Marketing Social Marketing in Social Change MarketAlan R. AndreasenJournal of Public Policy & Marketing; Spring 2002Article ReviewAccording to the author, social marketing can be defined as a process involving the design, implementation, and control of social change programs aimed at increasing the acceptability of a social idea in one or more groups of target recipients, as well as achieving the desired effect. behavioral change. Even if the marketed idea is accepted, social marketing is not successful until it can also induce action in the individual. Andreasen believes that social marketing is unique because:1. supports the need to make behavioral changes2. is extremely customer oriented3. requires a high level of creativity and ingenuity. Social marketing is in the growth phase of the product life cycle. It came to prominence with the family planning promotions of the 1960s. It was mentioned in the works of Kotler and Levy (1969) and Kotler and Zaltman (1971). It has gained acceptance over the years and is currently taught in many business schools and conferences and seminars regarding the same are held regularly across the world. It has become an important tool in the process of promoting various health and safety issues affecting society, such as smoking in public, immunization of children, wearing of seat belts and driving at speed limits, AIDS awareness programmes, girl child education, etc.Barriers and ObstaclesAndreasen, however, believes that social marketing runs the risk of not reaching its true potential due to numerous obstacles. These barriers exist due to a lack of clear understanding of what exactly social marketing is and what benefits and services it has to offer. A systematic study conducted by the Social Marketing Institute identified four key problem areas:1. Lack of awareness among top management: It has been observed that leaders of various non-profit organizations and government agencies are unaware of social marketing and/or its potential in bringing about social change. This has led to promising campaigns that either did not have a good social marketing program to spread their message or a poorly prepared and under-implemented social marketing campaign was used.2. Poor “brand positioning” of social marketing: The very concept of social marketing is unclear to many people due to various conflicting definitions and is also associated with some undesirable attributes. For example, social marketing is perceived as manipulative and not “community-based”. These biases arose due to incorrect assumptions that social marketing is similar to regular commercial marketing.