Background
The availability of formal academic training is essential to the development and professionalization of any discipline. Previous research described the worldwide availability of social ...marketing academic course offerings and their accompanying pedagogical approaches. This research has been demonstrably appreciated by the social marketing community, resulting in calls for its continuation.
Focus of the Article
We present an update to and expansion upon prior research, and identify patterns and trends observed over the past decade.
Importance to the Social Marketing Field
As social marketing continues to expand in its scope and uptake, an update to prior research has become increasingly relevant and necessary. Further, limited attention has been paid to social marketing pedagogical approaches. The patterns and trends identified through this research represent an updated baseline that can be used to assess and guide the discipline’s ongoing advancement.
Methods
Research was carried out via an online survey that was open between Fall 2019 and Fall 2021. In addition to general information about their university’s course offering(s), respondents were invited to share their course syllabi. The survey was promoted via online networks and academic conferences. Resulting data were cross-referenced with the outcomes of a prior study to identify patterns and trends.
Results
This research resulted in a listing of academic courses that can now be found on the Web site of the International Social Marketing Association (International Social Marketing Association, 2022). Over the past decade, we identified an upward trend in course availability alongside shifts in the disciplinary and other contexts associated with the courses. We also described instances where social marketing courses were eliminated or scaled back and the apparent reasons for those occurrences. Finally, geographic disparities were evident in course availability between Global North and Global South countries.
Recommendations for Research or Practice
Recommendations for increasing social marketing academic course offerings are presented within a systems framework focusing on targeted strategies for audiences and contexts such as university students, faculty, instructors, and administrators; accreditation bodies, and practitioner settings. We also call for increased collaboration between academics and practitioners in general, but specifically in the Global North and Global South in order to address issues of equity and diversity.
Limitations
A key limitation to this study is the fact that the survey was developed in English, thus introducing a bias towards Western academic settings. We also acknowledge the difficulty in searching online for courses using the term “social marketing” due to the pervasive confusion with “social media.” Finally, we only obtained 31 syllabi (from the total 104 courses reported via the survey), thus the pedagogical analysis should be considered incomplete and not fully representative of current practices.
In
Laczniak and Shultz’s (2021) article explicating Socially Responsible Marketing (SRM), they provide the argument for marketers (and their organizations) to act to benefit society. Organizations ...should actively seek, when given the opportunity, to increase positive social outcomes through addressing wicked problems. Those objectives are shared by social marketers and macro-social marketers (
Kennedy 2016). The authors state that SRM is most important for commercial marketers as social marketers inherently incorporate social values into their work. However, this does not take into account ethical issues (
Kennedy and Santos 2019;
Eagle 2009) and the increasing controversy surrounding behavior change. We argue that SRM is both necessary and applicable to social marketers within a macro-social marketing context. We first explain the need for such an approach in social marketing. Next, we discuss ethical approaches to social marketing in order to establish the appropriateness of distributive justice and any additional ethical approaches. Finally, we apply each guiding element (Corporate Citizenship, Stakeholder Orientation, and Social and Ecological Sustainability) to the context of macro-social marketing, with a brief statement on the applicability of constructive engagement and the necessity for future research in that area.
Background:
The adoption of systems thinking within social marketing is illustrated by the emerging literature relating to systems social marketing and macro-social marketing. Systems social ...marketing and macro-social marketing signal a shift from singular level behavior change toward a more holistic, multilevel change mode of operandi for complex and wicked problems. In recognition of this broadening perspective, Truong et al. took the first steps to describe the relationship between systems thinking and social marketing through a critical appraisal. However, their analysis stopped short of defining systems social marketing and macro-social marketing, examining how the concepts have been applied, and the impact this has on our change methodologies.
Focus:
This article is related to research and evaluation of the social marketing field.
Research Question:
This study aims to (a) examine the causality looseness surrounding the descriptions of systems social marketing and macro-social marketing, (b) conceptualize systems social marketing and macro-social marketing, and (c) develop a taxonomy for classifying and interpreting the systems-based social marketing–related literature.
Methods:
Following best practice protocols, a systematic review was conducted to identify systems social marketing and macro-social marketing literature and interventions published prior to March 2020. Five databases were searched using a combination of relevant search terms.
