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A Brief Overview on Societal Marketing Concept & Practices









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Introduction
Business executives are often perplexed by the continuous expansion of society's expectations
of corporations. For example, in the corporate world, numerous laws and extensive
government regulation affect virtually every aspect of business activities. They touch almost
every business decision ranging from the production of goods and services to their packaging,
distribution, marketing, and service. Thus, not only are companies held responsible for
maximizing profits for the owners and shareholders and for operating within the legal
framework, they are also expected to support their employees' quality of work life, to
demonstrate their concern for the communities within which their businesses operate, to
minimize the impact of various hazards on the global environment, and to engage in purely
social or philanthropic endeavors.
The societal marketing concept is an enlightened marketing concept that holds that a company
should make good marketing decisions by considering consumers' wants, the company's
requirements, and society's long-term interests. It is closely linked with the principles of
corporate social responsibility and of sustainable development. The concept has an emphasis
on social responsibility and suggests that for a company to only focus on exchange relationship
with customers might not be suitable in order to sustain long term success. Rather, marketing
strategy should deliver value to customers in a way that maintains or improves both the
consumer's and the society's well-being.
Most companies recognize that socially responsible activities improve their image among
customers, stockholders, the financial community, and other relevant publics. Ethical and
socially responsible practices are simply good business, resulting not only in favorable image,
but ultimately in increased sales.
Societal marketing should not be confused with social marketing. The societal marketing
concept was a forerunner of sustainable marketing in integrating issues of social responsibility
into commercial marketing strategies. In contrast to that, social marketing uses commercial
marketing theories, tools and techniques to social issues.

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Social marketing applies a customer orientated approach and uses the concepts and tools
used by commercial marketers in pursuit of social goals like Anti-Smoking-Campaigns or fund
raising for NGOs.

The Societal Marketing Concept
The societal marketing is a marketing concept that holds that a company should make
marketing decisions by considering consumers' wants, the company's requirements, and
society's long-term interests. The social marketing concept holds that the organizations task is
to determine the needs, wants, and interests of a target market and to deliver the desired
satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than competitors in a way that preserves or
enhances the consumers and the societys well-being. Therefore, marketers must endeavor to
satisfy the needs and wants of their target markets in ways that preserve and enhance the well-
being of consumers and society as a whole. It is closely linked with the principles of corporate
social responsibility and of sustainable development.
The societal marketing concept holds that the organizations should concentrate on the
needs and wants of their customers, and then deliver the desired satisfactions more effectively
and efficiently than competitors, in a way that maintains or improves the consumer's and the
society's well-being. It considers as well the possible conflicts between consumer short-run
wants and consumer long-run welfare. Basically, taking care of society's well-being is good for
business. Societal marketing managers believe that consumers will respond more favorably to
companies which are socially responsible, and react unfavorably to companies which they feel
are not socially responsible. This gives socially-responsible companies a competitive edge over
their competitors.
Environmentally damaging developments should not be financed or should be financed
only following modification to make them more environmentally benign. Similarly, enterprises
and projects promoting environmentally friendly development should be supported. Banks

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actively advise their customers in terms of the consideration of environmental criteria in
project planning. Banks tries to adopt good environmental practices in respect of premises,
equipment and consumption of resources and, where practicable, will seek to:
reduce energy consumption and improve energy efficiency
conserve resources and use renewable or recyclable materials
minimize or recycle waste
dispose of waste in an environmentally responsible manner
reduce the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)
favor suppliers and contractors who adopt environmental initiatives through
sponsorship


History of Societal Marketing
The concept of Social Marketing emerged in 1972, promoting a more socially responsible, moral
and ethical model of marketing, countering the consumerism way of thinking that had been
promoted by then.

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It was introduced in an article by Philip Kotler, What consumerism means for marketers in the
Harvard Business Review Journal. The social and societal concerns had existed by then, but it
was not that they became incorporated explicitly in the marketing literature.
Kotler introduced in that period both the concept of Social marketing (extending marketing
technologies into non-business areas) and societal marketing, arguing that the marketing
concept and its technologies must be tempered and ultimately revised by adopting a more
explicit social orientation.
Kotlers novelty to the marketing concept was the idea of long-run consumer welfare,
emphasizing that the short-term desires might not support the consumers long term
interests or be good for the society as a whole.

