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PAUL N. BLOOM &WILLIAM D. NOVELLI
Numerous problems can arise in attempting to use conventional, textbook approaches in social marketing programs.
This article contains a review of these problems and draws
on the experiences of the authors for supporting arguments
and examples.
PROBLEMS AND CHALLENGES
IN SOCIAL MARKETING
Introduction
M
UCH has been written about social marketing
since Kotler and Zaltman (1971) introduced
the concept a decade ago. The literature has contained extended discussions about the definition of
social marketing (Lazer and Kelley 1973, Sheth and
Wright 1974), the ethics of social marketing (Laczniak, Lusch, and Murphy 1979), the appropriateness
of broadening the marketing discipline to include
social marketing (Luck 1974), and the potential of
applying various social science theories in social
marketing contexts (Swinyard and Ray 1977). In
addition, several case studies of social marketing
efforts have been reported (Blakely, Schutz, and
Harvey 1977, Gutman 1978). However, there have
been few attempts (Rothschild 1979) to move beyond
the reporting of case studies toward the development
of general knowledge about social marketing, including knowledge about the problems most organizations tend to find in applying conventional marketing approaches in social programs.
This article identifies a set of general problems
that confront practitioners who attempt to transfer
Paul N. Bloom is 1980-81 Visiting Research Professor,
Marketing Science Institute, and Associate Professor of
Marketing, University of Maryland. William D. Novelli
is President, Porter, Novelli & Associates, Inc., Washington, DC. The authors would like to thank Alan Andreasen,
Gerald Zaltman, Patrick Murphy, and Susan Watson for
their comments and suggestions.
Journal of Marketing
Vol. 45 (Spring 1981), 79-88.
the marketing approaches used to sell toothpaste
and soap to promote concepts like smoking cessation, safe driving, and breast self-examination. An
awareness of these problems should allow social
agency administrators or their marketing advisors
to formulate more workable and effective social
marketing programs. While the authors believe
strongly in the contribution marketing can make
to social programs, they feel compelled to temper
the enthusiasm that many have shown for social
marketing by pointing out the difficulties and challenges associated with its practice.
Note that the term social marketing is used
throughout this article to mean “the design, implementation, and control of programs seeking to
increase the acceptability of a social idea or practice
in a target group(s)” (Kotler 1975, p. 283). Consequently, social marketing is treated as an endeavor
that can be engaged in by profit making organizations (e.g., a liquor company program encouraging
responsible drinking), as well as by nonprofit and
public organizations. It is also treated as an endeavor
that generally encourages people to do something
that will be beneficial to more than just themselves
(Lovelock 1979).For example, responsible drinking,
safe driving, and smoking cessation can all reduce
health hazards for others or lower the insurance
premiums of others. This article is concerned with
the marketing of social ideas and behaviors by any
organization to any target group.
The problems discussed here have come to the
Problems and Challenges in Social Marketing / 79
attention of the authors through work they have
done with numerous social agencies and organizations. Problems are identified in eight basic decision
making areas: market analysis, market segmentation, product strategy development, pricing strategy
development, channel strategy development, communications strategy development, organizational
design and planning, and evaluation. In each area
an effort has been made to point out several problems encountered by social marketers that typically
do not face the large commercial marketers who
are the focus of most textbook examples. Admittedly, many of the cited problems may also confront
small businesses and other less conventional marketers. But the discussion here will concentrate on
how these problems manifest themselves for social
marketers.
Market Analysis Problems
A basic tenet of marketing is that an organization
builds its marketing program using research it has
gathered on the wants, needs, perceptions, attitudes,
habits, and satisfaction levels of its markets. The
good marketer is supposed to examine previous
research on his or her consumers and, if necessary,
conduct original consumer research in order to
design maximally effective marketing strategies.
