Social Marketing Quarterly

Several studies document the potential for eco-labeling and marketing programs; however, they focused on inexpensive, frequently purchased items. We identify whether such programs can be effective with more expensive, durable goods. We isolate the impact of the program on consumers by analyzing responses to a survey administered before and after the program to independent samples of individuals residing in and out of the marketing area. We used both multivariate analysis of variance and regression approaches in the analyses. Few vehicle dealers participated in the eco-labeling portion and we find the eco-marketing component of the program led to only one positive outcome; individuals exposed to the marketing are less likely to think all vehicles pollute about the same when driven. This was one of the key misperceptions that the Maine Clean Car Campaign attempted to correct. However, we also found three negative impacts of the Campaign. Individuals exposed to the marketing viewed vehicle emissions as being a smaller contributor to Maine's air quality problems and had an increased perception that greener vehicles suffered from poor performance and were more expensive.

[Supplementary materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Social Marketing Quarterly for the following free supplemental resources: results of data analyses.]

Social marketing has gained prominence among researchers and practitioners working in social issues. Campaigns labelled as social marketing are implemented worldwide by governments, nonprofit organizations, and private industry. However, there is evidence that the concepts and processes associated with these campaigns are misunderstood and not consistently applied. This article describes social marketing benchmark criteria and follows with an overview of a strategic process for social marketing, specifically: planning, research, campaign development, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. The main focus is the social marketing development process undertaken by the Alberta Health Services to plan and implement cancer prevention and cancer screening campaigns. Unique to this process is an internationally recognized panel of social marketing experts to review and provide consultation. Improvements in planning and implementing campaigns are outlined, including stakeholder engagement, use of audience-centred strategies, and endorsement of campaigns by management. The primary outcome of bringing together a clear and organized social marketing tool for cancer prevention and cancer screening in Alberta is the development, implementation, and evaluation of campaigns that follow a systematic best-practice process. The learnings from this process will have important implications provincially in Alberta, nationally in Canada, and worldwide for the advancement of the social marketing discipline.

The nonprofit sector is increasingly faced with the challenges of adopting unfamiliar orientations focusing on customer service and quality which historically have been more usually associated with the commercial for-profit sector. Such organizations are also facing financial and competitive pressures which are also more commonly associated with the commercial world and market economies. These factors tend to imply that nonprofit organizations should adopt a market orientation. Indeed many initiatives offered by public and nonprofit organizations are now defined as “social marketing.” This article presents empirical evidence from a case study of an innovative supported-housing project for homeless street drinkers and considers the barriers faced when implementing the project. Issues surrounding top management leadership, service design, service quality, consumer engagement, and the engagement of frontline customers facing service delivery personnel are considered, as these would expect to be evident in a service organization with a strong market orientation. However, considering that the project was implemented contrary to the express wishes of both the organization's internal market of its service employees and the primary target market of its service users, conclusions are drawn within a conceptual framework that agrees with the need to consider a social rather than a market orientation to the provision of such services within nonprofit organizations.

This article asserts that social marketing may be effective in programs that are concerned with volunteering. A short review of the central elements of the social marketing approach and discussion of their application in the area of volunteering is followed by a description of a program based on this approach for recruiting volunteers. The results of the program, which was implemented in Israel, support the development of additional programs for marketing volunteering. The article discusses the main contributions of the social marketing approach in this area, related dilemmas, and the administrative measures necessary for designing a marketing approach specifically for volunteer recruitment.

Firefighters as an occupational group are at increased risk for a cardiac-related injury, with the largest proportion (44%) of firefighter on-duty mortality due to sudden cardiac death. As poor physical fitness behaviors are a contributing factor to this risk, a social marketing approach was used to design and market a competitive team-sports intervention to improve physical fitness and reduce cardiac risk factors in a group of full-time firefighters. This article describes how social marketing principles were used in the design and implementation of the “Get Firefighters Moving” physical fitness intervention. This includes strategic development of the marketing plan, with discussion of audience segmentation and the marketing mix used to implement the intervention. Preliminary findings are also presented, as they suggest improvement in cardiac risk factors including blood pressure, cardiovascular class, flexibility, and percent body fat.

Public health managers' perceptions of enablers and barriers to social marketing use among public health nurses were examined. Employing qualitative, action research methods, this study incorporated focus groups using nominal group process and group discussion. Eleven public health managers from large urban, small urban, and rural Canadian public health departments participated. Content analysis was conducted on the focus group transcripts, and trustworthiness was strengthened through independent review by participants and subject experts. Several enablers to social marketing use were identified in the areas of educational preparation of nurses and the nature of public health nursing practice. The majority of barriers to social marketing use related to human and financial resources at the system level. In addition, we identified as imperative that managers at those levels responsible for budgetary planning understand the principles of social marketing more fully if they are to be expected to support its use. Social marketing has the potential to positively influence the health behavior of populations. However, if public health nurses and other health-promotion professions are to incorporate this health-promotion strategy more effectively into their practice, issues related to its use must be addressed.

This article examines the effectiveness of implementing a community-based social marketing program to increase recycling. Researchers went door-to-door in a 200-home community distributing recycling containers, securing commitments to recycle, and increasing knowledge of what, why, how, and when to recycle. We analyzed the effect of the program by weighing recycling collected immediately after program implementation and then analyzing the weight of recycling collected a number of months later to measure sustainability. We found that automatic curbside distribution of recycling containers and face-to-face contact have a sizable, and partially sustainable, positive effect on the rate of recycling. Based on the results, we propose practical implications for motivating increased recycling.