Guest editorial

Citation

Brennan, L. and Fry, M.-L. (2016), "Guest editorial", Journal of Social Marketing, Vol. 6 No. 3, pp. 214-218. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSOCM-05-2016-0025

Transformations: social marketing and social change – macro, meso and micro perspectives

The impetus for this special issue arose from the 2014 Australia and New Zealand Marketing Academy Conference (ANZMAC). In reviewing the social marketing papers submitted, it was evident that many papers were addressing social marketing issues across key sectors of the broader market system – upstream/macro, midstream/meso and downstream/micro. Yet, what was more evident is the extent to which papers were elaborating on the challenges and complexities of facilitating social change across and between the differing market level systems. Attempts were being made to push social marketing theory and practice beyond behaviour change by examining the interrelationships that occur across and within a broader behaviour change market. No longer is it sufficient to simply examine challenges of upstream or downstream social change as discrete entities. Rather, social marketing research is increasingly moving towards considering social change from a more holistic view of how overlapping sectors of the market system interact and interconnect, enabling social marketers, government, organisations and societies to shape social change, alongside the individuals who are affected within the social system. This special issue extends a continuing theme within the Journal of Social Marketing which is to challenge those in the domain to better advance social marketing scholarship and applied practice to enhance societal level well-being.

In particular, this special issue extends calls within social marketing for scholars to embrace a more holistic, wider approach to social marketing (Fry, 2014; Brennan and Parker, 2014; McHugh and Domegan, 2013; Wymer, 2011). This approach considers the interface of social exchange, an interface that operates as a sub-system of networked value interchanges among various people within a broader market system (Karababa and Kjeldgaard, 2014; Bagozzi, 1975). That is, value is established, created and co-created via exchanges and interactions throughout the entire system. A market systems perspective draws attention to the ability of social marketers to shape markets viewing behaviour as influenced by social and cultural dimensions of society (Layton, 2014). Importantly, the value of a holistic market systems approach to behaviour change is the abandonment of victim blaming and viewing individuals as the sole initiator for changing behaviour. Rather, a broader market perspective of social marketing for social change emphasises that behaviour is influenced by many factors at multiple societal levels, with the individual representing only one actor among many actors capable of participating in social change processes. Thus, the challenge for social marketers is to engage with the relational nature of social change, from individuals as actors within social contexts across close social networks, to meso-level relations where individuals interact with organisations within the wider environment, alongside interactions with macro-level influences including social mores, government and legislative requirements.

Critically, we argue for the abandonment of simply dichotomising social change as either a downstream or upstream strategy. While the stream metaphor served the purpose of expanding social marketing’s domain, in the contemporary world, turbulent oceans of change might be a more apt metaphor to adopt, however uncontrollable and intimidating for people seeking to influence change. We argue that reductionist, dichotomous thinking has led to “silver-bullet” seeking. Nonetheless, the complexity of social change centres on how actors in the marketplace (including government, health policy, social change organisations and individuals) work collaboratively to affect social change considering the market system as a market of behaviours. Aligning with Lefebvre (2012), this broadening of social marketing towards a social change philosophy represents “out of the box” thinking, as it not only challenges social marketers to view behaviour change as a social entity but also requires social marketers to consider social change within a “markets of behaviour” perspective. A “markets of behaviour” purview acknowledges the complexity of behaviours to target within any single social change program. Further, implicit in this view, there is not a simple or even a single market for tackling social change, especially on “wicked” problems such as obesity and alcohol abuse. In such cases, there are many markets and sub-markets that are intervolved in the issues, sometimes with competing interests and concerns. Untangling this complexity is necessary before any sustainable social change is feasible.

This special issue contributes to the transformational potential of social marketing, urging social marketers, practitioners and the academy alike to challenge the state of play of the discipline, extending thinking to how social marketers can shape markets rather than how to influence individual behaviours.

To ensure that the high standards set by the Journal of Social Marketing are maintained, all submissions were desk-reviewed by the guest editors to ascertain their relevance to the theme of the special issue and their academic rigour. Once this process had taken place, successful submissions were sent to at least three reviewers who undertook a blind review of the papers. The reviewers are to be commended for working within tight time frames. The exception to this process was the paper by Brennan, Previte and Fry, which was submitted to the editor-in-chief for processing and underwent an external independent as well as double-blind peer review.

The five specially selected are empirical and conceptual in nature. They highlight the innate complexity of creating social change and the inherent interrelationships of the actor operating within a dynamic market system, where interactions (formal and informal, implicit and explicit) occur between actors across varying sectors within the market system.

The first article by Brennan, Previte and Fry is entitled “Social marketing’s consumer myopia: applying a behavioural ecological model to address wicked problems”. It aims to broaden social marketing thinking beyond “individualistic” parameters by describing a behavioural ecological model (BEM) as a systems approach to enhance understanding of social markets to assist the planning and implementation of social change programmes. The BEM conceives social markets as consisting of marketplace interactions between citizens, communities, civic and commercial institutions engaged in social change strategies (e.g. marketing strategies, advocacy, partnerships) directed at achieving societal change and social value creation. The BEM aims to guide social marketers towards systems thinking and marketplace solutions that focus on collaboration amongst market actors and with – rather than for – consumers. Critically, the BEM extends social marketing thinking beyond a myopic categorical model of individual and environmental categories/systems by explicating an ecological system of connections between and amongst actors. The BEM represents layers of influence on actors characterised as macro (distant, large in scale), exo (external, remote from individuals), meso (between the individual and environment) and micro (the individual within their social setting).

