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Before launching a social marketing campaign, social marketers take into account a mix of 4Ps and other extended elements like publics, partnership, policy and purse strings. It provides the campaign planner with a framework for generating ideas and an opportunity to be imaginative, innovative, and comprehensive. However, unlike commercial marketing mix where socio-cultural factors have been significantly identified, social marketing mix does not acknowledge socio-cultural factors to a significant level. This paper aims at developing propositions for research on social marketing by extending the scope of marketing mix via sociocultural factors. The key research aim that is addressed by the paper is to develop a theoretical link between socio-cultural factors and social marketing mix.
INTRODUCTION
The health and wellness sector has been the primary beneficiary of social marketing. According to Goldman (2002), although social marketing started as a 'hammer and nail' concept, it now contains within itself problem solving, program planning and intervention designing strategies. Social marketing is aimed at influencing the behaviour of the target market wherein the marketer aims at benefiting the market and not self (AMA, 2013). In fact, the definition of social marketing further describes it as an area, which focuses on the improvement of the society and where the consequences are related to strategic aspects of human development. Not surprisingly, major characteristics of social marketing encompass continuous market research focusing on motives,behavioural pattern and attitudes of the target group, an integrated mix of strategic key elements, and the perpetual evaluation of all procedures (Loss et.al., 2006).
Hence, before launching a social marketing campaign, social marketers take into account a mix of 4Ps and other extended elements like publics, partnership, policy and purse strings (Weinreich, 2006).The mix represents those elements of marketing that are controllable and can be manipulated by marketing managers to ensure the maximum appeal of their campaign (Dann and Dann, 2011). It provides the campaign planner with a framework for generating ideas and an opportunity to be imagina- tive, innovative (Donovan and Henley, 2010). Together, social marketing and social marketing mix aims to change the behaviour of an individual from unacceptable to acceptable for the overall enhancement and sustainability of the society.
This paper aims at developing propositions for research on social marketing by extending the...