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Argues that the general area of commercial sponsorship activity, while attracting increasing interest from marketing practitioners as an important strategic option in marketing communications, has not been the subject of sufficiently rigorous and comprehensive investigation by theoreticians. States the purpose is to establish and consolidate the available body of knowledge combining an overview of the standard conceptual approaches to marketing communication with an examination of the recent academic research in sponsorship, while maintaining a focus on current marketplace practice. Argues for a coherent and structured approach to the management of sponsorship expenditure through the application of a ‘management by objectives’ approach. Parameters are established in terms of a working definition of sponsorship, a review of its commercial development and an overview of current activity. Develops a commercially ration framework within which sponsorship activity may be undertaken. Views objective‐setting as the cornerstone of sponsorship management and outlines a classification of sponsorship objectives that subsumes current practice clarifies the range of potential benefits. Examines the criteria that govern rational sponsorship selection and proposes an evaluation strategy based on stated criteria. Methods of evaluating effects of marketing communications (sponsorship particularly) are examined and new evaluation techniques are advanced to facilitate the implementation of this rigorous scientific approach.

This paper aims to explore ways through which social marketing could help to revolutionise marketing education and argues that this change is needed now. The world is confronting a variety of serious challenges, including a global pandemic, an urgent climate emergency and overdue social transformations. Social marketing, with its far-sightedness, holistic systems thinking and genuine concern for the well-being of society and the environment, is ideally positioned to step forward to help accelerate the transformation of marketing education for the next generation of marketers.

This paper is conceptual and is informed by the literature on social marketing over its 50 years history, supplemented by the wider marketing literature. A SWOT analysis is used to analyse the proposed transformation of marketing education.

Six strengths are proposed by which social marketing can help to revolutionise marketing education, identified under the acronym COHERE: collaboration with a diversity of disciplines and stakeholders; openness to sharing knowledge, experience and detailed case studies; a holistic approach with a longer time horizon; engaging authentically with the social good; research that breaks new ground in theory and practice; and ethics embedded at its core.

The opportunities to help revolutionise marketing education offered through these strengths are explored, the weaknesses and threats acknowledged and the implications for marketing and social marketing analysed.

This paper proposes how (through the six identified strengths) and when (now) social marketing can help revolutionise marketing education, by adopting a dual lens of social and commercial marketing.

Due to social enterprises' (SEs) relevance to social value creation, marketing increases its attention to these hybrid organizations. However, there is no consensus on how strategic marketing can improve SE performance. Thus, this paper aims to discuss how commercial, social and societal strategic marketing approaches relate to compensatory and transformative social entrepreneurship scopes to improve SE performance.

This paper is conceptual. We hold discussions and raise reflections to advance knowledge on both marketing and social entrepreneurship fields, more precisely by intertwining them.

We develop a conceptual model for adapting three strategic marketing approaches to compensatory and transformative SEs. We argue that SEs have three types of performances: commercial, social and societal. Social and commercial strategic marketing are essential for SEs acting in compensating local failures of capitalism. Societal and commercial strategic marketing are essential for SEs focused on transformative actions to changing global system. Such relations can leverage social impact, which we conceptualize as compensatory or transformative.

The model contributes to improvements on strategic marketing decisions by marketers and entrepreneurs in social entrepreneurship.

We propose a decomposition of strategic marketing into three approaches: commercial, social and societal, which constitutes a novelty to the field. This can facilitate management of SEs with different actions and performances, whether at local or international levels.

The purpose of this paper is to deepen and add nuance to previous explorations of the voter‐consumer analogy in order to generate new insights into wider applications of the marketing concept.

A conceptual analysis is supplemented and enriched with insights from a non‐representative case of voter responses to political advertising.

Findings suggest that limitations to the voter‐consumer analogy revolve around the differing contexts of marketing in each case and reflect differing audience responses at the micro‐level.

The empirical component of this study is not representative or generalizable. However, it is used not to verify generalizations but to add qualitative insights to the conceptual discussion. Findings suggest that research which applies the marketing concept to non‐commercial settings, especially political marketing but also possibly extending to social marketing, non‐profit and public sector marketing, should be cautious in assuming that consumers of non‐commercial marketing respond in the same way to marketing initiatives as consumers of commercial marketing.

The research has implications for the application of the marketing concept in political and other non‐commercial contexts.

The application of the marketing concept in non‐commercial settings as well as commercial settings has become so common it is often taken for granted. Yet the behaviour, attitudes and responses of consumers in these different settings may diverge in important ways at the micro‐level. Explorations of the applicability of the marketing concept in different settings are relatively rare and this paper adds a previously unpublished empirical aspect to an original conceptual analysis which aligns secondary research from disparate sources in political science and cultural studies as well as marketing.

The study aims to analyse the possibilities of positioning the anti-consumption through different communication appeals. It analyses commercial and social marketing campaigns in the global context, with the aim to recommend communication guidelines to empower anti-consumption among different industries.

