Social marketing
Under social marketing the design, implementation and evaluation is understood by strategies that aim to bring about a social change in awareness and influence of societal values, attitudes and behavior, to maintain or raise awareness. It is often used synonymously with social marketing or non-profit marketing , marketing for non-profit organizations .
Social marketing relies on the systematic conviction to act voluntarily, where instruments such as the price, regulatory measures or state sanctions are not adequate as a control instrument. Social marketing is not to be confused with social media marketing , a special form of online marketing .
aims
Through social marketing in the broader sense, the acceptance of socially desirable attitudes and behaviors should be permanently promoted, undesirable behavior should be outlawed.
Examples
- Marketing for educational and health institutions ("Save eyesight!")
- Environmental protection (saving energy; recycling "I was a can")
- Health education ("Don't give AIDS a chance", "Smoking can be fatal")
- “Feel good” campaigns for positive thinking , without clearly defined behavioral appeal, are also subsumed under the term social marketing (“ You are Germany ”).
- but possibly also z. B. “Initiative for True Beauty” (Dove, Unilever), d. H. Corporate engagements
- The Occupy Wall Street movement, according to L. Gordon Crovitz, editor of the Wall Street Journal , fulfills all the requirements for “social marketing” and astroturfing through the associated Adbusters Media Foundation and its media.
Range
Communication and persuasion in the sense of social marketing takes place on a global, national, regional and / or local level.
actors
Social marketing starts where the instruments of government, legislation and administration reach their limits and is therefore often operated by social interest groups, private companies and the media in association with state or supranational institutions. Although there has been little discussion so far, there are also opinions that social marketing is also suitable as a tool for companies (Leuser, 2008).
Methods and tools
Social marketing draws on the methods of commercial advertising and the findings of sociology , psychology and behavioral science, striving instead of persuasion and seduction primarily argument-based conviction and the conscious and thus permanent decision of the responsible citizen for pro-social behavior. Social marketing wants to build up intrinsic motivation , where external compulsion or external incentives do not take effect and collective action can only arise in the long term through internalization of corresponding values. Social marketing is used, for example, in the context of health marketing (e.g. anti-smoking campaigns).
Since socially desirable changes in behavior are usually not directly linked to an individual economic advantage and appeals to financial self-interest fail, non-financial motives (instead of rational-economic) are addressed:
- individualistic motives, such as avoiding problems and expressing values
- social motives; Group identity
- altruistic motives (e.g. responsibility for future generations)
Awareness of the problem, conviction of the need for countermeasures and corresponding incentives to act are usually based on an appeal for fear (e.g. lung cancer, greenhouse effect, danger to Germany as a business location, etc.)
The success of social marketing programs depends largely on the effective use of the media. Typically, a wide variety of orchestrated (i.e., finely tuned, subtly interlocking, and collectively persuasive) communication methods are used.
Campaigns and target group-oriented measures
Effective product marketing is target group-oriented and requires market segmentation according to type (e.g. "uninterested materialists", "pleasure-oriented", "frustrated", "common good", "individualistic", "politically educated / uneducated" etc.) . Social marketing, however, often requires awareness-raising campaigns that are principally aimed at all sections of the population (undifferentiated marketing) and are associated with wastage and wasted resources, but also aim to reach people whose interest in political issues is usually low.
legitimation
Social marketing derives its justification from the demonstrable usefulness of the desired behavior change for the common good as well as for the well-being of each individual. The great success of numerous social marketing campaigns, however, is increasingly tempting non-governmental organizations to propagate their political values and the behavior that is only useful to them by means of emotionalising and media-effective campaigns and thereby bypassing the classic institutions of representative democracy.
criticism
Organizations that are not democratically legitimized, but have the appropriate human and financial resources, can abuse their position of power in order to enforce their particular interests through social re-education campaigns. Parliaments are bypassed and democratically elected representatives become driven under the pressure of the manipulated public, debates are forced upon them and solutions are dictated. In this respect, social marketing can be seen as a “democracy-endangering co-government of non-governmental organizations and as an indication of a decisive weakening of state sovereignty” (Baringhorst) and criticized as “an addicting poison for liberal democracy” (Josef Joffe).
See also
literature
- Handbook of Social Marketing by Ehrenfried Conta Gromberg; Cornelsen Verlag 2006.
- Social Marketing by Philip Kotler & Eduardo Roberto; Econ Verlag 1990.
- “ Social Marketing and Climate Protection ” by Friedemann Prose, Dirk Kupfer & Gundula Hübner, from the Institute for Psychology, University of Kiel; in: Fischer, W. & Schütz, H. (Ed.): Social aspects of climate change. KFA-Jülich, 1994, 132-144.
- Social propaganda and social marketing: a critical difference? , O'Shaughnessy N., in: European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 30, No. 1011, November 1996, pp. 54-67.
- To mediate political protest. , Sigrid Baringhorst, in: Ulrich Sarcinelli (Ed.): Political mediation and democracy in the media society. Bonn, 1998, pp. 326-342.
- Social Marketing as a Business Opportunity - The Effect of Cause-Related Marketing by Stephan Leuser, VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2008.