The Prospect of Social Marketing - Coursework Example

I. Introduction Three decades ago, marketing scholars, heralded by the Northwestern School initiated a look on the potential applications of business sector marketing apart from its conventional uses. In the seventies, marketing scholars concentrated on adjusting marketing frames of thinking, processes and ideas to a broad array of non-profit ventures, originally universities, performing arts groups, and health care centres. In the 1980s and 1990s, nevertheless, a growing number of researchers and practitioners transferred from the traditional emphasis toward what might be referred to as a ‘program focus’ (Bright 2000, 12). They acknowledge that the fundamental objective of marketing is to affect behaviour, regardless if that behaviour is buying a McFries, flying Southwestern Airlines, practicing safe sex, or regularly having one’s child vaccinated. In each scenario, marketers establish programs to encourage these behaviours. Some programs, such that of the National High Blood Pressure Education Program of the United Airlines, are stable. Others, similar to numerous new breakfast cereal introductions, and some medical interventions, are more temporary in existence (Bright 2000). This assumption that marketing embodies a validated and potentially extremely powerful technology for encouraging socially favourable behaviours is the engine stimulating the development and growth of what might be termed as ‘the social marketing movement’ over the last two decades. This movement has constructed social marketing as a unique sub discipline within the common area of academic marketing. Simultaneously, it has led to the embracing of the technology by a broad range of private, public, and non-profit organizations. Social marketing is at present adequately established that it has received its approval and criticisms (Farmer 2002). For instance, Wallack (1990) claimed that social marketing is unusually costly and time consuming its framework which is characteristically individual-level falls short to eliminate the harmful environments that are the real sources of the behaviour it is attempting to modify. Wallack (1990) put forth media support as the primarily cost-effective means to encourage essential social changes. He asserted that the success of social marketing remains incomplete. In spite of the constructive scepticism of its opponents, social marketing is at present both expanding and widening its market saturation. Because of this, it is necessary for those who have a feeling of custodial obligation for the discipline to guarantee that this development and progress is constructive. The challenges confronting the discipline rely on whether one is widening or expanding the application. II. Expanding Social Marketing Applications Social marketing in its seminal period was mainly related to health problems as embodied by two of the major early applications, namely contraceptive marketing and high blood pressure. Nevertheless, in the recent decade, even though health applications persist to lead, there has been an expansion in the application of the technology to other fields. Andreasen and Tyson (1993) made use of social marketing to motivate builders to be environmentally friendly on the residential spaces they develop. Others apply social marketing concepts to encourage householders and commercial establishments to recycle more and more, and to motivate families to adopt more underprivileged children. Still others design programs to encourage politicians, bureaucrats and school authorities in Asia to improve the educational opportunities for women, to promote rural economic progress, to lessen domestic violence, and to lobby congressional representatives (Evans 2008). Social marketing is all about changes in behaviour. It is not concerned in education and propaganda, and people should not think that they are carrying out social marketing if their main objective is informing the masses or attempting to modify some fundamental values. These are praiseworthy objectives and they can go before social marketing. But they are not social marketing. Consequently, social marketing is not as well social advertising. Even though communications devices are frequently vital to social marketing programs, social marketing is beyond the limits of communications (Samli 1992). Social marketing is never a mountain of notions and instruments such as focus group study erratically applied as needed or scattered throughout conventional frameworks such as health education. It is, above all, a particular frame of thinking that places customers at the heart of everything the marketer decides to accomplish. Second, it is a mechanism of carrying out social marketing. This mechanism entails continuously going back and forth to the intended market prior to and subsequent to planning and prior to and subsequent to implementation. And finally, it is a set of synchronized interventions that do not depend merely on communications (Samli 1992, 105). Social marketing is not a universal remedy. It frequently should address very big problems where the anticipations of funding organizations, administrations and the public are great. However, these same difficulties normally involve very elementary behaviours, outlooks and values. Transforming the manner Pakistani men deal with girls in their society is even more complicated than stimulating more children to eat Froot Loops in the United States. As different researchers have emphasized, social marketers have various particular issues with which to address (Goldberg 1997, 35-36): Nonexistent