Evolution of Societal Marketing Concept
Five orientations (philosophical concepts to the marketplace have guided and continue to guide
organizational activities:

1. The Production Concept
2. The Product Concept
3. The Selling Concept
4. The Marketing Concept
5. The Societal Marketing Concept

The Five Concepts Described

The Production Concept-This concept is the oldest of the concepts in business. It holds
that consumers will prefer products that are widely available and
inexpensive. Managers focusing on this concept concentrate on achieving high
production efficiency, low costs, and mass distribution. They assume that consumers
are primarily interested in product availability and low prices. This orientation makes

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sense in developing countries, where consumers are more interested in obtaining the
product than in its features.

The Product Concept-This orientation holds that consumers will favor those products
that offer the most quality, performance, or innovative features. Managers focusing on
this concept concentrate on making superior products and improving them over time.
They assume that buyers admire well-made products and can appraise quality and
performance. However, these managers are sometimes caught up in a love affair with
their product and do not realize what the market needs. Management might commit
the better-mousetrap fallacy, believing that a better mousetrap will lead people to
beat a path to its door.

The Selling Concept-This is another common business orientation. It holds that
consumers and businesses, if left alone, will ordinarily not buy enough of the selling
companys products. The organization must, therefore, undertake an aggressive selling
and promotion effort. This concept assumes that consumers typically sho9w buyi8ng
inertia or resistance and must be coaxed into buying. It also assumes that the company
has a whole battery of effective selling and promotional tools to stimulate more buying.
Most firms practice the selling concept when they have overcapacity. Their aim is
to sell what they make rather than make what the market wants.

The Marketing Concept-This is a business philosophy that challenges the above three
business orientations. Its central tenets crystallized in the 1950s. It holds that the key
to achieving its organizational goals (goals of the selling company) consists of the
company being more effective than competitors in creating, delivering, and
communicating customer value to its selected target customers. The marketing concept
rests on four pillars: target market, customer needs, integrated marketing and
profitability.


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Distinctions between the Sales Concept and the Marketing Concept:


The Marketing Concept has evolved into a fifth and more refined company
orientation: The Societal Marketing Concept. This concept is more theoretical and will
undoubtedly influence future forms of marketing and selling approaches.

The Societal Marketing Concept-This concept holds that the organizations task is to
determine the needs, wants, and interests of target markets and to deliver the desired
satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than competitors (this is the original
Marketing Concept). Additionally, it holds that this all must be done in a way that
preserves or enhances the consumers and the societys well-being.

This orientation arose as some questioned whether the Marketing Concept is an
appropriate philosophy in an age of environmental deterioration, resource shortages, explosive
population growth, world hunger and poverty, and neglected social services.
Are companies that do an excellent job of satisfying consumer wants necessarily acting in the
best long-run interests of consumers and society? The marketing concept possibly sidesteps
the potential conflicts among consumer wants, consumer interests, and long-run societal
welfare.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Societal Marketing
The societal marketing concept introduces corporate social responsibility (CSR) into marketing
practices. Societal marketing incorporates a focus on the consumers and societys well-being
(Kotler, 2003). Research executed in many countries has consistently shown that consumers
express a more positive attitude toward a company that practices societal marketing, and
additionally prefer to purchase the products of these companies. However, little research has
considered how and why this relationship between societal marketing and consumer attitudes
occurs, or to uncover the conditions favoring or hindering the development of this relationship.

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As a key member of society, a corporation should take into account the societal needs that are
expected to be met by business. These needs constitute a social demand. Thus, social demand
incorporates not only demand for a firm's products and services, but also extends to the
fulfillment of other societal needs. With this framework in mind, it can be stated that the scope
of a business organization, i.e., what products and services it provides, is determined both by
the organization itself and by society's expectations. Consequently, a firm's mission and
objectives should not only address traditional organizational concerns such as profitability and
markets served, but should also be concerned with determining and meeting various societal
expectations. One of the aspects of the societal marketing includes alliances that have arisen
between environmentalist groups and businesses in the last decade. The new relationships
have been described as path breaking and innovative. Typically, they are distinguishable from
the prior charitable and commercial relationships because they engage the expert knowledge
of the environmental group and involve it, to varying degrees, in joint problem solving or
strategic decision making with the corporate partner. In this category are green product
endorsements, audits by environmental groups of business programs or practices, and joint
projects of the type engaged in by green alliance between McDonald's and Environmental
Defense Fund, where the corporate partner's business practices are evaluated and improved
according to ecological criteria. Green alliances also function rhetorically in a more complex
way than traditional business-environmentalist relationships. Green alliances, a strategy within
corporate environmental management, also have symbolic and political value - for both
partners. The corporation borrows not only the environmental expertise, but also the
credibility, of the ecology group, which by its allegiance implicitly or explicitly endorses
company actions. The partnership also brings corporate actors into the group of those to been
trusted with the work of saving the earth.