The second article is an empirical article by Daellenbach, Dalgliesh-Waugh and Smith entitled “Community resilience and the multiple levels of social change”, which examines the interconnections within a market system to build community resilience to disasters and emergencies. Extending beyond traditional individualised behaviour change, the value of this paper is its focus on contextualising meso-level communities and community organisations as key mechanisms for not only building connected communities, but also harnessing and strengthening social capital around “resilience” among community members. Additionally, the paper demonstrates how community organisations connect with macro-level government agencies to further support and commit to community initiatives of building community resilience throughout populations. The authors argue that by taking a broader transformative social marketing perspective, the change sought is far more resourced, resulting in greater connected and networked and, therefore, more resilient communities. Consequently, they argue for the integration of an ecological perspective to enhance resilience through community-level ownership and empowerment for disaster preparedness, response and recovery. The authors call on researchers not to put boundaries around levels, but to take more of an integrative view to what “we” (being agencies, social marketers and social marketing researchers) need to do, to get where we want to be (i.e. a resilient community). They argue that working together rather than against each other is more effective when it comes to producing the mutual transformations required for sustainable social change.

The third article by May and Previte entitled “Understanding the midstream environment within a social change systems continuum” provides guidance on how midstream social marketing can be used to understand and address social marketing problems. Considering feral domestic cat overpopulation, May and Previte demonstrate the importance of understanding the micro-actions and interactions of micro-actors that form a part of an interdependent, interconnected, complex system that takes a long time to emerge and evolve – and therefore a long time to change through multi-layered and multi-faceted interventions. The authors draw attention to the role of service providers (i.e. veterinarians) and the tensions they need to balance to be agents of social change (i.e. dealing with feral cat overpopulation) against the profit-and-loss constraints of their clinical practice. The value of this paper demonstrates the need for social marketing to adopt a collaborative systems integration approach where social change agents interact across macro- and micro-contexts within a broader systems continuum. May and Previte’s article also highlights the need to consider what happens when no one “owns” the problem. How does a social marketing campaign address a systemic issue when there is no individual or group who are at the core of acting upon the concern? Indeed, the feral cat “problem” may not be considered a problem at all by many participants in the system, in which case who takes action? How and when? Who pays for action to take place? Their paper is an enlightening example of how passionate individuals can instigate system-wide initiatives that may have far reaching consequences in terms of change. The role of social marketing in these cases may be to introject resources instead of interpose solutions.

The fourth article by Wood highlights the importance of social marketing at the midstream (meso) proposing a model for co-creating public services. The article entitled “Midstream social marketing and the co-creation of public services” highlights the importance of communication, developing staff-client relationships, social networks and conversations as essential for effective co-creation of health and welfare services. Wood puts forward a model for co-creating public services where meso-level interactions between health professionals and clients have immense capability to strengthen social change outcomes. This recognition of conversations and peer-to-peer interactions demonstrates how supportive relationships and conversations within and between service organisations, front-line service staff, social networks and clients are essential for the effective delivery of co-created health and welfare services. The co-created design of social marketing interventions permits a much broader community participation in the outcome, including engagement of actors within the solution. Further, Wood’s paper illustrates the importance of community participation in social problem solving when it comes to sustained outcomes. The challenge for social marketers is to develop the system and sub-systems whereby inclusive co-creation processes can be enacted.

The final article by Godwin, Drennan and Previte entitled “Social capital stories behind young women’s drinking practices” explores how young women’s alcohol drinking is influenced by systems and goes beyond a micro-perspective of individual characteristics and choices. The paper contributes to the special issue’s theme with the argument that choices to consume alcohol are reflective of the sociality of consumption, where individuals interact within socially relevant drinking groups; that socially relevant drinking groups are a source for building and accumulating symbolic capital; and that displays of symbolic capital influence acceptable norms and position value as related to drinking to excesses or moderation of consumption. Critically, the authors argue friendship groups are a powerful context where displays of symbolic capital explain the normative influences and relational behaviours influencing young women’s drinking choices. Furthermore, the authors bring forward evidence that young women’s drinking is more nuanced and representative of their socio-cultural experiences. Their exploration allows a deep insight into the systemic social concerns that will need to be addressed by social marketers aiming to decrease harms associated with excessive alcohol consumption. The notion that individuals have power to change group drinking behaviours is confronted by the ideas embedded in this theme of research. As a result, social marketing and behaviour change theories may need to be reframed to include social and group behaviours.

Overall, the articles included in this special issue demonstrate that social marketing as a discipline is developing greater critical debate and insight. Together they demonstrate the complexities facing social marketing by drawing attention to the need to view social change from a market and systems perspective of interactions and interconnections. It is hoped that this special issue will challenge thinking beyond a simplistic, narrow upstream/macro or downstream/micro binary towards viewing social change as occurring within an ecology comprising of multi-layer systems where relational activities exist across multiple actors within the social change network. Importantly, this special issue illustrates that sustainable social marketing is feasible when bi-directional and multi-level (contiguous) influences within a system are engaged with each other in enacting social change solutions. That is, working with, not for, and not against actors in the system in order to create the system-wide transformations that are necessary for social change to occur.

We offer thanks to Sharyn Rundle-Thiele, as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Social Marketing, who has been supportive in encouraging the social marketing community to challenge our thinking and develop capability to build social marketing insight. This special issue has been an opportunity to further deepen social marketing thinking about social change. We also extend thanks to the Emerald publishing team for their expert assistance and guidance through the editorial process. We especially thank the reviewers across the world for participating in the blind review process and whose constructive comments have made it possible to further deepen key ideas across the papers in this special issue.