Results:
Sixteen thousand and forty-seven title and abstracts were screened, resulting in 45 articles being reviewed, 8 of which were interventions. Analysis of the findings indicated both systems social marketing and macro-social marketing use nonlinear causality and seeks to understand the structural and behavioral dynamics in a system to leverage change. Moreover, the findings suggest that systems social marketing focuses on evolutionary dynamics and a “whole system in the room” approach, pursuing top-down, bottom-up iterative processes with macro-social marketing pursuing institutional dynamics and “inside the system” top-down processes.
Importance to Social Marketing Field:
This article is one of the first efforts to examine the inner anatomy of systems social marketing and macro-social marketing for causality and definitional clarity. In drawing a distinction between the two orientations, social marketers can begin to understand in what contexts and settings these perspectives are most applicable.
Recommendations:
The taxonomy and search strategy can be adopted in other reviews as they offer a rich and diverse basis for further conceptual analysis of systems-based social marketing–related literature.
Limitation:
Community-based prevention marketing, community-based social marketing, and community-led assets-based social marketing articles were excluded from this review. Hence, further research could include these approaches and uncover their features, analogies, and differences versus systems social marketing and macro-social marketing.
Social marketing is based on the adaptation of the contemporary commercial marketing theory and practice as a means of guiding and aiding social change campaigns. This paper draws on recent ...developments in commercial marketing theory and prior work in social marketing definitions to create a new definition of social marketing which integrates the commercial definitions of the American Marketing Association (AMA) and Chartered Instituted of Marketing (CIM) with established social marketing definitions from the past thirty years of social marketing conceptual development. The development of the definition is supported through the use of qualitative research technique of text mining which uncovered a core series of principles consistent to the historical definitions of social marketing. Finally, the new definition also introduces clarification of several key subcomponent elements as part of an expanded definition of social marketing.
Purpose
Building on the social marketing theory, this study aims to examine the relationship between family units and obesity in Nigeria; and the social marketing interventions used to reduce and ...prevent obesity in the Nigerian society.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopted a semi-structured interview research design with 42 obese individuals in Nigeria.
Findings
The study findings show that the family unit an individual grows up in influences their consumption behaviour, which drives their obesity. The findings reveal that obese Nigerian citizens are willing to live a healthier lifestyle due to the direct and indirect medical costs associated with obesity. Furthermore, the findings disclose the social marketing interventions – local celebrity endorsements, healthy lifestyle promotions, reduced gym membership and affordable access to healthy foods and services – used to prevent and reduce the rising obesity rates in the Nigerian society.
Research limitations/implications
The findings have important theoretical implication given the focus on consumption behaviour and obesity.
Practical implications
The study findings provide an avenue to guide government officials, policymakers and social marketers in shaping their public policy and social marketing interventions to encourage healthier consumption and lifestyle behaviours among families and individuals in the Nigerian society.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research study to investigate how family units in the emerging market of sub-Saharan Africa drive obesity and the social marketing interventions used to reduce and prevent obesity. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Purpose
This paper aims to examine how social marketing intervention programmes to measure, evaluate and document social marketing impact.
Design/methodology/approach
A systematic review of 49 ...nutritional behaviour intervention programmes (2006–2020) was conducted. To examine the social marketing impact of the programmes, a logic model of social impact was used. The model comprises inputs (the resources used for an intervention programme), outputs (the direct products resulting from the use of resources), outcomes (short- to medium-term programme effects) and impacts (long-term programme effects on the individual, community or societal levels).
Findings
Most intervention programmes set the goal of encouraging their target audience to increase fruit and vegetable intake, choose healthy food items, drink less sugary beverages or consume low-fat diaries, while few others sought policy or systems change. Multiple criteria were used for impact evaluation (e.g. exposure and reach, changes in knowledge, awareness, attitudes, behaviours and body mass index). (Quasi) experiments were the most popular method used for impact measurement, followed by the pre-post model of impact. Positive changes were found in 33 programmes, often reported in terms of short-term outputs or outcomes. Long-term impact particularly on the broader societal level was not indicated.
