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Philip Kotler, Ned Roberto, and Nancy Lee. Social Marketing: Improving the Quality of Life. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2002.
If the success or failure of this planet and of human beings depended on how 1 am and what I do, how would I be? What would I do?
-R. Buckminster Fuller (p. 371)
If the objective of traditional marketing efforts by for-profit corporations is to foster greater consumption of products to the potential detriment of society and the environment, then social marketing is the counterbalancing force designed to support organized efforts to improve our quality of life. Social Marketing: Improving the Quality of Life by Kotler, Roberto, and Lee, is a handbook for students and professionals that synthesizes the writings and thinking of experts in the field of social marketing. Its goal is to provide a tool to plan and effectively execute a campaign for a cause in the areas of health, safety, environment, or community involvement. Although the purpose of the book is more applied, it raises questions and concerns about behavior change that lend themselves to further theoretical exploration by researchers.
As the authors point out, the statistics for detrimental behavior to self or society portray a grim reality. Each day in the United States, for example, more than 4,000 youths aged 11 to 17 try their first cigarette. Four million tons of paper are thrown in the garbage by American office workers, and 3.4 trillion nonbiodegradable cigarette butts are littered worldwide. Social marketing is one strategy for addressing these critical issues as well as many others. It has become an indispensable tool for the thousands of nonprofit and public sector organizations who work to alleviate suffering and address social problems that have their roots in undesirable behaviors. According to the authors, in addition to the funds nonprofit and public sector organizations target toward social marketing efforts, additional funding for these groups comes from more than 50,000 active independent corporate, community, and grant-making foundations in the United States. These can include individual foundations (e.g., the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), general foundations (e.g., the Ford Foundation), corporate foundations (e.g., the Bank of America Foundation), and community foundations. Additional funding can come from federal, state, and local government agencies; corporate contributions through cash donations;...