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Social marketing seeks to develop and integrate marketing concepts with other approaches to influence behaviors that benefit individuals and communities for the greater social good. It seeks to integrate research, best practice, theory, audience and partnership insight, to inform the delivery of competition sensitive and segmented social change programs that are effective, efficient, equitable and sustainable.[1]

Although "social marketing" is sometimes seen only as using standard commercial marketing practices to achieve non-commercial goals, this is an oversimplification. The primary aim of social marketing is "social good", while in "commercial marketing" the aim is primarily "financial". This does not mean that commercial marketers can not contribute to achievement of social good.

Increasingly, social marketing is being described as having "two parents"a "social parent", including social science and social policy approaches, and a "marketing parent", including commercial and public sector marketing approaches.[2]

The first documented evidence of the deliberate use of marketing to address a social issue was by the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta, India. The authors proposed, and subsequently implemented, a national family planning program that included high quality condoms with a government trademark be distributed and sold throughout the country at a low cost, that an intense consumer advertising campaign be run with active and open promotion at the point of sale, that retailers be trained to sell the product aggressively, and that a new organization be created with the responsibility of implementing the program.[3] In developing countries, the use of social marketing expanded to HIV prevention, control of childhood diarrhea (through the use of oral re-hydration therapies), malaria control and treatment, point-of-use water sanitation methods and the provision of basic health services.[4]

Health promotion campaigns began applying social marketing in practice in the 1980s. In the United States, The National High Blood Pressure Education Program [5] and the community heart disease prevention studies in Pawtucket, Rhode Island and at Stanford University [6] demonstrated the effectiveness of the approach to address population-based risk factor behavior change. Notable early developments also took place in Australia. These included the Victoria Cancer Council developing its anti-tobacco campaign "Quit" (1988) and "SunSmart" (1988), its campaign against skin cancer which had the slogan "Slip! Slop! Slap!"[7]

Since the 1980s, the field has rapidly expanded around the world to include active living communities, disaster preparedness and response, ecosystem and species conservation, environmental issues, development of volunteer or indigenous workforce's, financial literacy, global threats of antibiotic resistance, government corruption, improving the quality of health care, injury prevention, landowner education, marine conservation and ocean sustainability, patient-centered health care, reducing health disparities, sanitation demand, sustainable consumption, transportation demand management, water treatment systems and youth gambling problems, among other social needs (See [8][9]).

On a wider front, by 2007, government in the United Kingdom announced the development of its first social marketing strategy for all aspects of health.[10] In 2010, the US national health objectives [11] included increasing the number of state health departments that report using social marketing in health promotion and disease prevention programs and increasing the number of schools of public health that offer courses and workforce development activities in social marketing.

Two other public health applications include the CDC's CDCynergy training and software application[12] and SMART (Social Marketing and Assessment Response Tool) in the U.S.[13]

Social marketing theory and practice has been progressed in several countries such as the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK, and in the latter a number of key government policy papers have adopted a strategic social marketing approach. Publications such as "Choosing Health" in 2004,[10] "It's our health!" in 2006 and "Health Challenge England" in 2006, represent steps to achieve a strategic and operational use of social marketing. In India, AIDS controlling programs are largely using social marketing and social workers are largely working for it. Most of the social workers are professionally trained for this task.[citation needed]

A variation of social marketing has emerged as a systematic way to foster more sustainable behavior. Referred to as community-based social marketing (CBSM) by Canadian environmental psychologist Doug McKenzie-Mohr, CBSM strives to change the behavior of communities to reduce their impact on the environment.[14] Realizing that simply providing information is usually not sufficient to initiate behavior change, CBSM uses tools and findings from social psychology to discover the perceived barriers to behavior change and ways of overcoming these barriers. Among the tools and techniques used by CBSM are focus groups and surveys (to discover barriers) and commitments, prompts, social norms, social diffusion, feedback and incentives (to change behavior). The tools of CBSM have been used to foster sustainable behavior in many areas, including energy conservation,[15] environmental regulation [16] and recycling.[17]

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Social marketing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia