Gareth Shaw, Stewart Barr and Julie Wooler
The evolution of social marketing
For a subject that is only just over 40 years in the making social marketing has attracted a considerable amount of controversy and confusion over its actual defi nition. As a term social marketing appears to have been formally used for the fi rst time by Kotler and Zaltmann (1971) who viewed marketing as a technological process which in turn was to have implications for how they viewed social marketing. As Andreasen (2003) argues, the initial views of social marketing culminating in the defi nition in 1971 grew from early post-war ideas in the USA which saw the birth of marketing as a professional activity as a response to a growing consumer market (Truss et al. 2009). Social scientists such as Wiebe (1952) whilst acknowledging the power and effectiveness of marketing saw other opportunities for shifting such techniques from the selling of commodities through to the domain of social change. He went on to propose a series of processes and social mechanisms which would be required to mount a successful programme of social change via marketing.
Wiebe (1952) identifi ed the following key processes: force, direction, social mechanism, adequacy and compatibility, along with compatibility and distance. The fi rst mechanism of
‘force’ was needed and referred to there being suffi cient motivation from an individual to give attention to information being provided and equally to be strong enough to carry through to an action. The idea of ‘direction’ concerns how the individual could achieve the desired outcome, i.e. what type of behaviour was needed. ‘Social mechanism’ is that which needs to be put into place to achieve the outcome. This relates to perhaps structural changes to facilitate change, whilst ‘adequacy and compatibility’ relate to whether existing structures are suffi cient enough to deal with the processes of change. Finally, ‘distance’ was defi ned by Wiebe (1952) as the physical or psychological distance from one type of behaviour to another. He concluded that it should be possible to ‘market’ social goals since principles are similar to those used to change consumer purchasing habits.
It was these ideas that Kotler and Zaltman (1971) extended into the notion of social marketing which they saw as a framework or structure. Their work opened up a debate about not only the defi nition of social marketing but also its legitimacy as a distinct discipline. Thus, Luck (1974) argued that social marketing would struggle to be recognized as a discipline whilst its defi nition
Social marketing and tourism
Table 5.1 Key principles of social marketing
Principle Description
1. Customer or consumer placed at the centre
All interventions are based around and directly respond to the needs and wants of the person, rather than the person having to fit around the needs of the service or intervention. Social marketing seeks to understand ‘where the person is now’ rather than ‘where someone might think they are or should be’.
2. Clear behavioural goals Social marketing aims to achieve measurable impacts on what people actually do, not just their knowledge, awareness or beliefs about an issue.
3. Developing ‘insight’ Social marketing is driven by ‘actionable insights’ that are able to provide a practical steer for the selection and development of interventions. This means moving beyond demographic or epidemiological data to ask why people behave in the way that they do.
4. ‘The exchange’ Social marketing aims to maximize the potential ‘offer’ of a behavioural intervention, and its value to the audience, while minimizing all the ‘costs’ of adopting, maintaining or changing a particular behaviour. This involves considering ways to increase incentives and remove barriers to the positive behaviour, while doing the opposite for the negative or problematic behaviour.
5. ‘The competition’ Social marketing uses the concept of ‘competition’ to examine all the factors that compete for people’s attention and willingness or ability to adopt a desired behaviour.
6. Segmentation Social marketing uses a ‘segmentation’ approach that ensures interventions can be tailored to people’s different needs. In particular it looks at how different people are responding to an issue, and what motivates them.
7. The ‘marketing mix’ Single interventions are generally less effective than
multi-interventions, although multi-interventions are more time consuming and effortful. It is important to consider the relative mix between interventions selected.
Source: French et al. (2010) and Corner and Randall (2011)
and semantics remained blurred and imprecise. The debates and discussions from the 1960s through to the 1970s, according to Andreasen (2003), caused confusion on two fronts. First confusion grew over uses and the terminology of practice with ‘social marketing’, ‘not for profi t marketing’ and ‘responsible marketing’ all being considered similar. Second, there was a tendency to confuse social marketing ‘with just plain social advertising, public relations or most simply, mere education’ (Andreasen 2003: 295).
It was only during the 1990s that social marketing overcame its identity crises when as a subject it became more focussed on one of its key defi ning features, that of behaviour change (Andreasen 1999; 2003; Hornik 2002). This aspect of behaviour change in turn encouraged links with the theoretical work on change behaviour, whilst at the same time such perspectives led to the recognition of the key features of social marketing (Stead et al. 2007). Table 5.1 highlights four of these key characteristics and in doing so draws attention to the essence of social marketing as used in this chapter.
This chapter explores a number of key aspects of social marketing starting with the relationships with behaviour change within the context of more policy driven agendas, before going on to explore its application to aspects of tourism. In this latter context we examine the growing applications of social marketing to behaviour change within a tourism context using a case study example based on holiday travel and conclude by considering future research opportunities that this aspect of marketing presents.
Social marketing, behaviour change and the emergence of the concept of ‘nudge’
Whilst many of the early developments were in America with an emphasis on health and issues of increasing lifestyle choices (CDC 2005), there has in recent years been a widening of the social marketing agenda. Part of this unfolding research agenda has seen social marketing as a policy led tool for state campaigns on health, such as lowering alcohol consumption and stopping smoking (Gordon et al. 2006; Hastings 2007; National Social Marketing Centre 2006). In this context government policy has very often tended to use social marketing in terms of what Thaler and Sunstein (2008) describe as value-neutral approaches. Their infl uence has been signifi cant on both the US and the UK governments according to Corner and Randall (2011) with the value-neutral approach of social marketing, where the ‘characteristics of the audience and the social context determine’ the most effective approach, being taken up by UK government policy (2011: 1010).
This was most evident in the establishment of the ‘Behavioural Insight Team’ or what became known as the so-called nudge unit in 2010. The notion of nudge behaviour was central to the ideas at the heart of Thaler and Sunstein’s thesis. The basis of the ideas and their attractiveness to the UK government is in large part summed up by the following description, ‘A nudge, as we will use the term, is any aspect of choice architecture that alters people’s behaviour in a predictable way without forbidding any options or signifi cantly changing their economic incentives. To count as a mere nudge, the intervention must be easy and cheap to avoid’ (Thaler and Sunstein 2008: 6). The key aspects of this approach are fi rst it is value-neutral as previously mentioned and second it assumes interventions can be made easy. Both of which are politically attractive to central government.
Whilst their approach has moved social marketing into a different way of approaching behaviour change its basis in behavioural economics has been seen by some as being rather too simplifi ed. This view is supported by Hauseman and Welch (2010) who argued for a defi nition of nudge that recognised the fl aws in individual decision-making, thereby calling for nudges as
‘ways of infl uencing choice without limiting the choice set on making alternatives more costly in terms of time, trouble [and] social solutions’ (2010: 126). However, at a wider level the use of the nudge approach has also been questioned by other UK policy makers in the form of the Science and Technology Committee (2011). This in part called for more research and a greater understanding as well as criticizing the application of nudge tactics in isolation. Eagle et al. (2012) have widened this debate to call for a more critical evaluation of social marketing and the use of behaviour change theories, following critiques from a range of academics.
These have not dismissed the concept of nudge but rather sought to draw attention to some potential limitations. For example, Avineri and Goodwin (2010) argue that nudge is best applied to unintentional or automatic behaviours but tends not to work as effectively on knowledge and attitudes and as a consequence is less sustainable over the longer term. Similarly, Sugden (2009) and Marteau et al. (2009) contest the notion of nudge since what may be a nudge to some policy makers may be seen by the individual recipients as a distinct ‘shove’. Within the context of food policy and consumption patterns relating to healthy eating, there are mixed messages on the idea
Social marketing and tourism of using nudge theory (Food Ethics Council 2011). Thus, Warde (2011) suggests that ‘nudging will probably be ineffective in situations of intense market competition’ (2011: 21) such as in food retailing. As such the nudge mechanism on its own will struggle to overcome the commercial advertising of large supermarket organizations and food companies.