Social Marketing versus Societal Marketing A Comparison
Many a times people have confused social and societal marketing with even the marketers
sometime not getting to understand that both these terms are completely opposite to each
other. And the basic objective behind both these processes is totally different. The overall

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objective that both these processes have been used to achieve are 180 degrees opposite to
each other. So we just thought to try and shed some light on both these topics.

Social Marketing: - It is a marketing function that is used by the organizations to commercially
spread a social message so that it can benefit the individuals and the society on the whole by
educating the people and society about a social cause to improve their wellbeing.
Societal Marketing: - It is a marketing function in which the organizations identify the needs and
wants of the target market and then align the marketing activities of an organization in such a
manner that their marketing efforts are socially responsible and thereby help the organization
in gaining the trust of the society by having an image of a socially responsible organization, but
still remaining profitable.

Thus we can say that in societal marketing the main focus of the organization is still earning
profits, moving the business forward, but by still keeping the interest of the society in mind.
That means growing the profits, while still providing the benefits to the society. On the other
side social marketing focuses on improvement in living standards of people living in societies by
making improvements in the way they live their lives. So basically it aims on imparting benefits
to individuals and societies and not on profits as such. This shows that social marketing can
have a greater impact on the social well-being as these campaigns can influence even the policy
makers, and people who can influence the policy makers to change the policies to improve the
interests of the society on the whole.

Societal Marketing & Green Marketing

Concept of Societal Marketing: Societal marketing concept holds that the organization is to
determine the needs and interest of the target market and to deliver the satisfaction more
effectively and efficiently than competitors in a way that preserves or enhance the consumers
and societys wellbeing. Societal marketing aims towards optimizing the needs of the
consumers with relation to what the product offers. It concentrates on two major dimensions:

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1.TIME DIMENSION: It emphasis that an organization must differentiate between the short run
and long run welfare of the society and thereby plan strategies in keeping with the long run
welfare of both organization and society, rather than purely having a short run view point.

2. TIME DIMENSION: It emphasis that market does not include only the buyers of the product
but also some non users of these products who may be affected due to the production and
consumption of these products.

CONCEPT OF GREEN MARKETING
Green marketing refers to an organizations effort at designing, promoting, pricing and
distributing products that will not harm the environment. It include all the activities designed to
generate and facilitate any exchanges intended to satisfy human needs or wants, such that the
satisfaction of these needs and wants occurs with minimum detrimental impact on the natural
environment. Green marketing generally involves:

Ecologically safer products.
Recyclable and biodegradable packaging.
Energy efficient operations.
Better pollution control.
Todays consumers becoming more conscious of the natural environment. Thus the businesses
are beginning to modify their own thoughts and behavior in an attempt to address the concerns
of consumers. Thus Green marketing is becoming more important to business

Consumer awareness of environmental issues has grown considerably in the past few years and
presents a good opportunity for companies to differentiate themselves through green
marketing. Green marketing is the marketing of products that are presumed to be
environmentally safe or friendly. Thus green marketing must take into consideration a broad

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range of activities, including product modification, changes to the production process,
packaging changes, as well as modifying advertising.