Although large commercial marketers surely have
difficulty accumulating valid, reliable, and relevant
data about their consumers, the data gathering
problems facing the social marketer tend to be far
more serious. Social marketers typically find that:
• They have less good, secondary data available
about their consumers. Social marketers can
rarely go to the shelf to get fast, inexpensive
guidance from reports on previous consumer
studies. Most social organizations have done
little consumer research, and what has been
done has been weakened by small budgets
and, consequently, poor samples and simplistic analysis procedures. Moreover, there are
no syndicated services or panels available
that can provide reasonably priced data on
health behavior, safety behavior, conservation behavior, etc. Perhaps the best source
of secondary data is the academic or scholarly
literature. Journals such as the Journal of
Health and Social Behavior, American Journal of Public Health, Health and Society, and
Social Service Review can sometimes be helpful. But many academic works tend to be
narrowly focused and hard to tap for action80 / Journal of Marketing, Spring 1981
able marketing ideas (especially by people
with limited research backgrounds). Unfortunately, marketing academics-who have the
capability of producing consumer studies that
could be more readily used by social marketing planners-have given only limited attention to how consumers deal with social ideas
and behaviors (Rothschild 1979, Swinyard
and Ray 1977).
• They have more difficulty obtaining valid,
reliable measures ofsalient variables. In doing
primary data collection, social marketers
must ask people questions about topics such
as smoking, sickness, sex, and charitytopics that touch people’s deepest fears,
anxieties, and values. While people are generally willing to be interviewed about these
topics, they are more likely to give inaccurate,
self-serving, or socially desirable answers to
such questions than to questions about cake
mixes, soft drinks, or cereals. A recent study
on how to ask questions about drinking and
sex suggests that “threatening questions requiring quantified answers are best asked in
open-ended, long questions with respondentfamiliar wording” (Blair et al. 1977, p. 316).
Using such methods can be extremely timeconsuming and expensive.
• They have more difficulty sorting out the
relative influence of identified determinants
of consumer behavior. Social behaviors tend
to be extremely complex and usually hinge
on more than just one or two variables. The
reasons patients drop out of antihypertensive
drug therapy, for instance, may be related
to an individual’s limited self-discipline, lack
of family support, drug side effects, physician/patient miscommunication, or any combination of these and other factors. It is
extremely difficult for respondents to sort
out these contributing variables in their own
minds, and articulate them to a researcher
in such a way that they can be recorded and
analyzed for marketing planning. Furthermore, asking physicians to untangle patient
behavior is often no more enlightening than
asking the patients themselves. A recent
study of physicians revealed, for example,
that the reason patients were not on antihypertensive therapy was because they were
not following the regimen that had been
prescribed for them (U.S. Department of
Health, Education, and Welfare 1979). This
may be logical, in a self-evident sort of way,
but not very helpful to the marketing planner.
• They have more difficulty getting consumer
research studies funded, approved, and completed in a timely fashion. Social agencies
typically have very limited funds, and the
intangible output of a research study is often
more difficult to justify to donors (e.g.,
Congress) than the more tangible output of
a new program or publication. Furthermore,
if the federal government is involved in some
way in the proposed research, lengthy delays
often will occur while the questionnaire and
research design are approved by the agency
doing the study, its Department, the Office
of Management and Budget, and other parties. For example, the Office of Cancer
Communications of the National Cancer
Institute began the paperwork on a straightforward three stage study of knowledge,
attitudes, and reported behavior related to
breast cancer in April 1977. Red tape and
the system delayed the completion of the
analysis of the full study until July, 1980.
As a final comment on market analysis problems,
it should be pointed out that the red tape that chokes
and delays consumer studies can lead to some very
unsound but highly original research tactics. One
ploy is to conduct focus groups, always with fewer
than nine respondents. This gets around the letter,
if not the spirit, of the OMB clearance regulations
concerning what constitutes a survey. However,
this tactic, while it may provide some useful research
hypotheses, can lead to misleading conclusions and
poor planning. This is because the focus groups
are often not followed by larger scale studies to
quantify the preliminary findings and assess the
hypotheses. The misuse of qualitative research as
a substitute, rather than a precursor, to more definitive research appears to be a common problem
among many social agencies.
Market Segmentation Problems
The process of dividing up the market into homogeneous segments and then developing unique marketing programs for individual target segments
(while perhaps ignoring certain segments) is fundamental to modern marketing. Market segmentation
is generally viewed as being more productive than
treating the entire market in an undifferentiated
manner. Although market segmentation is widely
utilized and accepted by most profit making and
many nonprofit (e.g., universities, hospitals) marketers, social marketers find that:
• They face pressure against segmentation, in
general, and especially against segmentation
that leads to the ignoring of certain segments.
