Guest editorial

Citation

Domegan, C. and Harris, F. (2017), "Guest editorial", Journal of Social Marketing, Vol. 7 No. 2, pp. 114-118. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSOCM-02-2017-0013

In physics, the frontiers of understanding are shifting between Einstein’s theory of relativity and quantum gravity, showing that time is linked to space in a way such that one cannot adequately describe time without full mention of its space counterpart, resulting in “unified timespace” (Cobley, 2010; Miller, 2013). In social marketing, analogous broadening patterns are sweeping through our field as signposted with this selection of frontier-exploring papers, requiring us to rethink the nature of social marketing’s reality at the most fundamental level and move away from our predictable, deterministic universal assumptions.

Our first paper, a conceptual contribution titled “Social change design: disrupting the benchmark template” from Marie-Louise Fry, Josephine Previte and Linda Brennan pays attention to an increasingly important issue in social marketing – the need to address complex, “wicked” problems through indicator design and development. The indicator journey begins with the concept of benchmarking from Andreasen and the NSMC in social marketing, and through indicator criteria for social change, embraces the wider systems framing of behaviour change over time where multi-linked relationship networks and multi-layered systems are considered.

Our second conceptual voyage takes us to the domain of evaluation with “Evaluate development! Develop evaluation! Answering the call for a reflective turn in social marketing” from Patricia McHugh and Christine Domegan. Its concern is with not only measuring “what” works well, but also evaluating “how” and “why” success or indeed failure happens. It extends the evaluation process to integrate researchers and other societal stakeholders into the heretofore sole focus on clients, and to recognise their interconnectedness in assessments of social marketing programmes.

From reflective evaluation, our third conceptual insight comes from Fiona Spotswood, Tim Chatterton, Yvette Morey and Sara Spear, in “A practice-theoretical intervention planning process for social marketing”, exploring “what practice theory and social marketing can learn from each other for the future effectiveness of social change”. This paper aims to increase social marketing’s ambition and to help it “regain its soul” (Lefebvre, 2012) by going beyond just changing behaviour to transforming “culturally ingrained ways of doing” (Spotswood et al., this issue).

In “Young adults, alcohol and Facebook: a synergistic relationship”, our fourth paper, Sandra Jones, Simone Pettigrew, Nicole Biagioni, Mike Daube, Tanya Chikritzhs, Julia Stafford and Julien Tran, present evidence beyond linear causality with the finding that “social media use stimulates alcohol consumption and alcohol consumption stimulates social media use”. Specifically, the 18- to 21-year-old participants reported constant exposure and influence from peer images of drinking alcohol with few negative outcomes portrayed in social media postings.

Our next paper, “A useful shift in our perspective: integrating social movement thought into social marketing”, proposes that social marketing adopt collective action frames (CAFs) from a social movement perspective and that “social marketers consider their task as one of activating a collective”. Authors Kate Daellenbach and Joy Parkinson advocate “moving beyond individual level behaviour change, to mobilising communities into action”, using obesity and disaster preparation as the social contexts within which they explore these ideas.

Staying with the theme of social change and social activism, William Bellew, Adrian Bauman, Becky Freeman and James Kite, take us into the territory of critical, oppositional and de-marketing to consider social countermarketing. “Social countermarketing: brave new world, brave new map” provides a stimulating eight-domain framework designed to advance the conceptual basis of social countermarketing research and practice.

We conclude our broadening special issue with a thought-provoking personal viewpoint on moral agency from Gerard Hastings. Titled “Rebels with a cause: the spiritual dimension of social marketing” – the article captures that blend of self-interest, mutuality and morality (Layton and Domegan, 2016) underlying exchanges in social marketing. What is often missing from our understanding of exchange is the morality component, the community/compassionate values; social marketers know all about self-interest (the client/customer principle) and mutuality (social good for the target audience and social good for society). Now, we invite you to consider moral agency and its implications for social marketing. In this paper, Hastings argues for our society of “passive consumers” to find the courage “to become rebels with a cause” and that social marketers “have to foster and encourage the innate human drive to think critically and act accordingly” and “are not here to edit choice but to facilitate personal growth and social progress”.

This kaleidoscope of broadening papers talks to our Kotlerian 4Ps behavioural change heritage and how it is enlarging, extending and stretching with social science theories, tools and techniques. Just as quantum gravity “seems baffling and troubling to humans because it confounds our common sense expectations about how the world works” (Orzel, 2011, p. 11), when “social” is fused with “marketing” for transformation, the world of change is equally messy and unpredictable with confounding consequences. All papers in this special issue highlight the “social” in social marketing. Each illuminates a social perspective in ways that challenge social marketers to venture forth in a more expansive, yet unifying direction. In our widening search, we ask what could be the “theoretical glue” (Whetten, 1989, p. 491) that could offer explanatory logical binding for a unified behaviour and social change understanding?

