Social marketing in the global context

Citation

Chao, P. (2009), "Social marketing in the global context", International Marketing Review, Vol. 26 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/imr.2009.03626caa.001

Social marketing in the global context

Article Type: Guest editorial From: International Marketing Review, Volume 26, Issue 3

Social marketing is about delivering social values, promoting social causes or effecting social changes by planning and implementing marketing strategies to meet the needs of multiple constituencies. These constituencies may consist of customers, managers, donors, public policy makers, etc. Most organizations practicing social marketing are non-profits including government or non-government organizations, etc. They commonly rely on governmental units, philanthropic organizations or individual donors for funds to plan programs and activities. They may also charge user fees to clients for services they render. Whereas research about international marketing issues is quite well established, fewer studies which seek to address factors influencing social marketing in non-profits have been reported in this or other international related journals.

Having overcome the initial resistance by most non-profit organizations to the idea of applying marketing research and strategies to promote social causes, social marketing research in non-profit settings in the industrialized world has made tremendous progress and gained maturity in terms of rigors in the methodologies and study designs used. The developing world, on the other hand, is only now beginning to pay greater attention to the roles social marketing may play in various non-profit organizations. Developing countries due to their specific economic and political circumstances face greater challenges in meeting social needs and therefore require more assistance in learning how to use social marketing strategies or techniques to achieve social goals within more resource constrained environments.

This research field is not limited just to non-profits; for-profit organizations have also been known to engage in social marketing. Various firms in the USA have used cause-related marketing to promote social causes such as “fighting breast cancer”, “Promoting UNICEF”, etc. in their promotional campaigns. Little, however, is known about how these techniques may or may not work in other country and cultural settings.

It is hoped that this special issue can fill this void by serving as a forum for researchers to share their ideas and research findings about social marketing issues facing various for profit and not-for-profit organizations in different countries. To this end, we hope to bring together research contributions from international social marketing researchers who have been actively engaged in addressing some of the critical social marketing issues in different parts of the world. Of particular interests to this special issue are cross-national and interdisciplinary studies. These studies can provide valuable insights for international marketers and public policy makers into how various social marketing initiatives may or may not be used effectively in different national or cultural settings. We are pleased to include six papers in this special issue.

The first paper by Zhou, Chao and Huang addresses an important social marketing issue in China on how to encourage blood donation without compensation when the blood donation organization is still state controlled. This study employs a structural equation modeling approach to test the applicability of a set of MARKOR scales to measure market orientation and the effects of a set of organizational antecedents on market orientation. The results based a large national sample show the robustness of the modified MARKOR scales even in this organizational setting. Professional education and commitment are shown to have a positive and significant impact on the degree of market orientation embraced by the managers in the organization. Training on management skills is found to be lacking which can potentially have an adverse effect on the managers’ ability or willingness to adopt and implement market orientation perspectives within the organization. The findings have significant ramifications not just for managers of state-controlled organizations in China but also for many other similar organizations in various countries, which may face similar challenges in encouraging social desirable behaviors.

The second paper by Dolnicar and Lazarevski report a survey research conducted with a sample of non-profit managers in three advanced industrialized countries in terms of their focus of attention on various elements of marketing activities. The results show that in advanced industrialized countries such as UK, the USA and Australia, an “organization-centered” instead of a “customer-centered” mindset prevails in the minds of non-profit managers. Consistent with the results reported in the first study conducted in China, this survey reveals minimal efforts devoted to training their personnel in marketing for non-profit organizations in these countries. This suggests that even in western industrialized countries, opportunities exist for non-profit organizations to refocus their center of attention on the more important elements of marketing activities and provide more marketing training to help them to improve their performance as well as competitive advantage.

Using the protection motivation theory by Cismaru, Lavack and Markewich, the third paper examines English language websites from the USA, UK, Canada and Australia and provides a qualitative review of various social marketing campaigns aimed at drunk driving prevention. The review shows the key themes and messages used in different countries and how the protection motivation theory can be used successfully in this context.

The paper by Singh, Kristensen and Villasenor reports a study conducted in Norway to examine whether increasing consumer familiarity with repeated CRM claims can reduce consumer skepticism toward CRM claims. Furthermore, the issue of whether the relationship between familiarity and skepticism can be moderated by skepticism toward advertising in general is addressed. The results show that repeated cause-related claims can indeed help to reduce consumer skepticism toward CRM claims as well as reduce the adverse effects of skepticism toward advertising thereby enhancing the credibility of such messages. This study shows the power of CRM message repetition. However, evidence exists to show that consumers may be annoyed with too much repetition of any advertising message. Therefore, the point beyond which consumers may experience tedium or boredom thereby reducing the effectiveness of such repeated messages should be studied further.

The conceptual paper presented by Polonsky and Javons addresses three types of complexity associated with multinational corporations’ global branding and CSR strategies. The authors seek to integrate various marketing and management literature on issue, organization and communications complexities when implementing consistent branding and CSR strategies all across the world. The complexities are further compounded when issues are further divided into higher and lower level issues. A set of research propositions is identified to provide an agenda for further research.

The last paper by Yin and Ma takes a public policy perspective in examining the effectiveness of ISO 14000, a global standard certification for environmental protection. Even though it is the hope of the ISO 14000 to encourage firms in developing countries such as China to adopt these standards, it is questionable whether this can be achieved in the short run. In the west, consumer concerns with products going green may exert enough pressure on firms to adopt ISO 14000, it is not yet clear based by the evidence in this study that the firms in China have been forced to comply with the ISO 14000 certification standards. Since ISO 14000 represents a set of voluntary environmental standards, lack of government agency enforcement in China effectively reduces the level of compliance with the standards among Chinese firms. It is therefore suggested that a more broad based approach must be adopted in order to achieve the desired environmental objectives in China.

Paul ChaoGuest Editor