demand – for example, where targets of a contraceptive social marketing program are members of a particular religious group who believe that children are “God’s plan” and cannot be prevented or spaced. Negative demand – for example, where drivers feel that driving under 55 mph or wearing a seat belt is unduly restrictive. Intense public scrutiny – for example, where village leaders feel that a new breast feeding or oral rehydration program is a hostile Western attempt to eliminate traditional values and social patterns. Nonliterate and/or extremely impoverished target markets – for example, when villagers cannot afford either the cost of condoms or, alternatively, the time to go to a health clinic to get free ones. Highly sensitive issues--for example, where one wishes to ask Muslim women about their sexual behaviors in order to develop a more effective safe sex campaign. Invisible benefits--for example, where one is promoting driving under 55 mph or getting a child inoculated but where success means that nothing happened (i.e., no accidents, no measles), which makes it hard for the target audience to see a connection between the recommended behavior and specific outcomes. Benefits are often to third parties--for example, where one is trying to get individual households to recycle even though they do not directly benefit and, in fact, pay real costs. Benefits are often hard to portray--for example, where one would like to show the outcome of safe sex or family planning without using clichéd pictures of happy, healthy individuals and families. Social marketing is never a mass marketing process. Certainly, one of the important contributions of social marketing is to persuade that markets nearly at all times have to be segmented and in several instances in untraditional manners. Lastly, transforming behaviour in several instances is merely the initial step. Numerous programs are temporary, devised as one-time operations. For the intricate behaviours with which countless social programs are incorporate, such short-ranges are probable to have uniformly speedy lifetimes (Goldberg 1997). III. Advertising in the Social Marketing Mix Social marketing persists to be associated, by several practitioners and even by a number of academics, with social advertising. Overemphasizing the importance of advertising in social marketing intimidates the field in various ways: non-promotional components of the social marketing mix are overlooked; social marketing is limited in application; diverting arguments are raised; social marketing held responsible for the limitations of advertising and is prone to ethical doubts. Some have claimed that the authority of social advertising in social marketing is unavoidable for the reason that the abstractness and immutability of the products of social marketing make promotion as the single mix factor susceptible to manoeuvring. On the other hand, social marketers can modify their products, being a UK marketing programme advocating water fluoridation to the masses, legislators, and the media channels. Critical thinking is necessitated to avoid social marketer assuming that all they can modify is promotion and they can only do social advertising (Houston 1994). From the formative periods of social marketing, scholars and practitioners have warned that social marketing is a greater concept than social advertising and embraces more that the formulation and employment of mass media movements. However, the inclination to name what is basically social advertising operation as social marketing continues at practitioner stage, as Andreasen (1994) asserted: “Too many practitioners are really doing social advertising and calling it social marketing” (p.9). Articles and books carry on to be written that, through naming mass media advertising operations as their primary social marketing research, maintain the inclination for the two to be perceived as identical in spite or arguments to the contrary. This fusion menaces both the progress of the field and its application. Problem 1 The basic philosophies of social marketing are consumer orientation and exchange. The marketing principle appeals for organizations to be well informed and sensitive to consumer needs and demands at all phases and views consumers as dynamic participants in the pursuit for equally beneficial outcome (Goldberg 1997). Quick fixing a social advertising solution weakens social marketing in two ways. Primarily, it overlooks the most basic principle of marketing, which is that decision making must be grounded on a definite understanding of consumer needs and demands. The paramount or most useful offering to address there requirements may not encompass or even integrate mass media promotion. Second, it diverts attention from other components of the marketing mix that can have a critical function to fulfil in reinforcing the suitability of the offering (Goldberg 1997, 42). Problem 2 An unwarranted focus on mass media advertising stimulates the inclination for social marketing to be perceived as a remotely costly alternative. Mass media advertising is exceptionally expensive. Developing and managing a main UK television operation can cost quite a few million pounds, and the mass media campaign allocations of government organizations are still a minute portion of the amount used up by the manufacturer of just a single health-hazardous product, which is the tobacco industry. For instance, in the UK, it is approximated that the tobacco industry uses seventy million pounds yearly on advertising. On the contrary, the Health Education Authority (HEA), which is the