Social Marketing

Satisfying Exchanges

Marketers believe people act largely out of selfinterest, searching for ways to optimize the benefits they gain and minimize the costs they pay in their exchanges with others. In commercial transactions, consumers typically exchange money for tangible [Page 992]products or services. In public health, people more often sacrifice comfort, time, and effort for the value gained from adopting a healthy behavior or participating in a program. Social marketing encourages public health practitioners to offer exchanges that satisfy customers’ wants as well as their needs.

The Marketing Mix

Marketing also offers public health professionals a set of conceptual tools called the ‘4 Ps’—product, price, place, and promotion—for planning program interventions. Also, known as the marketing mix, these concepts are carefully considered from the consumers’ points of view and used to develop integrated plans that guide all program activities.

The product refers to several critical features of an intervention. The actual product refers to the recommended or desired behavior—for example, a protective behavior being promoted, use of a public health program, or abandonment of a risky behavior. The core product refers to the benefits consumers gain from adopting the product. In some cases, tangible commodities, called augmented products, also are involved. For instance, in a program to decrease eye injuries among citrus pickers, the actual product is the use of safety glasses, reduction of daily irritation is the core product or benefit, and specific brands of safety eye wear that are comfortable to wear in Florida's groves are augmented products.

Price refers to monetary and other costs (e.g., embarrassment, hassle) that are exchanged for product benefits. In the eye safety project just described, intangible costs, such as discomfort and loss of productivity when glasses get dirty, were just as significant as the cash outlay to purchase them. Unless costs for public health products are lowered or made acceptable, even appealing offers may be rejected as unaffordable.

Place has several applications: the locations and times consumers perform the desired behavior, the distribution of augmented products and the point at which consumers obtain them, the actual physical location at which services are offered (attractiveness, comfort, and accessibility), and people and organizations that facilitate the exchange process (e.g., refer people to a program or reinforce behavioral recommendations).

Promotion includes a variety of activities intended to affect behavior change. In public health, an integrated set of activities are usually needed. Professional training, service delivery enhancements, community-based activities, and skill building are often combined with communications (e.g., consumer education, advertising, public relations, special events).

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