However, in spite of these concerns and possible limitations nudge is increasingly part of the UK policy landscape and attracting more interest from a wide range of academics. More recently the concepts of nudge and indeed the attempts to change behaviour using social marketing have been focussed on aspects of sustainable behaviour both in general terms and specifi cally in the context of travel. The latter has been fi rmly linked to the agenda of mitigating climate change (Corner and Randall 2011; Sussman 2010; Barr et al. 2011a). Social marketing has been used as one way of promoting sustainable lifestyles however slippery and ill defi ned this lifestyle concept is (Jackson 2005). Indeed the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) commissioned research under the leading ‘Promoting Sustainable Lifestyles: a social marketing approach’ in 2006, which included some work on holiday travel (Barr et al. 2006).
Predating the so-called nudge unit the National Social Marketing Centre applied campaigns promoting pro-environmental behaviour (Corner and Randall 2011; Peattie and Peattie 2009).
Such campaigns involved the ‘de-marketing’ of particular types of behaviours as well as promoting others. Such ideas were based on the notions of social marketing using in turn a number of underlying principles (Table 5.1). Of key importance is the idea of market segmentation and fi tting campaigns to particular segments of the market. As a comparison the Community Based Social Marketing programme in the USA (McKenzie Mohr 2000; Corner and Randall 2011) has also demonstrated in part the effectiveness of social marketing in terms of encouraging pro-environmental behaviour at the community level.
One of the central parts of Defra’s pro-environmental behaviour strategy is the development and application of a market segmentation policy. This embraces seven types of groups characterized by such criteria as environmental attitudes, socio-demographic variables and motivations. Such segments are based on the UK population relating to their propensity to undertake 12 key behaviours (Defra 2008). Clearly by using this approach behaviour change policy can be guided by social marketing techniques. As French et al. (2009) explain, social marketing for sustainability has emerged as both a major policy initiative and an academic area of research.
These are two key areas of academic concern relating to this social marketing approach; fi rst, the underlying concepts of behaviour research and second, the importance of ‘sites of practice’.
As we shall see the latter is of particular importance to enacting behaviour change in the context of sustainable practices on holiday.
In terms of behaviour research there are two broad perspectives we need to note (Barr et al.
2011a). One concerns the more social-psychological theories that use a range of models and seek to understand the infl uences on environmental behaviour. These include Fishbein and Ajzen’s (1975) ‘Theory of Reasoned Action’ and Ajzen’s (1991) ‘Theory of Planned Behaviour’.
Such ideas have been criticized on the grounds that they tend to over-rationalize behaviour and more specifi cally simplify the debates concerning environmental practices. More signifi cantly Eden (1993) argued that these rationalistic models are too linear in their approaches to decision making, and knowledge is often assumed to be a barrier to behaviour change. This forms the basis of the second main approach relating to the ideas of Shove (2003) with a perspective on social practices (Verbeck and Mommass 2008). In this context pro-environmental behaviour, ‘in its conventional setting is framed by and within the daily practices of individuals and the interactions with different social, political and material cultures’ (Barr et al. 2011b: 1235).
The second major area of interest concerns the notion of ‘sites of practice’, which are of particular signifi cance to enacting behaviour change relative to tourism consumption. Barr et al.
(2011b) argue that there is a need to focus on different sites of practice as a way of understanding and questioning sustainable lifestyles. We can recognize two signifi cant sites of practice in this context: the ‘home’ and the ‘holiday’. Increasingly the home is seen as a site of practice to engage in sustainable behaviour through energy savings and recycling. By comparison the holiday destination as a site of practice shifts the boundaries of sustainable action, and research by Barr et al. (2011c) has demonstrated that there is a need to recognize such ‘spaces of liminality’, leisure practices and the home. These are important complications for the application of social marketing in terms of sustainable behaviour and will be considered in the following section.
We started this section by highlighting the increasing attention given by policy makers to the ideas relating to nudge theory along with recent criticisms. In terms of promoting and enacting pro-environmental behaviour a consensus seems to be emerging that nudge will not provide a single way forward but rather needs to form part of a range of social marketing strategies. This was the clear message from the House of Lords Report (Science and Technology Committee 2011). Young and Middlemiss (2012) go further and suggest ‘a package of measures that impact on the individual, community and the wider context’. In these terms nudge strategies fi t by providing a range of choice architecture. Here choice architecture refers to the means by which decisions are infl uenced and by how such choices are presented to people. Nudge ideas involve arranging the choice architecture in such a way that may nudge individuals to a certain pattern of behaviour but at the same time not taking away any freedom of choice. This approach therefore is very different from ideas of interventions such as fi scal incentives. Young and Middlemiss (2012) have demonstrated in their review of different social marketing approaches and environmental behaviour the importance of using a package of incentives and penalties along with nudge actions. This to some extent contradicts some of the basic ideas associated with nudge strategies which do not embrace direct incentives but at the same time appears to offer a potentially effective strategy.