countrywide health advocate organization for England, has a budget allocation of just over twenty million pounds to finance all its programs and activities, of which promotion or advertising is merely a part (Samli 1992, 88). An exaggeration on advertising as the product of social marketing bolsters the notion that social marketing is a costly club exclusive for organizations with sizeable budgets and inaccessible for impoverished and smaller agencies. Apparently, carrying out social marketing study or designing social marketing activities and programs also demands resources and proficiencies, but does not automatically require the menacing budgets needed for large-scale advertising. Social marketing is a frame of thinking, not an assembly of obligatory, costly activities. As Andreasen eloquently pointed out, “Social marketing is a point of view. Even if we don’t have a big budget we can do social marketing with what we have because it’s a way to address a problem” (Sutton 1991, 46). Problem 3 Confounding social marketing with social advertising triggers two unsubstantiated criticisms from other fields. The first inquires, “What’s new about this? Why do we need it if we have already got social communication/mass media theory?” and assumes social marketing as a “me too” (Goldberg 1997, 44); the second, noticing weaknesses to social advertising, establishes alternative fields and techniques to address what are believed to be the weaknesses of social marketing. Specifically, social marketing has been indicted of failing to respond “upstream,” of highlighting individual transformation techniques, and of overlooking the social and political context (Goldberg 1997, 44). Neither claim can continue to the broader perspective of social marketing. The idea of social marketing as a ‘me too’ for the assumptions of mass communication disintegrates when other components of the marketing mix in addition to promotion are taken into account, or consumer orientation and exchange theory are incorporated (Goldberg 1997). Problem 4 In addition to being costly, social advertising is complicated to accomplish well, can merely carry out fairly limited tasks, and is frequently exploited. Social marketing will be held responsible for these weaknesses if it is confounded with social advertising. There have always been dilemmas with relocating advertising from the industrial to the social sector. There is an inadequacy of professional in social advertising and unsatisfactory liberty and flexibility to make use of advertising to its absolute capability. The insufficiency in professionals arises because, while there are several individuals who are knowledgeable of advertising and many who are aware of social marketing themes such as health advocacy, there are few who have knowledge on both (Willigen 1993). Advertising is best fitted to performing a relatively constricted array of communication tasks, a weakness that has been expansively acknowledged. The field of drug abuse presents a common example. Even though it is decided that well-intended and reliable media operations can be successful in stimulating awareness and presenting information, improvement in knowledge can be fleeting and may even be counterproductive (Willigen 1993, 62). Furthermore, the significance of social advertising motivates its abuse in all-too-public dimension. Social marketing is afterwards held responsible for the consequent faulty operations (Willigen 1993). Problem 5 The dominance of advertising as well influences the moral tolerability of social marketing. There is a predisposition for the public sector to doubt advertising, to believe it as manipulative and deceitful, forcing individuals to purchase items they do not need, in spite of the fact that there is abundant evidence that advertising is not that near as influential as this perspective would indicate. These sentiments are oftentimes transmitted to standard and social marketing, a mechanism that is promoted by an overemphasis in social marketing promotions on advertising. This problem is aggravated by the propensity for politicians to be exaggeratedly interested about social advertising since it gives out an alluring and highly perceptible quick-fix way out to social problems (Farmer 2002). In short, overemphasizing the significance of social advertising in the social marketing mix intimidates the field in many ways. It darkens its strong points, limits its application, encourages unsubstantiated academic and matter-of-fact criticism, and creates scepticism. In relation to these problems, why then do social marketers persist to attract considerable attention and interest? The answer is not because it needs to be that way, but for the reason that social marketers do not respond creatively enough to challenges. IV. Functional Associates of Pro-Environmental Behaviour In majority of social psychology, associations among demographic attributes, personality features, international outlooks, and particular behaviours seldom exceed .40. (Samli 1992, 135). Nevertheless, as Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) emphasized, correlations between outlooks toward a particular item and behaviour toward that item are inclined to be greater, and correlations between goals to carry out a particular behaviour in the future and assessments of that behaviour tend to be greater still. These results indicate that a general concept of pro-environmental behaviour can present informative context for a scientific arrangement connecting precursors, general outlooks, particular attitudes, and specific aims with specific behaviours (Samli 1992). Also