Originality/value
This research offers a systematic review of how social marketing impact is measured, evaluated and documented. It also provides some guidance for social marketers on how to shift from a reductionist, behavioural outcome-focussed approach towards an “expansionist” impact approach that explicitly considers social marketing impacts on the quality of life of individuals, communities and societies.
Macro-social marketing is the use of social marketing – up, mid and downstream – to affect holistic systemic change (Kennedy 2016). Presently, fragmented views within macro-social marketing threaten ...to divide the field. Much of this fragmentation is due to a confusion between systems thinking and systems theory, the basis for macro-social marketing. This article presents an explanation of the key facets of systems literature, a macro-social marketing philosophy and a macro-social marketing methodology to show the benefits of combining systems thinking and systems theory, thus alleviating conflict within the field.
Upstream social marketing strategy Kennedy, Ann-Marie; Kemper, Joya A; Parsons, Andrew Grant
Journal of social marketing,
07/2018, Volume:
8, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Purpose
This paper aims to provide guidelines for upstream social marketing strategy on to whom, how and when social marketers can undertake upstream social marketing.
Design/methodology/approach
...This article is a conceptual piece using academic literature to justify and conceptualise an approach to communicating with and influencing upstream actors.
Findings
Specifically, it looks at the characteristics of policymakers targeted, then targeting methods, with a special focus on the use of media advocacy. Finally, a process of government decision-making is presented to explain message timing and content.
Practical implications
Specific criteria to judge time of decision-making and implementation guidelines are provided for social marketers.
Originality/value
In the case of complex social problems, such as obesity and environmental degradation, structural change is needed to provide people with the ability to change (Andreasen, 2006). Strategic social marketing has identified upstream social marketing as a method to influence structural change through policymakers (French and Gordon, 2015); however, literature in the area tends to be descriptive and there are no clear guidelines to its implementation (Dibb, 2014). This article seeks to provide those guidelines.
Environmental problems have their origins in human behavior, and as a result, any
solution to environmental issues will require changes in behavior. While many disciplines
in the social and ...behavioral sciences offer important perspectives on the behaviors linked
with environmental problems, the study of the individual brings a focus on cognitive,
social, and motivational processes that provides insights into effective ways to promote
change. Psychological research on proenvironmental behavior dates back nearly 40 years,
and within this rich body of empirical research are a number of well-established findings.
Strategies such as prompts, commitments, feedback, social norms, incentives, and
convenience have all been shown to effectively promote proenvironmental behavior -
at least in some contexts, for some behaviors, and for some individuals. This article
begins with a brief overview of these research findings, and then proceeds to examine the
less-explored question about when various strategies work. The article
concludes with recommendations for selecting an appropriate strategy for promoting
behavior change, along with fruitful areas for future research.
El papel de los niños como consumidores ha generado un gran interés en el marketing social, especialmente en los aspectos relacionados con la alimentación; sin embargo, hay campos como la regulación ...de la publicidad, el comportamiento digital y las actitudes de los niños hacia los productos, que hasta ahora no están completamente estudiados. Para apoyar las futuras investigaciones de la comunidad científica del marketing social sobre este tema, el presente estudio bibliométrico tuvo como objetivo investigar y describir las líneas y áreas de investigación en psicología, comportamiento y marketing social, en relación con el consumo infantil, para responder a la siguiente pregunta de investigación: ¿Cuáles son las publicaciones, autores y tendencias más importantes en la investigación sobre el consumo infantil en los últimos 45 años? Para ello, se analizaron 1375 artículos de 703 revistas con los paquetes Bibliometrix (R Studio), utilizando una metodología exploratoria y descriptiva, analizando 2588 palabras clave de autor y 1265 palabras clave adicionales con 2597 autores en la base de datos Scopus. Los indicadores cienciométricos muestran la existencia de cinco grupos temáticos relacionados con el consumo infantil. Se concluye que la producción científica sobre el consumo de niños y niñas debe abordar cuestiones de protección y regulación orientadas a la responsabilidad social, especialmente en las comunicaciones integradas de marketing y publicidad de las marcas alimentarias, con mayor y especial cuidado en el entorno digital, debido a la actual inmersión de la población infantil mundial y su creciente autonomía en la elección de contenidos, productos y marcas digitales.
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