We believe the synthesis of various broadening trends and theoretical glue can be found in social marketing’s contextualised exchange concept, as the world is much more complicated than we perceive it (similar to the sweeping changes in Physics). Bagozzi (1975, p. 38) explains – “there is most definitely an [mutually beneficial] exchange in social marketing relationships” and that “the exchange is not the simple quid pro quo notion characteristic of most economic exchanges”. In essence, the conceptual, philosophical, methodological and practical broadening of social marketing points to a localised exchange nexus as critical and fundamental to our expanding universe– not just the simple quid pro quo exchange but also the dynamic exchange systems where actors in different contexts and localities are participants in complex networks and webs of exchange which do not occur in isolation. Such a nested or embedded exchange nexus explains the diversity of simple and complex exchanges in different contexts and localities; it unravels the individuals, the organisations and their perceptions as they engage in the ebbs and flows, mixtures and blends of exchanges at the same time. Furthermore, individuals and organisations have exchange positions that oscillate, adapt and modify over time as the situation/marketplace evolves and alters.

How so? Our exchange universe is based on a blend and mixture of localised self-interest, mutuality and morality value-based exchanges (Layton, 2009, 2015; Layton and Domegan, 2016). For example, take any lovely summer day you cast your mind back to in the middle of a cold and blustery winter […] the sun is shining, blue skies roll out as far as the eye can see with the odd white cloud gently floating by. It’s hot, so hot you can almost smell the heat but there’s a gentle breeze blowing that cools you down. Schools are closed. Families and friends are on the beach for a day of fun and laughter, swimming, sand castles, picnics and the all-important ice-creams. At the end of a fabulous day, people head home. Some put their rubbish in the bin, while others leave the evidence of their beach day behind on the sand.

Varying degrees of self-interest, mutuality and morality values are at work. For most individuals, a day at the seaside with family and friends represents having a good time and enjoying life. Some go sailing or pay for a banana boat ride, adding excitement and adventure to their day. For others, the family custom is a swim and building sand castles followed by a homemade picnic, where there is great chat, laughter and stories told. As the day comes to an end and all head home, some individuals and families put their rubbish in the bins provided by the local authority, following the rules and acting accordingly. Inevitably, there are those who ignore the governance signs saying “Put your rubbish in the Bins provided”, “Don’t leave your Litter Behind” and “Leave no Trace” and the evidence of their behaviours that day (wine and beer bottles, ice cream sticks, plastic bags, food leftovers, etc.) remain on the sand, perhaps to be washed out to sea at some point in time.

This blend of interacting self-interest, mutuality and morality values, always within its localised context, makes it all the more difficult to understand the exchange nexus in social marketing with its behavioural–social duality (akin to light and matter having wave- and particle-like properties at the same time). Social marketing will be best served if we move away from thinking of change in an ensemble of distinct things (e.g. behavioural change/social change; upstream/downstream or micro, meso or macro levels) to thinking of change in the systems of networks and processes surrounding interconnected localised exchanges. From this new vantage point, we can see all the things people value about a trip to the seaside (the individual, the family, the banana boat operator, the ice-cream vendor, the lifeguards, the local authority, etc.) the perception of different values and their interconnections at work. In this universe, change is pervasive, endemic, evolutionary not static, stable or restricted to equilibrating analyses.

A unified exchange nexus (Figure 1) within a particular setting and contact consists of seven points:

1. a person’s own self-interest, mutuality and morality values;

2. their perceptions of others’ self-interest, mutuality and morality values;

3. others’ self-interest, mutuality and morality values;

4. others’ perception of a person’s self-interest, mutuality and morality values;

5. the person’s perception of self-interest, mutuality and morality values framed and amplified by the organisations and social institutions;

6. together with (5), the perception of the organisations and social institutions of the person’s self-interest, mutuality and morality values; and

7. finally, with (6), others’ perception of the institution self-interest, mutuality and morality values and vice versa.

Most importantly, this unified exchange nexus presents the social marketer with a localised conduit and practical junction box to uncover social relationships, interactions and processes behind change, coupled with the fundamental kernel to explore “the underlying causal dynamics that generate these value exchange flows and a strategic response on the basis of these understandings” (Layton and Domegan, 2016, p. 4).

In summary, the frontiers of understanding in physics are exploding with:

[…] the idea that the universe is not really about things, but rather relationships between things […] a thing doesn’t have mass on its own. It has mass through its relationship with other things (Brinker, 2013, p. 1).

Equally, social marketing is experiencing comparable volatile developments between the tangled and jangled cross-wires between behavioural change and social transformation. Our broadening papers now presented suggest we should emphasize the “social” in relationships and interactions, in the detail and dynamics of what individuals, institutions and society value, in a given localised context. Perhaps one of the most important shifts in our expanding universe is to see localised, yet unified, value-based exchanges as the central frontier of social marketing.

Figures

Figure 1.

A unified exchange nexus for social marketing