important to remember is that environmental agencies are not probable to have the financial reserves to finance new research every time they agree to respond or act. Hence, when an agency is confronted with an alternative between no research, study on a number of other particular pro-environmental behaviour, or study on the common concept of pro-environmental behaviour, the research on common concept is appropriate to give out the best available assistance (Samli 1992, 136). As new products become more composite with numerous inorganic elements, the mounting peril to the environment and hence human being as well is mounting. It should be deliberated that marketing has diverse intentions in this overall picture. As they are distributed in the marketplace, marketing is creating somewhat or completely the environmental problems that are probable to get in the way with the progress of the quality of life in any society. This directs to the second concern of marketing in the environmental realm. Marketing subsists and thrives as the quality of life flourishes. If the environment in which society subsists disintegrates, the quality of life, by principle, weakens as well (Willigen 1993). Hence, opportunities for marketing in addition to its performance become doubtful. It is argued here that in several instances the permanent cost, grounded on environmental effect or health problems or other disorders brought about by products would outperform temporary benefits. Hence, all products should be investigated for their temporary and permanent effect on the environment and they all should be evaluated on the grounds of their cost-benefit features (Willigen 1993, 92). In reality, in generating a product that is environmentally friendly, it is required to formulate a social cost theory. In order to produce environmentally-friendly products, public and private costs alike should be taken into account. This may help remove a number of exceptionally environmentally-unfriendly products prior to reaching the consumer (Willigen 1993, 92-93). V. The Postmodern Transition in Public Health Advertising Medicine is turning out to be a fragmented cultural component, not longer governed by sacralised doctors who dictate the definitions of health and sickness. The social sciences begun to influence individuals’ meaning of wellness, both the personal behaviours adequate to its accomplishment and the public circumstances needed for its sustenance. Consequently, Hermes, who is the god of science and commerce, is displacing Hippocrates as the governing public health allegory and advertising, the narrative of consumption, is starting to demonstrate this postmodern transition in the manner the human body is interpreted and its wellbeing is discussed. Making use of public health advertisements across the globe, I will attempt to illustrate several pointers of postmodernism to emphasize how the public dialogue regarding wellness is shifting and to show that current advertising is containing this modified health discourse. Aside from depicting public health operations in practice, these instances indicate a number of strategic parameters for social marketing program under the emerging postmodern circumstance (Stanley 2003). Medicine’s conventional impressive narrative has disintegrated. Family members, corner pharmacies, and community health care centres have caved in to selected specialists, supermarket drugstores, and technology-administered medical centres. Third-party financiers, public and private sectors alike, have struggled control of the therapy procedure from patients while the charge, efficiency, and impartiality of the system is discussed in an apparently never-ending struggle at transformation (Stanley 2003, 24). However, excluding Third World populations, which is still intimidated by the natural factors of food shortage, starvation, and disease, current health problems of societies are mainly self-imposed. With negligible resource scarcity and a considerable individual autonomy, people have developed unconstructive lifestyles and these have turned out to be the primary causes of their morbidity and mortality. Our liberty to be foolish as well politicizes practically all things related with medicine and health care. With regard to public health, this has come to involve advertising, since point of view is perceived as ideal to legislation. A number of healthful behaviours are basically too close to put in force, hence people can merely be persuaded to practice them. Other violations can be sanctioned, but merely after the harm has taken place, so it is more sensible to encourage attitudes that put off such behaviours (Icard et al. 2003). Advertising has eventually been used in the service of private and public behaviours alike believed favourable to health. The former is portrayed by supports for individuals to take on low saturated fat diets, while the latter is demonstrated by ads caution of the hazards of secondary cigarette smoke. Even though such attempts reflect careful efforts to reinforce the public health quotient of a society, they are still with controversy basically by force of their regulatory principle. People detest limitations to their freedom and it is effortless for them to reduce the reliability of such messages, specifically in a pluralistic society (Stanley 2003). Hegemony, which means regulating the discourse contained in an issue, is a well-known concept in postmodernism and there is no justification to presume that medicine is resistant from this condition. Hence, there is a discussion over advertisements that suggest strategies in