The notion of treating certain groups differently or with special attention while perhaps ignoring other groups completely, is not
consistent with the egalitarian and antidiscriminatory philosophies that pervade many
social agencies (particularly those within
government). The social marketer is, therefore, frequently asked to avoid segmenting
or to try to reach an unreasonably large
number of segments (Lovelock and Weinberg
1975). If a marketing plan has only a few
target markets identified, requests will be
made to add to the list of targets until, with
the limited funds that usually are available,
only a very broad and very shallow marketing
effort is authorized. This will produce the
opposite of the rifle approach the marketer
normally attempts to bring to bear.
An example of this problem occurred in
a multiagency federal effort in 1978-79 to
increase public understanding of the health
risks of exposure to asbestos, and to persuade
those exposed to get regular medical checkups, stop smoking, and seek prompt medical
treatment for respiratory illness. The serious
diseases associated with asbestos take from
15 to 35 years to develop, and workers
exposed during World War II (especially ship
yard workers) were identified as the primary
target segment for the program. However,
due to the mandates of some of the agencies
involved, it became necessary also to target
the effort to current workers. The characteristics of this segment differed substantially
from the other, and throughout the planning
and implementation of the program, there was
a constant problem about whether to divide
limited resources or simply take a general
audience route.
• They frequently do not have accurate behavioral data to use in identifying segments. The
data collection problems alluded to earlier
impede segmentation attempts by making it
difficult to separate users from nonusers.
Utilizing self reports on behaviors like breast
self-examination and contraceptive usage can
be very misleading, and it may be impossible
to obtain other behavioral measures (e.g.,
observational data).
• Their target segments must often consist of
those consumers who are the most negatively
Problems and Challenges in Social Marketing / 81
predisposed to their offerings. Social marketers often segment on the basis of risk to
the consumer. They will target their efforts
at drivers who tend to avoid using seat belts,
sexually active teenagers who tend to avoid
using contraceptives, heavy smokers, etc.
They may sometimes even target their efforts
at segments facing greater legal risk, such
as in a program recently formulated by William Novelli to persuade sheet metal contractors to recruit and accept more women into
their field. This segmentation approach
creates situations where social marketers face
target markets having the strongest negative
dispositions toward their offerings-the
exact opposite of the situation faced by most
commercial marketers. Moreover, as Rothschild (1979) has pointed out, these target
markets are frequently highly involved with
their negative feelings, making them much .
more resistant to changing their views than
people who have negative attitudes toward
low involved products like soap or bread.
Product Strategy Problems
Once the marketer has analyzed the market and
determined target segments, he or she should then
develop an offering that conforms closely to the
desires of the target segments. Conventional marketers will typically adjust product characteristics,
packaging, the product name, the product concept,
and the product position to increase the likelihood
of a sale to the target segments. However, social
marketers find:
• They tend to have less flexibility in shaping
their products or offerings (Kotler 1975,
Lovelock and Weinberg 1975). They often find
themselves locked into marketing a given
social behavior that cannot be modified or
changed. This could occur because the government might approve of only one way of
doing the behavior. For example, social
marketers may be able to market only one
way to get a home insured against floods
or one way to get a child immunized. On
the other hand, they may be able to market
several ways of quitting smoking, getting
physically fit, or conserving energy.
• They have more difficulty formulatingproduct
concepts. They frequently find that the product they are selling is a complex behavior
which may, in some cases, have to be repeat82 / Journal of Marketing, Spring 1981
ed over a considerable period of time. It
therefore becomes difficult to formulate a
simple, meaningful product concept around
which a marketing and communications program can be built. Effective concepts like
a squeezably soft toilet paper and an extra
thick and zesty spaghetti sauce do not come
readily to mind when thinking about selling
behaviors such as drug therapy maintenance
or use of an in-home colon-rectal cancer
detection test (i.e., the hemocult test). In
addition, the problems associated with doing
consumer research (discussed above) tend to
hinder product concept development.
