Social marketing is defined as using marketing principles and techniques to influence voluntary behavior change for social good. It involves understanding target audiences, developing socially beneficial products and messages, and disseminating these through appropriate distribution channels. The document outlines the evolution of social marketing from commercial marketing, its objectives and principles, applications, and differences from commercial marketing. Recent developments highlighted include its use in health promotion, injury prevention, and community mobilization through approaches like social franchising and tailored messaging to segmented populations.

1. Social Marketing
Dr Phaneendra. M. S.
+91 9739233993
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2. Plan of presentation
1. Introduction and definitions
2. Evolution: Global and Indian context
3. Objectives, Principles & distinctive features
4. Application & stepwise approach to Social Marketing
5. Current status
6. Social marketing v/s Commercial marketing
7. Critical comments
8. Recent developments & Summary
9. References
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3. Introduction
 Social Engineering phase
- Preventive to Promotive
- Right to Responsibility
 Marketing in health
- Preventive - felt need is low
- Curative - felt need is higher
 Adoption of healthy behaviour.- 3 stages
 Had to begin with no well established network.
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4. Definitions
 Marketing is, ‘‘Process of planning and executing the product,
pricing, promotion, and distribution/placement of goods and
services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and
organizational goals.’’
 ‘Social marketing is the use of marketing principles and
techniques to influence a target audience to voluntarily accept,
reject, modify or abandon a behaviour for the benefit of
individuals, groups or society as a whole.’
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5. Definition
 Social marketing is defined as, “The design, implementation and
control of programs calculated to influence the acceptability of social
ideas and involving considerations of product planning, pricing,
communication, distribution and marketing research.”
--- Philip Kotler
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6. Evolution…
 1968 – 6 leading companies, 300000 outlets
 1977 – Trade bonus scheme for retailers
 1983 – Promotional incentives
 1988 – Pariwar Seva Sanstha - an SMO
 1991 – Companies withdrew
 1994 – Revision of sale promotion incentive
 2001 – National strategy for social marketing…
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7. Objectives
 Promote acceptability of socially beneficial behavior.
 Improve access and availability of health information,
products and services.
 More affordable health services with equitable distribution.
 Essential health service should reach economically active
poor people.
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8. Principles of Social Marketing
 Four marketing principles
 Product - Package/training course
 Price – direct and intangible
 Place (& Promotion)
 Person
 Designing a social message - short, correct, delivered to target
audience at most opportune moment.
 Philip Kotler identified four approaches to social change-the
legal(smoking), informational & technological (social media) and
economic(contraceptives & home made ORS) approaches.

9. Distinctive Features
 Consumer orientation
 Use commercial marketing technologies and theory
 Voluntary behavior change
 Targets specific audiences- segmentation of audience
 Focus is on personal welfare and that of society
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10.  Communication strategies – message placement (for example, in
clinics), promotion, dissemination and community level
outreach.
 Audience Segmentation – sociodemographic, cultural and
behavioural.
 Tailored health communications
 Prevention versus promotion (SMO v/s CMO)
 Competing for attention (salt v/s sat.fat)
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11. Applications
 Increase utilization rates - ORS, tooth paste,
Safe drinking water in Madagascar, mosquito nets in Nigeria
 Improve client satisfaction - Evolution of NIRODH, It is
your sex life, Lovelife, TRUST.
 Improve job satisfaction – Seat belt, VERB Its what you do,
Loving support for breast feeding.
 Enhance compliance – Organ donation, Truth campaign
against tobacco. 11

12. Step wise approach to social marketing
 Identification of health problem and establishing methods for
social marketing.
 Identification of priorities and needs, implementation of affordable
efforts.
 Analysis of marketing activities including social message.
 Identification of target audience for each marketing component.
 Analyzing each marketing strategy to determine attitudes and
potential resistance among target groups
 Identification of objectives of each target group.
 Designing and testing the social messages. 12

