Social Marketing Quarterly

The present paper focuses on compulsive buying, outlining the need to tackle this phenomenon using a social marketing approach, for the wellbeing of the affected individuals, their families and contacts, and for the health of our society at large.

This conceptual development article is centered on behavior change and social marketing strategies that can address compulsive buying.

How can social marketers help in curbing compulsive buying? What conceptual components and practical guidelines can be used in marketing programs for addressing compulsive shopping?

The platform developed herein outlines segmentation, targeting, product, price, place and promotional strategies recommended based on theoretical elements across disciplines.

To date, compulsive buying has largely been ignored in the social marketing field, despite its relevance and prevalence. This paper provides a framework that can be employed in developing social marketing programs.

The proposed platform was created by bridging the literatures on compulsive buying and social marketing, identifying useful theoretical elements (e.g., the potential of the Thranstheoretical model), adapting and customizing these elements to provide actionable insights for intervention programs. The toolkit used for tackling other addictions was taken into account and integrated into the current development.

This paper offers an initial framework for social marketing efforts aimed at compulsive buying. It hopes to inspire significantly more work in this area to explore the potential of other theories and approaches to foster behavioral change for the better.

Social marketing successes are relatively well-documented, but mistakes and failures in the field are not. When mistakes and failures are reported, they are usually on an ad hoc basis, as opposed to a systematic gathering of evidence. This paper is the second half of a two-part research study that aims to understand the perceptions of social marketing professionals with regard to mistakes and failures in the field.

This article is related to research and evaluation of the social marketing field.

What are the perceptions of the social marketing community regarding mistakes and failures in the field?

A greater understanding of mistakes and failures in the social marketing field will assist practitioners to assess their own shortcomings, address causes of mistakes and failures, and improve program outcomes.

This research is qualitative and exploratory, with a constructivist, grounded theory methodology. Surveys were completed by 100 social marketing community members. Survey data was analyzed and coded using SPSS software and Microsoft Excel.

According to the analyzed survey data, the social marketing community believes that inadequate research, poor strategy development, and mismanagement of stakeholders are the most common mistakes made by social marketers. Further, weak evaluation and monitoring is considered to be the “least well-managed” program element. Poor strategy development, external influences, and poorly designed program and behavioral objectives are considered to be the primary reasons for social marketing program failure.

Future research may explore the extent to which external influences lead to social marketing program success or failure, particularly in comparison to mistakes made by social marketers. Additionally, practitioners should be aware of and develop strategies to mitigate common mistakes and failures in order to improve program outcomes.

The 100 social marketing professionals who responded to the survey are not representative of the global social marketing community. Further, responses were based on self-report rather than direct observation, which may make them more susceptible to bias.

This article is the first to explore the emergence and evolution of social marketing as a professional practice in Aotearoa New Zealand [1] (NZ).

The article identifies key political factors enabling the emergence, and causing the decline, of social marketing in NZ.

What are the factors that practitioners of social marketing identify as most influential on its development in NZ?

The article makes a unique contribution to the growing literature on the history of social marketing in different jurisdictions by providing the first account of how social marketing evolved in NZ and by identifying the crucial role of political factors.

The research is based on appreciative inquiry-based interviews with 20 experienced social marketers and a review of key documents. Because the field in NZ is small, it was possible to interview almost all of the leading figures.

This study constructs a timeline of significant political impacts on social marketing in NZ and identifies neoliberal approaches as key. Initially, neoliberalism enabled the growth of social marketing due to its emphasis on individual responsibility for health. Later, a neoliberal agenda helped disestablish the discipline due to social marketing shifting focus from downstream to upstream economic, political and social factors.

This research concludes that to sustain the legitimacy of their field, social marketers need to produce ongoing evidence-based communication of their effectiveness and responsibility and be less dependent on government funding. It also suggests the continuing enlargement of specifically situated studies of the different evolutions of social marketing in different places to better map commonalities and contrasts.

The study is limited to social marketing in NZ and would be strengthened by comparative studies of social marketing within other cultures and political systems during particular historical periods. While mainly exploring NZ social marketers’ experience from their own point of view, it could be broadened to include other perspectives.

One in four Americans have a disability but remain an overlooked minority population at risk for health care disparities. Adults with disabilities can be high users of primary care but often face unmet needs and poor-quality care. Providers lack training, knowledge and have biased practices and behaviors toward people with disabilities (PWD); which ultimately undermines their quality of care.

The aim is to identify behavior change interventions for decreasing health care disparities for people with disabilities in a healthcare setting, determine whether those interventions used key features of social marketing and identify gaps in research and practice.

To what extent has the social marketing framework been used to improve health care for PWD by influencing the behavior of health care providers in a primary health care setting?

Scoping Review.

Social marketing has a long and robust history in health education and public health promotion, yet limited work has been done in the disabilities sector. The social marketing framework encompasses the appropriate features to aligned with the core principles of the social model of disability, which espouses that the barriers for PWD lie within society and not within the individual. Incorporating elements of the social model of disability into the social marketing framework could foster a better understanding of the separation of impairment and disability in the healthcare sector and open a new area of research for the field.

Four articles were found that target primary care providers. Overall, the studies aimed to increase knowledge, mostly for clinically practices and processes, not clinical behavior change. None were designed to capture if initial knowledge gains led to changes in behavior toward PWD.

The lack of published research provides an opportunity to investigate both the applicability and efficacy of social marketing in reducing health care disparities for PWD in a primary care setting. Integrating the social model of disability into the social marketing framework may be an avenue to inform future interventions aimed to increase health equity and inclusiveness through behavior change interventions at a systems level.