• They have more difficulty selecting and implementing long-term positioning strategies. Assuming the social marketer has some ability
to shape the offering and to formulate a
relatively simple product concept, he or she
may still have major problems selecting a
product position that will be attractive and / or
acceptable to the extremely diverse publics
that impact on the typical social agency. The
current dilemma of the Asthma and Allergy
Foundation of America (AAF A) illustrates
this problem. The new executive director
wants to revitalize the agency at the national
headquarters level, to strengthen the existing
13 chapters, and to add new chapters
throughout the country. She sees several
positioning options open to help AAFA
achieve these objectives, including presenting
AAF A as a service organization, a research
organization, or a public education organization. The best positioning approach is not
clear, as each position has a positive appeal
for some publics and a negative appeal for
other publics. For instance, projecting a service position will probably help AAF A in
its exchange relationships with patients and
local chapter volunteers and personnel (who
apparently favor this stance), but it might
not be the best approach for attracting funds
from donors or for generating public clamor
for more congressional funding of research
and public education.
Even if the social marketer can settle on
a preferred positioning strategy, the implementation of this strategy over a lengthy
period of time may be impossible. Social
marketers frequently do not have the ability
to communicate persistently and present a
position-like Avis did with “We Try
Harder”-for more than a few months. The
result is often consumer confusion about what
it is an agency or program is trying to accomplish. The short life of many positioning
strategies is caused (in government agencies
at least) by frequent budget shifts, sudden
personnel changes, a desire to show that
something new and different is being tried,
and other forces. For example, the government rarely concentrates funds and effort on
a single problem for an extended period,
producing instead what seems like a disease
of the month approach; A notable exception
is the National High Blood Pressure Education Program, which has been unerring in
its positioning for eight years and has made
substantial progress in contributing to hypertension control in the United States (Ward
1978).
Because doing anything in the product strategy
is difficult for social marketers, many will ignore
this aspect of marketing planning and, instead,
concentrate their efforts on developing advertising
and promotion strategies for the product they have
been told to sell. However, social marketers should
recognize that although they may be unable to adjust
the performance characteristics of their products,
they may be able to adjust the perception characteristics of their products and achieve significant
results. Through minimal amount of product testing
research with consumers, and some creative concept
development and positioning, social marketers can
gain confidence that the signals being transmitted
by their offerings are favorable. They can also avoid
making the kind of product strategy mistake made
by the Agency for International Development in
a program designed to persuade Nicaraguan mothers
to give their babies the proper treatment for diarrhea
(a major cause of infant mortality). Problems occurred with this program because of lack of in-home
product testing of the super lemonade (a rehydration
solution) the program promoted. It was discovered
after the program had begun, that the solution may
not have been administered in some cases because
some mothers who sampled it before giving it to
their babies, thought it tasted bad. In addition, there
was evidence that some women had difficulty measuring the ingredients and concocting the solution.
The solution also caused the diarrhea to increase
for a short time after first being administered,
providing mothers with a potential signal that the
product was ineffective or perhaps even harmful.
In a new program in Honduras, extensive formative
research, including product testing, is being applied
(Smith 1980).
Pricing Strategy Problems
Marketers of most products and services find that
the development of a pricing strategy involves
primarily the determination of an appropriate (i.e.,
goal satisfying) monetary price to charge for an
offering. On the other hand:
• Social marketers find that the development
of a pricing strategy primarily involves trying
to reduce the monetary, psychic, energy, and
time costs incurred by consumers when engaging in a desired social behavior. Social
marketers generally have much more complex
objective functions than commercial marketers. They are primarily concerned with shifting birth rates, death rates, pollution levels,
and the like, and are concerned with the
financial consequences of their actions only
to the extent that they want to insure their
organization’s financial viability. They do not
price their offerings to maximize financial
returns but instead try to price offerings to
minimize any barriers that might be preventing consumers from taking desired actions.
