Social Marketing for the Promotion of Responsible Consumer Behaviors

Abstract

As societies evolve, they become more complex, generating new problems for the public domain, including health, social and economic inequal- ities, and the environment. Social marketing is a subdiscipline of marketing that seeks to address such problems by targeting its efforts at influenc- ing the domain of civil society or government institutions. Focusing on the exchange that takes place between these influential institutions and the ordinary citizen, social marketing adapts the strategies and tools of commercial marketing and create new ones for social ends. Driven by a vision of creating a better society for all, it aims to diminish inequalities between citizens, help the public to adopt more healthy lifestyles, edu- cate people on how to protect their natural envi- ronment, encourage the public to become better educated, and foster more critical thinking in society, among other goals. In this entry, a current definition of social marketing is presented and its upstream and downstream manifestations are explained. Focusing on downstream social marketing – so called because of its direct impact on citizens’ behaviors – the entry explores how this approach seeks to convince individuals of the benefits of adopting more responsible consumption behav- iors, an outcome otherwise known as the “social product.” Key characteristics and benchmarks of downstream social marketing are presented to clarify the concept. The following sections focus on the stakeholder-engagement approach proposed by Gordon and colleagues (Gordon 2012; Zainuddin and Gordon 2014; Gordon et al. 2016) and on value-in-behavior (Butler et al. 2016; Zainuddin et al. 2017), as the under- lying philosophy of social marketing lies in facilitating value-exchanges among different parties. This involves creating long-term strate- gies, from managing the social product itself and its branding, to facilitating and communicating that product, taking all stakeholders into account.