Social Marketing: A Literature Review

The term social marketing was first coined by Philip Kotler and Gerald Zaltman in the year 1971. The nature of social goal is complex and social marketing is a purpose driven platform aimed at bringing improvement in the targeted society as defined by the driving forces behind it. The principles of commercial marketing is holding good for social marketing. At the beginning goal of social marketing was to bring desired change in the society through behavior change. Later the focus shifted from behavior to attitude. The effect of fear, threat, and shame appeals were studied by many scholars and researchers. However, till date a concrete theory has not yet established. Instead of taking universal approach, social marketing started to formulate campaigns on the basis of target audience. It may be said that social marketing is all about communication. The better the communication, the more it will be effective. The world is digitally divided. The people living outside the digital world have more social problems, which may be solved by adopting appropriate social marketing strategy.