This task is made difficult because consumer
research data are often not available to provide social marketers with information about
the psychic, energy, and time costs consumers perceive as being associated with a
particular action. In other words:
• Social marketers have difficulties measuring
their prices (Rothschild 1979). In addition,
the pricing task is made difficult because:
• Social marketers tend to have less control
over consumer costs. Unlike commercial
marketers who can readily change consumer
costs by essentially adjusting monetary
prices, social marketers often can do little
to change the time costs involved with carpooling, the embarrassment costs involved
with getting an examination for cervical
cancer, or other nonmonetary costs. In some
cases, all the social marketer can do is try
to make sure that consumers perceive the
various costs accurately and do not inflate
them in their minds. In other cases, however,
the social marketer may at least be able to
cut some red tape or eliminate other inconveniences to lower the price. This last strategy
is being employed in the food stamp program
of New York State. They have made it easier
to become enrolled and have eliminated the
necessity of putting up any money with food
stamps in the retail stores. Additional strateProblems and Challenges in Social Marketing / 83
gies for lowering time costs are discussed
in a recent paper by Fox (1980).
Channels Strategy Problems
Developing a channels strategy usually gets an
organization involved with selecting appropriate
intermediaries through which to distribute its products or offerings, and formulating ways to control
these intermediaries to make sure they behave in
a supportive manner. Social marketers typically
must distribute the idea of engaging in a social
behavior and/ or a place to engage in such behavior,
rather than a tangible product. However, they find
that, relative to more conventional marketers:
• They have more difficulty utilizing and controlling desired intermediaries. Social marketers often find that they cannot convince
desired intermediaries, such as doctors or the
television news media, to pass along and
support an idea, nor can they control effectively what these intermediaries might say
if they choose to cooperate. Control over
clinics, community centers, government field
offices, or other places where a social behavior might be performed or encouraged is also
frequently lacking. Unfortunately, social
marketers usually cannot provide incentives
to desired intermediaries to get cooperation,
as a business marketer would do, and they
generally cannot afford to build their own
distribution channels. To achieve a smoothly
functioning distribution system of basically
volunteers, they must rely primarily on the
attractiveness of their offerings, the creativity
of their appeals for assistance, and the quality
of their intermediary training programs.
ran up against the problem that, although the
physicians wanted to cooperate, they did not
know the most effective quitting skills, or
benefits, or how to communicate them. It,
therefore, became necessary to teach physicians how to teach patients-a task that was
complicated by the beliefs held by many
physicians that they are adept at all facets
of patient management.
Communications Strategy Problems
There are several approaches that marketers use
to communicate with their target markets. These
include advertising, public relations, sales promotion, personal contact, and atmospherics. Social
marketers, however, often find that their communications options are somewhat limited. As discussed
in the previous section, social marketers sometimes
find channels of distribution for their ideas unavailable or difficult to control. For instance:
• The federal flood insurance program has had
difficulty getting insurance companies’ agents
to add flood insurance to their product line.
The agents have seen this insurance as being
hard to learn about, hard to sell (with government forms and regulations to worry about),
and low in profitability.
• They usually find paid advertising impossible
to use. This problem may arise because of
advertising’s cost or because of media fears
of offending certain advertisers or audiences
by carrying messages about controversial
social issues. In addition, many voluntary
organizations may see paid advertising as
impossible to use because they fear the effects on all voluntary organizations. If the
American Cancer Society pays for an antismoking campaign, then the media might ask
the American Lung Association and others
to pay for their campaigns also. Furthermore,
government agencies may see paid advertising as impossible to use because they fear
criticism about wasting taxpayer money and
about having the media overly populated with
government sponsored advertisements (e.g.,
military recruitment). Questions could arise
about who controls the media if the government became the largest total advertiser.
An inability to use paid advertising restricts many social marketers to the use of
public service announcements. Since the
competition for PSA time and space is heated,
social marketers often find they cannot control the reach and frequency of their messages
among their target segments. Audience coverage, therefore, becomes much more uncertain.
• A program designed to motivate physicians
to teach their patients how to quit smoking
Social marketers face several other communications problems:
The problems associated with establishing, utilizing, and controlling distribution channels produce
a major difference between social and more conventional forms of marketing. The following two
examples illustrate just how serious these problems
can be.
84 / Journal of Marketing, Spring 1981
• They often face pressure not to use certain
types of appeals in their messages (Houston
and Homans 1977, Lovelock and Weinberg
1975). Donors and other influential parties
may not want to see a social change organization cheapened by the use of hard sell, fear,
or humor appeals. The use of hard sell and
fear appeals may also be unwise when target
audiences are strongly predisposed against
a social behavior. These appeals could backfire and solidify a person’s feelings against
behaviors such as seat belt usage, smoking
cessation, or responsible drinking. In general,
an audience reaction of they can’t tell me
how to run my life is much more likely to
confront a social marketer than a more conventional marketer.
