Alan R. Andreasen

Marketing Social Marketing in the Social Change Marketplace

Social marketing faces significant barriers to growth because there is no clear understanding of what the field is and what its role should be in relation to other approaches to social change. However, growth is possible through increases in social marketings share of competition at the intervention, subject matter, product, and brand levels. The author proposes a specific social marketing branding campaign to advance the field, with roles for academics and the American Marketing Association.

The Life Trajectory of Social Marketing: Some implications

The history of social marketing has similarities to the growth and maturity of human beings from its birth in the 1960s through its present status as a respected discipline. After an extended childhood grappling with varying definitions andapplications, the 1990s saw a breakthrough in concept and practice by focusing on behavior change. Despite the growth in the number of textbooks, practical guides and infrastructure, the field has many unanswered challenges that ought to be addressed if it is to continue its maturation and achieve wider respect.

Rethinking the Relationship Between Social/Nonprofit Marketing and Commercial Marketing

Despite the long history and increasing interest in nonprofit and social marketing, the managerial and pedagogical issues that arise in these noncommercial contexts are treated as unique cases in an intellectual environment dominated by commercial issues and applications. Its literature and basic textbooks allot only a few paragraphs or pages to nonprofit and social marketing. This essay posits the radical idea that this implicit taxonomy has the relationship upside down. The author argues that nonprofit and social marketing represent the most complex and difficult contexts in which marketing activities are carried out and that the appropriate classification of commercial applications is (only) one simplified variety of this complexity, principally the sales of products and services.

Navigating the Central Tensions in Research on At-Risk Consumers: Challenges and Opportunities

A perennial problem in social marketing and public policy is the plight of at-risk consumers. The authors define at-risk consumers as marketplace participants who, because of historical or personal circumstances or disabilities, may be harmed by marketers’ practices or may be unable or unwilling to take full advantage of marketplace opportunities. This definition refers to either objective reality or perceptions. Early research focused on consumers who were at risk because they were poor, ethnic or racial minorities, immigrants, women, or elderly. Todays researchers also study consumers who are at risk because they are from religious minorities, disabled, illiterate, homeless, indigent, lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. The authors identify four tensions affecting research on and policy and marketing applications for at-risk populations: the value of focusing on (1) vulnerabilities versus strengths, (2) radical versus marginal change, (3) targeting versus nontargeting, and (4) encouraging knowledgeable versus naive consumers. They conclude with a discussion of the significance of including at-risk consumers as full marketplace participants and identify future research directions.

A Social Marketing Approach to Changing Mental Health Practices Directed at Youth and Adolescents

Abstract The mental health problems of children are of increasing social concern. Many best practices have been developed but often not implemented. Social marketing has been suggested as an innovative, useful approach to this challenge-along with others in the health care field. However, much confusion exists over what the approach entails, where it has been applied and how it can be adapted to significant social challenges such as changing mental health practices directed at youth and adolescents. This article defines key terms, offers historical perspective and provides a specific approach and set of models to implement an effective social marketing strategy in a range of contexts.

Consumer dissatisfaction as a measure of market performance

ZusammenfassungDer vorliegende Beitrag orientiert zunächst über zwei frühere Arbeiten über (a) eine Taxonomie der Indikatoren für Verbraucherzufriedenheit/-unzufriedenheit und (b) die Ergebnisse einer amerikanischen Studie von Verbraucherproblemen bei einer großen Zahl von Produkten und Dienstleistungen. Anschließend untersucht der Beitrag, in welchem Ausmaß solche spontanen Verbraucherklagen, die der anbietenden Wirtschaft bekannt werden, die gesamte Spannbreite aller Verbraucherklagen widerspiegeln und repräsentativ sind für alle Konsumenten. Der Beitrag kommt zu dem Ergebnis, daß beides nicht der Fall ist. Im Fall der Verbraucher zeigten sich jedoch — anders als in bisherigen Studien — keine durchgängigen Zusammenhänge zwischen sozioökonomischen Merkmalen und dem Beschwerdeverhalten, wenn die Produktgruppe und die Art des Problems bei der Analyse berücksichtigt wurden.AbstractThis paper summarizes two earlier papers on (a) a taxonomy of consumer satisfaction/dissatisfaction measures and (b) results of a U.S. study of consumer problems across a broad range of product and service categories. The paper then assesses the extent to which unsolicited complaints data voiced to business are representative of all types of complaints an all consumers. The paper concludes that they are representative of neither but in the case of consumers, in contrast to previous studies no consistent relationships between socio-economic characteristics and complaint behavior appear when product category and problem type are included in the analysis.

