Societal Marketing and Social Marketing
Societal marketing should not be confused with social marketing. The societal marketing concept was a forerunner of sustainable marketing in integrating issues of social responsibility into commercial marketing strategies. In contrast to that, social marketing uses commercial marketing theories, tools and techniques to social issues. Social marketing applies a “customer orientated” approach and uses the concepts and tools used by commercial marketers in pursuit of social goals like Anti-Smoking-Campaigns or fund raising for NGOs.
As we mentioned above Societal Marketing can be defined as a “Marketing with a social dimension or marketing that includes non-economic criteria” . Societal Marketing “concerns for society’s long term interests” . It is about “the direct benefits for the organization and secondary benefit for the community” . It makes a difference between the immediate consumer’s satisfaction and the long term consumer benefits.
Social Marketing is a discipline that began in 1971, with Kotler and Zaltman. It is defined as an “adaptation of commercial marketing technologies to programs designed to influence the voluntary behavior of target audiences to improve their personal welfare and that of the society of which they are a part” . Social Marketing uses more traditional commercial techniques and strategies, focusing on selling, to achieve goals for the greater social good. Its campaigns can either encourage merit goods, as for example fund raising for not-for-profit organizations or dissuade the use of demerit goods promoting society’s well being, as Non-smoking campaigns or promote the use of seat belts. Another characteristic of Social marketing is, that is planned to influence individuals' behavior to improve their well-being. It includes “more than just advertising in print media, radio or television”, it includes sponsorship or online marketing and is usually planned or implemented by governmental and nongovernmental organizations. A clear example that differentiates Societal from Social Marketing is a marketing campaign on non-smoking. A focusing smoking cessation advertisement is an example of social marketing, but if the marketing strategies and techniques used in that campaign focus on increasing the well-being of society, that same campaign can be an example of societal marketing.
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Famous quotes containing the words societal and/or social:
“Society’s double behavioral standard for women and for men is, in fact, a more effective deterrent than economic discrimination because it is more insidious, less tangible. Economic disadvantages involve ascertainable amounts, but the very nature of societal value judgments makes them harder to define, their effects harder to relate.”
—Anne Tucker (b. 1945)
“We were that generation called “silent,” but we were silent neither, as some thought, because we shared the period’s official optimism nor, as others thought, because we feared its official repression. We were silent because the exhilaration of social action seemed to many of us just one more way of escaping the personal, of masking for a while that dread of the meaningless which was man’s fate.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1935)