• They usually must communicate relatively
large amounts of information in their messages. Social marketers typically need to say
more to consumers in a media message than
commercial marketers. A complex social behavior may need to be described, along with
the benefits of the behavior (i.e., a reason
why) and a time and a place for acting.
Particular emphasis must be given to presenting benefits, since the benefits of behaviors
like reducing salt in the diet or lowering one’s
thermostat might not be as obvious or personal to people as the benefits of buying a
new car or piece of clothing (Rothschild 1979).
Equally important is a message conclusion,
which tells in specific terms what (and where
and when) the consumer should do next. The
social marketer cannot be like most commercial marketers and assume that consumers
know this (e.g., pick up a six pack at the
store and drink it). Unfortunately, the need
to provide large amounts of information
forces many social marketing messages to
close with the old standby, For more information, please call or write . . . .
The need to communicate large amounts
of information makes it imperative for social
marketers to look beyond the use of public
service announcements toward the use of
nonadvertising channels of communication
(Rothschild 1979, Mendelsohn 1973). One
program that has clearly recognized this necessity is the breast cancer education program
of the National Cancer Institute. They have
recognized that communicating the benefits
of doing breast selfexamination is very problematical, since unlike many other preventive
health behaviors (e.g., exercise, taking blood
pressure medication), the payoff is perceived
by many women as the discovery of sickness
rather than the improvement of one’s health.
This program has, therefore, shifted its
emphasis away from media messages toward
more personal forms of communication using
health care professionals and other credible
intermediaries.
• They have difficulty conducting meaningful
pretests of messages. Given the problems
social marketers tend to have with selecting
appeals and communicating desired behaviors, it would seem essential for careful
pretesting to be done on social media messages. However, pretests of social messages
run up against the same funding and measurement problems discussed earlier. For
example, in a recent test of a message on
the need to take mental patients out of institutions and accept them into our communities, few respondents gave expected (but
socially unacceptable) comments such as: “I
don’t like the message. These people are
dangerous and unpredictable and I don’t want
them in my neighborhood.”
Pretesting is also made less meaningful
by the lack of any norms or standards against
which newly tested social messages can be
compared. Clearly, it would be instructive
to the social marketer to know how his / her
message performed compared to previously
tested messages on measures of comprehension, recall, believability, personal relevance,
etc. Fortunately, social marketers working
in the health area can now get comparison
data on pretest performances by using the
newly established Health Message Testing
Service. This service, funded and administered by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood
Institute, National Cancer Institute, and several other Federal agencies, has now tested
more than thirty-five television and radio
messages with samples of up to 300 individuals. The service invites randomly selected
subjects from specified target audiences to
view pilot television programs that have
health messages and other commercials
appearing within them. During an experimental period that is still underway, the service
has been conducting pretests for public and
nonprofit organizations at no charge. The data
accumulated by the service is also available
at no charge. A print. testing capability is
Problems and Challenges in Social Marketing / 85
now being added to the service (Novelli 1978,
Bratic and Greenberg 1980).’
Organizational Design and Planning
Problems
The well-managed marketing organization has a
marketing person in a key position at the top of
the organization chart and numerous well-trained
marketing individuals throughout the organization.
This organization has a carefully drawn marketing
plan developed annually, with procedures set up
to make sure the plan is implemented and monitored.
However, social marketers typically find that while
social organizations usually know something about
management and organizational design, they rarely
have an interest in setting up responsive marketing
organizations with marketing planning and control
procedures. Social marketers typically find that:
• They must function in organizations where
marketing activities are poorly understood,
weakly appreciated, and inappropriately located. Social organizations have a tendency
to adopt marketing in small doses. The management may decide to try marketing by hiring
a few employees or consultants with marketing backgrounds. These persons are generally
assigned to work with public affairs or public
information offices because management
generally equates marketing with communications or promotion. The results the marketers can achieve in these positions are quite
limited, since they have little influence over
program development and administration
