fundamental principles to multiple audiences within our literature. The field of social marketing continues to mature, recently demonstrated by work toward the development of a set of expected competencies for social marketers (Huhman, Bryant, Lee, & McCormack Brown, 2013). As a field matures, scholars and students benefit from critical analyses of key elements of the discipline.

We chose the place strategy as a starting point because our own experience as both scholars and professionals who have worked in the field intuitively told us that place is the “P” of the marketing mix where ambiguity and misunderstanding have been the greatest. We know, though, that other components of the mix such as product also have spurred conceptual debate and have resulted in confusion (see, for example, Lefebvre, 2011 and Rothschild, 2009 for essays addressing product), especially for those who are new to social marketing and who are trying to firmly grasp foundational elements. We encourage others to conduct similar systematic reviews that will identify distinctions and offer guidance for clarification.

We also hope that the findings prompt our colleagues who serve as referees for peer-reviewed journals to be increasingly vigilant in insisting that submitting authors be more precise and accurate in how they conceptualize and operationalize basic terms. If, for example, a reviewer reads a manuscript where the description of the place strategy focuses entirely on placing messages within a communication channel or information delivery, then the referee should call into question the appropriateness and validity of the designation. The entire field profits when we intensify the rigor of our approach and require consistency in definitional practices. If we do otherwise, our credibility suffers and social marketing will lose its power to serve as a reliable structural foundation for behavior change.

We anticipate that the issue of confusion with placing messages in a communication channel will become more challenging in the digital era. Interventionists are rapidly moving to strategies that use digital devices, notably, smartphones, and web-based platforms like Facebook. For example, an immediate desired behavior might be for a person to download an app (product) to use to count their daily steps. Motivational messages (promotions) are on the app as are ways to get support from and compete with other walkers (price). However, the end behavior that is sought is to increase physical activity and place is where they are going to do that. Here, the app itself is not the place strategy, but the probability of success of the place strategy can be elevated if the app allows the target audience to put in their ZIP code, for example, which would link the person to safe places to walk. We have found that teasing out the distinctions of the marketing mix where the behavior is participation that involves using digital devices is difficult for novice and experienced social marketers alike. We recommend that planners ask the questions, “Where will the end desired behavior occur?” or “Where will the product be accessed?” and be guided by these keystones of place.

Ultimately, we hope that clarity of place will produce stronger interventions related to this very important component of the marketing mix. As we have noted, developing an effective place strategy may mean environmental or infrastructure changes that require expense and effort. Yet, social marketers should not shy away from these challenges. They should build these needs into their budgets, arguing that sustainability of behavior change may depend most closely on changes that surround the place where the target audience lives, works, and plays.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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