daily living. Some individuals hold a certainty that their greatest intimate belonging is their physical existence and they, and nobody else, definitely not bureaucrats, should regulate it. Physicians are still esteemed for their expert knowledge, yet they have mislaid much in public confidence and they no longer dictate the moral ascendancy. As a result, the symbol for medicine is changing, from one embodied by the compassionate Hippocrates to one typified by Hermes, all to demonstrate the incomplete sponsorship and negotiable circumstance of what represents wellness (Goldberg 1997). The postmodern world is at times referred to as the information society, not merely to acknowledge the fame of knowledge in contemporary existence but as well to highlight the agenda-establishing function of the mass media. Such media awareness has advanced various characteristic attributes. For instance, advertising, news and amusement travel instantly, frequently in the kind of snippets, and this produces both plurality and fragmentation. The never-ending representation and symbolism have changed reality into a form of hyper-reality; in semiotic notions, this is a dimension of signifier and never the signifieds (Willigen 1993).The consumer dimension has turned out to be an imitation of conflicting juxtapositions and this heightens the fragmentation of rationality or logic. Consumers desire self-satisfaction, but this may no longer be expected in the conventional manner, such as through buying a product (Willigen 1993, 63). In the postmodern world, value rests in consumption, one should experience the product itself before its satisfaction is shown, and the outcome, since it is exceptionally contextualized, is hard to foresee. VI. Conclusions The prospect of social marketing is more fascinating than ever. For the recent decades, the orientation has been on the marketing section of social marketing. Scholars have attempted to clarified, to sell, to conduct, to assess, and to contain the fundamental principles of a marketing mindset to a vigorous social sector, mainly overwhelmed by public investment in health intervention, the conservation of the environment and the regulation of human reproduction. The difficulty has been to elaborate on the theory of exchange, the ideas of segmentation, intended marketing, consumer research and locating to a profoundly dedicated, yet often extremely doubtful, audience attempting to do something good for the world. Nowadays, it is the ‘social’ in social marketing that is assaulted. The concern is no longer, why employ social marketing to guide individuals, but to a certain extent why help individuals? And, if you are obliged to help them, why make use of the government? The recreation of the social agreement between the government and the public compels social marketers to basically re-evaluate their function and their future in the world. The weakening leadership of the United States; a widespread belief that for the very first time in the history of humanity children may not be well-off than their parents; the unending torrent of closely reported crimes such as murders, rapes, school violence, and psychosis reported on the news; and a developing annoyance with the control of American existence by ‘health Nazis’ and ‘tree huggers’ has produced an anti-security net mindset (Samli 1992, 50). The unrelenting sell of nourishment, supplements, safe sex, and the parameter of discrimination and the conservation of the environment have resulted in a counterattack, even among several individuals who desire to be healthy for a long time lives in accord with mother nature. The most assertive detractor of AIDS prevention presently is an AIDS psychotherapist, Walter Odets. Odets assumed that homosexuals or gays have been troubled as much by the pressure to alter their way of life as by the contagion itself. He claimed that gays should be given the opportunity, through interventions, to choose between a short-range, contented and pleasurable life of safe sex, versus a longer-life tied to the fear of the using condoms and AIDS (Goldberg 1997, 64). Social marketing lies on the beliefs that there are behaviours valuable of modifying and that it is the responsibility of the society to assist people in making the right choices. The agreement on both of these assumptions is weakening. Social marketing is, above all, a vigorous technology of shifting behaviour and attitude. Far from perfect, but remarkable in its strategic consistency, nevertheless; however, the political agreement that advocated and financed much work is collapsing. Even for those who do not depend completely on public subsidies, access to public budget allocations made a number of the best and foremost work feasible. The global family planning organization has been one of the operating founders of the social marketing in the field. Domestic cost-cutting in public programmes and removal of government organizations is transforming the context wherein social marketing was conceived and has developed. How to adjust is really the concern of the discipline. Take into account first an instant status report, a number of persistent nuisances in social marketing, and a body of opportunities for the future. References Books Andreasen A. R. & Tyson C. B. ( 1993). Improving tree management practices of homebuilders: A social marketing approach. Washington, DC: American Forests. Goldberg, M. E. et al. (1997). Social Marketing: Theoretical and Practical Perspectives. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Houston, F. S. (1994). 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