The term "Green marketing" refers to the planning, development and promotion of products or
services that satisfy the needs of consumers for quality, output, accessible prices and service,
without however a negative effect on the environment.
Green marketing has been around for longer than one might suspect in fact, a workshop on
ecological marketing was held by the American Marketing Association in 1975. Since then, the
definition has been refined and segmented into 3 main buckets:
Retailing Definition: The marketing of products that are presumed to be
environmentally safe.
Social Marketing Definition: The development and marketing of products designed to
minimize negative effects on the physical environment or to improve its quality.
Environmental Definition: The efforts by organizations to produce, promote, package
and reclaim products in a manner that is sensitive or responsive to ecological concerns.
All three of these definitions speak to the fact that green marketing involves informing
consumers about initiatives youve undertaken that will benefit the environment, with the
overall goal of improving sales or reducing costs.
Unfortunately, a majority of people believe that green marketing refers solely to the promotion
or advertising of products with environmental characteristics. Terms like Phosphate Free,
Recyclable, Refillable, Ozone Friendly, and Environmentally Friendly are some of the things
consumers most often associate with green marketing. While these terms are green marketing
claims, in general green marketing is a much broader concept, one that can be applied to
consumer goods, industrial goods and even services.

Green marketing has not lived up to the hopes and dreams of many managers and activists.
Although public opinion polls consistently show that consumers would prefer to choose a green

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product over one that is less friendly to the environment when all other things are equal, those
other things are rarely equal in the minds of consumers.






Companies Employing the Societal Marketing Concept


McDonald's is the leader of the fast-food industry, with worldwide operations employing
approximately 500,000 people in 11,000 restaurants and serving 22 million customers a day. At
the time Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) approached McDonald's, its entanglement in
controversy over its packaging frustrated the company. From EDF's perspective, McDonald's
leadership position, its problematic history of waste management, and the iconic value of waste
management as an environmental issue made the company an attractive candidate for
partnership. EDF saw significant opportunity for both environmental action and a major, high
visibility, opportunity to test its innovative approach to environmental problem-solving through
corporate partnerships. Plastic had been demonized by several environmentalist organizations.
The use-and-dispose philosophy at the core of McDonald's business and its distinctive plastic
clamshell sandwich boxes, which helped to make the company one of the largest single users of
polystyrene in the United States, had made McDonald's a continuing target of ecology groups.
Throughout the late 1980s, McDonald's instituted and publicized a number of environmentally
positive steps in its domestic operations. It reduced consumption, for instance, by using lighter

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weight paper in straws, paper bags and other items and recycled paper and cardboard
packaging. In 1987, it switched from polystyrene blown with CFCs, the family of chemicals
which destroy the ozone layer, to plastic foam that used hydrocarbon blowing. In 1989, the
company instituted a pilot program in 450 New England stores to recycle its plastic clamshells.
In April, 1990, it committed $100 million, or one quarter of the company's annual building and
remodeling budget, to buy recycled materials for restaurant construction, remodeling, and
operations under a program called "McRecycle"
In 1989 and 1990, McDonald's bolstered its environmental management practices with a
proactive public relations campaign. McDonald's also offered in-store flyers to educate
customers about the company's environmental management practices, policies, philosophies,
and positions on particular issues such as rainforest beef and the ozone problem. Brochures on
environmental topics, including packaging, were available from its public relations department.
In addition, McDonald's worked with several different environmental and nonprofit groups
(e.g., the World Wildlife Fund and the Smithsonian Institution) to coproduce elementary school
materials on the environment. McDonald's positions itself as having concerns ecological and
practical, social as well as economic. Second, McDonald's positions itself as one of a community
of stewards of the earth. McDonald's defends its environmental record by listing specific
actions that it has taken to manage waste and conserve resources by reducing, reusing and
recycling materials. It cites experts who support its position on plastic packaging and who point
out the small contribution of the entire quick-service restaurant industry to America's waste.


Coca- cola is a soft drink company started early in the 90s in USA. After gaining a good market
value in the world the company looked out for promoting large people towards their products.

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As a result they formulated an awareness program in the African countries about the HIV
awareness.

In the 2001 the Coco-Cola African foundations was formed to reduce the impact of HIV
AIDS on Coca-Cola 60000 employees and 40 independent bottlers in Africa. At present,
100 percent of the coca-colas independent bottling companies in 54 African countries
are enrolled in the foundations programs.
All their employees and the employees families are eligible to receive benefits,
including access to antiretroviral drugs, testing, counseling, prevention, and treatment.
The foundations outreach also extends beyond employees and into community.