The ideas of social marketing therefore are centred on some key principles (Table 5.1) but in addition to these Ong and Blair-Stevens (2010) have also outlined the intervention process in terms of a ‘total process planning’ framework. This is based on a series of phases or stages (Table 5.2) that embrace the more practical aspects of social marketing. Using these basic ideas gives the social marketing process a clear set of bench marks to develop the key interventions.
Social marketing approaches to tourism and travel
The application of social marketing techniques to tourism and travel is a relatively new phenomenon and in large part intersects with the growing agenda on pro-environmental
Table 5.2 Key stages in the total process planning framework for a social marketing campaign
Stage Aspects
‘Scoping’ – Examining issues and challenges, gaining detail understanding of the lives and behaviours associated with main problem
‘Developing’ – Designing and developing behavioural goals into an intervention. Pre-test ideas to see which interventions likely to be most effective
‘Implementation’ – Rolling out the intervention and monitoring its progress
‘Evaluation’ – Receiving and reassessing the cost effectiveness of the campaign
Source: Ong and Blair-Stevens (2010)
Social marketing and tourism behaviour and issues of climate change. Early inroads were made by tourism researchers seeking to explore the concepts and techniques of social marketing in the context of sustainable tourism.
For example Dinan and Sargeant (2000) published one of the earliest papers which applied some basic ideas of social marketing, including the social marketing mix, to a survey of 540 visitors to three attractions in Devon (UK). This focussed on attempting to identify those market segments that had visitors willing to follow a responsible code of conduct. They concluded that, ‘social marketing may have much to offer those responsible for the management of tourism products’
(Dinan and Sargeant 2000: 11). In effect one part of the study was suggestive of the possible development of promotional marketing campaigns that focussed potentially on those individuals who had ‘expressed a willingness to change’. The intervention part of social marketing was therefore limited.
Surprisingly this early study did not spark wider scale interest in social marketing, in part because it did not engage with the underlying theories of behaviour change. At the same time Bright (2000) argued for the use of the practices of social marketing to market the quality of life benefi ts of tourism and recreation – seeing a strong link between social marketing and recreational tourism. Hall (2013) has provided a discussion of the interests in social marketing by tourism researchers using a range of examples. However, he also admits that ‘direct tourism related research on social marketing is still very limited’ (Hall 2013: 5). He sees this in part as a matter of labelling given the growing interest in sustainability research and climate change being undertaken within tourism. Whilst much of this work may use the ideas of social marketing the authors do not label their projects as such (Hall 2013). Table 5.3 gives a short summary of selected social marketing approaches within tourism and in part illustrates the issues associated with both labelling as well as the actual use of social marketing processes.
We would add to Hall’s view by returning to the ‘sites of practice’ discussion and argue the diffi culties of spill-over sustainable behaviour between say home and holiday sites of practice.
Our research on the use of air travel for holiday use has shown that even committed environ-mentalists within a domestic site of practice may very well not follow such pro-environmental behaviours when it comes to holidays (Barr et al. 2011a, 2011b, 2011c). Under these circumstances changing behaviour in terms of both social practices and sites of practice presents a more challenging set of circumstances for social marketing. One of the accepted social practices for holiday makers is the use of air travel and increasingly low cost carriers for short haul fl ights.
Cohen et al. (2011) have discussed the so-called addiction some consumers have with a behavioural addiction to air travel. Such social practices are behavioural tendencies that contribute to climate change and lead to unsustainable patterns of behaviour. The issue is whether a social
Table 5.3 Selected examples of social marketing and tourist behaviour
Authors Context
Dinan and Sargeant (2000) Social marketing applied to visitor attractions, review of marketing mix Bright (2000) General review but applications to healthy lifestyles and social welfare Beeton (2001) Ideas of de-marketing of gambling holidays
Beeton and Benfield (2012) De-marketing to control demand in environmental sensitive areas Wearing et al. (2007) Developing target marketing messages for national parks
Kim et al. (2006) Use of films promoting pro-environmental behaviour. Limited use of social marketing methods
Source: Authors and modified from Hall (2013)
marketing campaign can be used to change such behaviour. To explore these ideas we have presented a case study based on a recent research project working jointly with two social marketing companies. The purpose of the case study is to highlight the key processes of a social marketing campaign.