Social Marketing Applied to Economic Reforms

As social marketers seek to broaden their purview to include upstream applications, they are handicapped by the lack of examples of such applications. This article represents a retrofit of social marketing approaches developed by Andreasen to a major international intervention in Bosnia Herzegovina to reduce the array of impediments to private sector business investment and growth. The Bulldozer Initiative project, run by Herzberg, focused on two target audiences, businessmen and politicians, and sought participation by the former and support and legislative change from the latter. The Initiative was highly successful and resulted in a major change in the business climate and wide praise from an array of international agencies. Major components of the program closely conformed to ways in which social marketers would have constructed them.

Information needs for consumer protection planning

The paper discusses alternative research programs designed to help consumer agencies to better meet their needs of factual information on which to base their evaluation of present programs and their setting of priorities for the future.In the main, it concludes that data on consumer problems and consumer complaining behavior in particular can help policymakers in individual countries to make short-run decisions about where and to what extent they should concentrate protection activities under present structures and procedures. Similar data in several countries can further help a policymaker to decide whether in the longer run his or her country should adopt the more effective structures and procedures of another country.Data from an EEC consumer survey and from a study of perceived problems and complaint behavior among U.S. consumers are used as illustrations of the papers theses.ZusammenfassungDer vorliegende Beitrag behandelt unterschiedliche methodische Ansätze zur Erarbeitung der Datengrundlage, die zur Evaluierung laufender Maßnahmen der Verbraucherpolitik und für die Schwerpunktsetzung bei der künftigen Entwicklung solcher Maßnahmen notwendig ist.Neben der Erforschung beispielsweise von Konzentrationsentwicklungen, der Wirkung von Werbemaßnahmen, des Informationsverhaltens von Konsumenten oder der Gebrauchstauglichkeit von Produkten, wird die Erforschung von Verbraucherproblemen, ihren Ursachen und ihres Ausmaßes, für besonders wichtig gehalten. Entsprechende Daten sich nicht nur für kurzfristige, sondern auch für längerfristige verbraucherpolitische Entscheidungen von Bedeutung. Dazu ist es zweckmäßig, wenn Forschungsergebnisse aus verschiedenen Ländern zusammengetragen und international vergleichende Studien durchgeführt werden.Gegenüber der Erhebung von Indikatoren für generelle Unzufriedenheiten mit globalen Güter- oder Dienstleistungskategorien wird der Erforschung von konkreten Anlässen von Verbraucherproblemen der Vorzug gegeben, vor allem weil Angaben über solche konkreten Anlässe weniger stark von schwer zu kontrollierenden externen Einflußfaktoren abhängig sind als Äußerungen über generelle Unzufriedenheiten. Dabei kommt der dirketen Befragung von größeren Verbraucherstichproben wegen ihrer höheren Repräsentativität mehr Bedeutung zu als der Analyse von gesammelten Unterlagen über Reklamationsfälle.Der Beitrag illustriert seine Thesen anhand zweier empirischer Untersuchungen. Die erste ist eine international vergleichende Studie von Verbraucherzufriedenheit und Verbraucherbeschwerden in den Mitgliedsländern der europäischen Gemeinschaft. Tabelle 1 zeigt die entsprechenden Prozentzahlen aufgeschlüsselt nach diesen Ländern. Die zweite Studie wurde in den USA durchgeführt. Untersuchungsgegenstand waren Verbraucherprobleme und Verbraucherbeschwerden bei 34 Güter- und Dienstleistungsgruppen. Tabelle 2 zeigt für einige davon den Anteil von Käufen, die zu Problemen führten, an der Gesamtzahl der Käufe, ferner davon wiederum den Anteil derer, die zu Reklamationen führten, und schließlich davon wiederum den Anteil derer, die zu einem befriedigenden Ergebnis führten.

Changing behavior: a challenge for reproductive health awareness.

Social marketing applies commercial sector ideas to programs to change behavior. It involves a mindset that is customer-focused; a process that starts with customers and continually returns to them for validation; and concepts to make change happen. Customer behavior models guide strategy. One useful model is based on stages of change and four behavioral influences: perceived benefits, perceived costs, the influence of others, and perceived behavioral control.

Social marketing: Influencing behavior for social impact

SOCIAL ENTERPRISES ARE CREATIVE APPROACHES to bringing about important—and some not-so-important—changes in the lives of individuals and of the societies of which they are a part. They can be carried out by corporations, nongovernmental organizations, and, in some countries, government agencies. To succeed, they need to find ways to get a wide range of individuals to take actions. Central, of course, are behaviors vital to the social enterprise’s mission—getting people to take up a recommended action such as not smoking, starting a business, allowing their daughters to get advanced schooling, washing their hands regularly, installing energy-saving appliances in their homes, and so forth. But the social enterprise has a great many other constituencies to take actions—governments to give contracts or give permission for a particular initiative, volunteers to help out, corporations to partner, foundations or philanthropists to give grants, and individuals to volunteer as advisors or board members. And finally, because they are social enterprises, they are expected to generate sales for their artist works, food services, or used clothing!