13. Step wise approach to social marketing(cont..)
 Selection of marketing and distribution system.
 Evaluate the impact of social messages.
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14. Differences between social marketing
and commercial marketing
Commercial marketing Social marketing
Felt need and cognizable rewards Needs not perceived, rewards not
seen
Pertains mainly to products Pertains to ideas, behaviour and
practices
Persuasion to make audience buy Persuasion to make audience learn,
adapt and change
Adapt products to audience needs Adapt audience to larger social needs
Buyer, user main audience Audience: Providers, Influencers
Price: Cost, Tax and Margins Price: Performance cost 14

15. Differences between social marketing
and commercial marketing
Commercial marketing Social marketing
Distribution: Wholesaler to retailer Distribution: Social network
Product: Goods and Services Product: Service + Added value
Competition: Competing brands/
substitutes
Competition: Existing behaviour, peer
Groups and pressure groups
Profit motive Welfare objective
Talks to people who have money Talks to needier sections
Success / failure hardly affect
society
Major impact on society
Rarely needs to involve Government Must work with Government to ensure
achievements of national priorities.
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16. Critical comments on social marketing
 It proves ineffective where major barriers resist change in
individual behaviour (False beliefs).
 It is ineffective if individual efforts are inadequate.
 It should ideally involve consumers in decision making.
 Inadequate funds.
 Time intensive activity.
 Few social marketing programs.
 Progress is slow and results are difficult to achieve.
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17. Critical comments on social marketing
 Mass media efforts.
 Greater challenges faced by social marketing with respect to
commercial marketing
 Accurate market analysis not possible.
 Market segmentation.
 Competing for attention- Product & Pricing strategy
 Challenges for dissemination of social messages
 Communication options
 Limited knowledge of marketing principles.
 Few objective variables are present to evaluate the change. 17

18. Recent developments
 Health promotion, injury prevention, environment protection and
community mobilization are the areas where social marketing has
focused in the recent years.
 Social franchising – Janani model in Bihar & M.P.
– Blue & Gold circle program in Indonesia.
 Cross subsidisation – (ICU pricing).
 American Legacy Foundation’s Truth campaign, could reduce the
number of people who started smoking and progress to established
smoking. From 1999 to 2002, the prevalence of smoking in young
people in the US decreased from 25.3% to 18%.
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19. Recent developments
 Contraceptives – an achievement?
 Generalization - Individual topic to wider application.
 Social marketing has been slow till 2001 but is picking up
pace with support of social media (free of cost), improving
literacy, globalisation and economic growth.
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20. Summary
 Philip Kotler – 1971
 Principles- 4 Ps
 Objectives - 4 As
 4 Approaches – Legal, Economic, Information &
Technology and (JUICE)
 Social franchising, Cross subsidisation, Tailored message
to segmented population.
 An old enemy and a new friend.
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21. References
 RajVir Balwar. Text Book of Public Health and Community
Medicine.1st
edition. New Delhi: Department of Community
Medicine Pune in collaboration with WHO, India office; 2009,p
387-389.
 Kishor J. National health programs of India.10th
edition. New
Delhi: Century publications;2012,p 155,222.
 http://www.sfu.ca/cmns/faculty/laba_m/425/07-
fall/documents/Kotler-Zaltman.PDF Accessed on 13-12-14 at
3:00 pm .
 http://www.epa.gov/owow/NPS/outreach2009/pdf/051209_0930_
Lee_handout.pdf Accessed on 13-12-14 at 3:30 pm.
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22. References continued…
 Gerard Hastings, Laura McDermott. Putting social marketing into
practice,BMJ 2006;332: 1210-12.
 NIHCM foundation. Recommended adolescent health care
utilization: How social marketing can help; march 2009.
 Hong Cheng, Kotler P, Nancy RL.Developing a social marketing
Campaign: step by step; Social marketing for Public health: An
introduction, Jones and Bartlett Publishers; 2009.
 Gupta JP, Sood AK. Contemporary public health. Apothecresis
foundation; 2005:3.77-3.93.
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23. If we walk together a path will emerge…
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