We do this to move beyond many of the more general ideas of social marketing that are presented and also to show the nature of the stages involved in this context and as a form of action research in the social marketing of holiday travel behaviour.
Approaches to social marketing and sustainable travel behaviour:
a case study
The case study formed part of a project entitled ‘Social marketing for sustainability: developing a community of practice for co-creating behavioural change campaigns’ (ESRC 2012). This project aimed to explore the potential of establishing a collaborative ‘community of practice’
between academics and practitioners to in turn develop a series of applications using existing technology platforms (for promoting responsible environmental behaviour). The focus was on reducing travel and tourism’s impact on climate change. This in itself has been a rich source of potential for social marketing within tourism but few projects have actually tackled in detail the idea and more importantly the steps towards enacting behaviour change using social marketing strategies. The project had a number of research objectives but the two of most relevance to this case study are:
1 To co-create with practitioners an approach towards developing social marketing strategies relating to sustainable holiday travel.
2 To co-create a platform of products using social marketing for promoting responsible travel amongst key market segments.
The starting point for any social marketing strategy is indentifying the key behavioural goal. This is something that has to be achievable and again it is important that targets are not set too ambitiously. In our case our goal was ‘to reduce so-called “aspiring green travellers” who fl y short haul in the UK and Europe by 5 per cent by 2015’. However, our key focus was to switch travellers from plane to train on selected European routes.
Flying was chosen as it is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions and it accounts for 7 per cent of UK carbon emissions. In addition it is often at odds with the political agenda so there is no government policy to counteract the increasing demand for air travel. Finally, it appeared possible to reduce fl ying in certain circumstances as a potential behaviour change.
The main stages of research associated with the process of social marketing are shown in Table 5.4. As can be seen most effort was devoted to considering who were the key market segments and also what were the key challenges in attempting to change attitudes and hence behaviour. These are both critical starting points in the development of any social marketing strategy.
In terms of fl ying habits the highest number of users is in the socio-economic groups ABC1 and certainly in the fi rst two of these. Using a desk based study, data from Mosaic identifi ed three very general groups (Mosaic UK 2009), namely: ‘Liberal opinions’ (young professionals);
‘Suburban mindsets’ (mainly married middle aged people); and ‘Professional Rewards’ (managerial classes, 40+ years old with considerable spending power). Working in partnership with a social marketing company ‘Uscreates’ along with two other such organizations as stakeholders (Jeff French and Hyder Consultancy), more market segmentation analysis was undertaken and
Social marketing and tourism Table 5.4 Key phases in a social marketing strategy
Phase 1
• Identifying the behaviour change target
• Identifying the main market segments
• Identifying key issues regarding attitudes/behaviours
• What trends/themes can be used
• Recruiting consumers within the selected market segments
Phase 2
• Development of co-creation workshops
• Key topics for discussion/operation within the workshops, namely i. Green attitudes and behaviours
ii. Flying: attitudes/behaviours iii. Rail travel: attitudes/behaviours iv. The decision making process v. Switching triggers/ideas
Phase 3
• Experimental marketing
• Developing and launching the social marketing interventions
Source: Authors and Uscreates
Table 5.5 Market segments identified in social marketing exercise Group Age range Characteristics
½ 25–early 30s ‘Generation Y’ – Young professionals engaging in environmental behaviour but reluctant to give up regular travel, seeking new experiences, individual income £40k, couple £80k+. ABC1
3 30–55 yrs ‘Suburban families’, married, unpretentious, engaged in environmental behaviour, car dependent household, income £80k+. ABC1
4 Over 55 yrs ‘Empty nesters’, married, grey gappers, environmentally aware, no guilt on environment – doing enough, income £80k+ (individual) ABC1
Source: Survey data collected in London (2012) for co-creation workshops
mapped onto the Defra sustainable behaviour segments (Defra 2006). Two of these segments had positive attitudes towards sustainable behaviour: ‘Positive Greens’ (approximately 18 per cent of the population) and ‘Concerned Consumers’ (14 per cent of the population). From further market research analysis two key market segments were identifi ed: ‘Generation Y’ (Liberal Opinions) and ‘Empty Nesters’ (Professional Rewards). These were to form the focus of co-creation workshops which were undertaken in a second phase of the research (Table 5.5).