It focuses its efforts on three factors which Coca- cola operates: healthcare, education,
and the environment. The many projects are supported by the foundation cost millions
of dollars each year, but coca- cola offers more than just funding. By using its
distribution network, one of the most extensive in Africa, coca-cola can transport vital
materials to the remote part of the continent.

It reach areas of Africa which the AIDS/HIV workers have not previously had easy access
and thereby ensure that people in those areas can obtain information about the
prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS. Even Coca-Colas marketing expertise is being
used to raise awareness of key issues of such as HIV prevention. By leveraging its
corporate assets, Coca-Cola has made contribution to all African communities.




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Nike, Inc., a marketer of athletic shoes and sports apparel, has grown into a large multinational
enterprise through a marketing strategy centering on a favorable brand image.

In 1996, NIKE decided to design a new, state-of-the-art campus for its European
headquarters in the Netherlands. A complex of five new buildings, the campus was
designed to integrate the indoors with the surrounding environment, tapping into local
energy flows to create healthy, beneficial relationships between nature and human
culture.

We had come to see that our customers' health and our own ability to compete are
inseparable from the health of the environment," said Darcy Winslow, one of the early
leaders of the sustainability movement within the company. Product innovation and
performance remained Nike's first priority, she said, "but our sense of design excellence
had expanded to include a commitment to ecological intelligence, to fully understanding
the impacts of our products on the natural world."

Nike's first steps toward ecologically intelligent product design began with materials.
Together they sought to determine the chemical composition and environmental effects
of the materials and manufacturing processes. Using natural flows of energy and
nutrients as models, these product materials are designed to flow in closed loop cycles,
eliminating the concept of waste while enhancing and replenishing both nature and
commerce.

With its Management of Environmental Safety and Health program, for example, Nike
has merged health and safety metrics with a Nike management model to create a
framework for sustainability suitable for its Asian contract factories.


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Body Shop: Body Shop is a cosmetic company found by Anita Roddick. The company uses only
vegetable based materials for its products. It is also against Animal testing, supports community
trade, activate Self Esteem, Defend Human Rights, and overall protection of the planet. Thus it
is completely following the concept of Societal Marketing.



Ariel is a detergent manufactured by Procter and Gamble. Ariel runs special fund raising
campaigns for deprived classes of the world specifically the developing countries. It also
contributes part of its profits from every bag sold to the development of the society.



British American tobacco Company: BAT is a British based Tobacco company. It was found in
the year 1902. BAT is involved in working for the society in every part of the world. It conducts
tree plantation drives as part of its societal marketing strategy.




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Conclusion

We have studies that affinity marketing initiatives, especially societal marketing initiatives, have
the potential to improve consumers attitudes about a brand in a number of different ways.
How much a given initiative will help or hurt a given brand will, of course, depend on the
characteristics of its target markets.

While consumerists and other critics of the selling concept regularly and loudly chastise
business organizations for employing marketing strategies and campaigns which are ostensibly
based upon assumptions of consumer ignorance and irrationality, these same guardians of
consumer interest are typically synonymous with those pushing organizations most forcefully
into programs of social responsibility and the societal marketing concept.

It must inevitably be those organizations which are encouraged to view their consumers as
ignorant or irrational that can and will most easily extend that notion to discover opportunities
for exploiting that ignorance and irrationality. It is for this reason that those espousing the
societal marketing concept of business can be seen as the greatest danger to consumer
sovereignty and consumer welfare. Yet it is a corollary rule that in reducing one individual's
power, all others with whom that person deals have their relative power increased. By forcing
consumers into the roles of ignorant, helpless, and mindless children in need of protection and

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corporate welfare, advocates of the societal marketing concept have liberated consumers from
both responsibility and power, and have concomitantly made business more powerful.







Bibliography

http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~rgm/ha400/class/professional/concept/Article-Mkt-Con.html
Source: Kotler, Philip. (2000) Marketing Management. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey:
Prentice Hall.
http://basicmarketingfundas4u.blogspot.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societal_marketing
Crane, A. & Desmond, J. 2002, Societal marketing and morality, European Journal of
Marketing, vol. 36, no. 5/6, pp. 548-69.
Hoeffler, S. & Keller, K. L. 2002, Building brand equity through corporate societal marketing,
Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, Spring, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 78-89.