The challenges to behaviour change are associated with the key motivations for fl ying, including – it’s quicker, cheaper, easier and more convenient than other alternatives in most cases.
It is also one of the last actions that many individuals are willing to reduce of all environmentally friendly behaviours. However, social market strategies also seek to identify those positive ideas/
attitudes that exist to help change behaviour – in a way this can link with the notions of nudge
discussed earlier. These are associated with changing habits in gradual ways rather than stopping fl ying. Some sustainable travel companies already promote around savouring the journey (see for example Snowcarbon 2012). The ideas that our strategy attempted to harness embraced: a focus on values rather than actions, small changes rather than stopping fl ying, links with pro-environmental attitudes and to develop positive networks around such pro-pro-environmental behaviour.
Individuals were recruited via on-street surveys in parts of London (Islington, Dulwich and Surbiton) during 2012. The recruitment questionnaire along with so-called ‘vox-pops’
video interviews were aimed at the high end of four market segments along with fl ying habits (on average most groups identifi ed in Table 5.4 made three or more short haul fl ights per year).
In phase 2 of the research (Table 5.4) a key component was the use of co-creation workshops undertaken by the social marketing company Uscreates. These workshops were held for each of the four segments and contained six respondents per segment selected from the on-street interviews. The workshops differed from normal focus groups in that attendees were presented with the problem of how to change holiday travel behaviour from plane to train for certain short haul fl ights. This followed a citizen-central approach to social marketing as suggested by French et al. (2010). This argues that citizen consumers are not passive, calling for a more pragmatic and insight driven approach. Our use of co-creation workshops was therefore developed to serve such a strategy.
The workshops were used in two ways to inform the project on key aspects of behaviour change and to help co-create a behavioural change campaign. The workshops were designed to open up discussions in a playful way and in turn create opportunities for new ideas. Topics discussed within the workshops included: attitudes to climate change and sustainability, notions of environmental cynicism, attitudes and behaviour to fl ying, rail travel, switching triggers and ideas. It is not possible to present all the results here but we focus on the key points regard-ing plane and train travel along with switchregard-ing triggers and related ideas. At this stage in the analysis our key market segments had been reduced to two core groups, ‘Generation Y’ and
‘Empty Nesters’.
As expected plane travel was favoured for costs and time in the early stages of decision making, but few actually enjoyed the experience of fl ying. A frequently used statement in the workshops was plane travel ‘was a necessary evil’ with the whole process ‘being fairly unpleasant’
(quotes from ‘Empty Nesters’). However, the workshops highlighted the obstacles to behavioural change. These were that fl ying was the social norm as illustrated by the following quotes: ‘We are used to the plane, it’s a habit’ (‘Generation Y’), and ‘I guess I do it because everybody does. I just don’t think about it’ (‘Generation Y’).
In terms of the environmental impacts of fl ying in all the workshops few people had very little knowledge, with levels of understanding ranging from confusion, scepticism, powerlessness to transferral of blame.
In contrast, the attitudes towards rail travel were rooted in a great many negatives, associated with costs, time and the problems of getting to the station. Typical views were: ‘The train is so much more expensive than getting on a plane’ (‘Generation Y’), ‘Carrying a heavy case on public transport is diffi cult’ (‘Empty Nesters’). In terms of continental travel there were lots of positive experiences of using the Eurostar but people were more uncertain of continental sleeper trains.
Comments such as ‘I don’t consider it safe on trains, if they are sleeper trains’ (‘Empty Nesters’),
‘It can be unsafe. I don’t know if I’d take one’ (‘Empty Nesters’) were common. However, in general terms people spoke more passionately about continental train travel in terms of comfort, relaxation, ‘quality time’ and enjoyment.