The study conducted a qualitative content analysis of marketing communication focused on anti-consumption promotion.

The results bring a comprehensive overview of possible communication appeals of anti-consumption and prove feasibility of their implementation. The analysis of used appeals leads to recommendations for developing effective marketing communication for promoting anti-consumption.

The recommendations can serve both for-profit and non-profit organization as a showcase to discover the idea of anti-consumption as communication appeals. By empowering anti-consumption, consumers could reach personal welfare and participate in social equilibrium. Also, the study brings recommendations for further research considering the evaluation of the implemented strategies.

The study covers a gap in published literature focusing on comprehensive analysis of existing anti-consumption marketing communication strategies and appeals and brings an overview of potential strategies for empowering anti-consumption among modern consumers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the view of integrated marketing communications (IMC) by social marketing practitioners. Specifically, the paper furthers the discussion how a symbiotic relationship between IMC and social marketing can lead to both practical improvements of health-related social marketing campaigns, as well as theoretical advancement of the IMC construct.

Based on semi-structured, in-depth interviews with practitioners, the authors provide exploratory evidence for support for IMC within the social marketing community and highlight potential differences and similarities when transferring IMC from a commercial to a social context.

Three main differences emerged when transferring IMC from a commercial to a social context. These include differences of customer-centric approaches between commercial and social marketing, the need to weigh out the application of IMC to the charity brand or the use of IMC at a behavioural level and, finally, different complexity levels of desired behaviour as a mediating factor.

As with all qualitative data, the findings may not be generalisable beyond the interview participants and organisations studied.

Many practitioners expressed that they liked IMC as a concept, but they lacked guidance as to the application with a social marketing context. This paper contributes to providing this guidance and establishing a body of knowledge how IMC can be applied in a non-commercial setting.

The paper contributes to the practical development of guidance how the largely commercially applied IMC construct can be modified to be used in a social marketing context, while correspondingly highlighting how IMC needs to evolve to grow beyond purely commercial application.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of social marketing principles in Web 2.0 commercial and social marketing campaigns.

A literature review and online search were conducted to document the types of products and behavior change initiatives being marketed on Web 2.0 platforms. Case studies from commercial and social marketing were critically reviewed to determine whether they exhibited one or more of the principles of social marketing.

Results demonstrated that social marketers can employ the following social marketing principles to successfully design and implement a Web 2.0 campaign: consumer orientation, behavior change, market segmentation and targeting, mixed methods, exchange and competition.

The findings present originality and value to social marketers who want to effectively integrate, expand and apply Web 2.0 channels to meet their behavior change goals.

This paper aims to demonstrate the utility of branding theory for social marketing services. Specifically, this is to our knowledge the first to investigate brand personality (BP) and brand personality appeal (BPA) in a single study as predictors for consumer attitudes and intentions to engage with a service.

The associations between BP and BPA and their subsequent associations with attitudes and intentions are tested in two service types, i.e. a commercial marketing service (banking) and a social marketing service (health screening). This involved a cross-sectional dual online survey administered to a sample of 395 women 50-69 years old in Queensland, Australia. This sampling criterion represented the primary target audience for the social marketing service, which was breastscreening and was maintained for the banking services sample. Multiple mediation analysis using a bootstrapping approach was conducted using Mplus 6.11.

BP and BPA perform similarly across the two service types. BP and BPA are related and have direct and indirect associations with consumer attitudes and behavioural intentions towards both commercial and social marketing services. Specifically, the BP traits of responsibility and activity were found to have significant direct and indirect relationships with attitudes and behavioural intentions towards both commercial and social marketing services. The relationships for the emotionality and simplicity traits were non-significant. The results also suggest that the attractiveness, favourability and clarity BPA traits had the strongest associations with consumer responses.

This study demonstrates the utility of using branding in social marketing services, which to date has been under-utilised. It also offers originality by combining BP and BPA in the same empirical inquiry, which to date has been examined separately. A new and alternative factor structure for BPA is provided, and future research is recommended to further examine BPA in this and other contexts.

The purpose of the editorial is to accompany this special issue on “Social marketing: social change”.

The editorial presents three invited reflections by Philip Kotler, Michael Polonsky and Gerard Hastings. It also discusses the articles in this special issue.

Overall, the contributed papers demonstrate that there are many layers to social marketing.

The articles featured in this special issue help to advance social marketing theory as well as offer valuable implications and recommendations for managers, practitioners and policymakers.

The purpose of this paper is to contend that one way to advance the social marketing discipline is by introducing students to social marketing concepts during the early stages of their marketing education. Thus, it describes an interdisciplinary group Social Marketing Plan (SMP) project that was included as a class project in an introductory marketing course. An analysis of the SMP's impact on student learning is presented.

Foundations of Marketing (Foundations) students at a US university completed an SMP project as a course requirement. Project impact was assessed with post‐project measures of students' ability to apply social marketing concepts in a SMP. Project impact was also assessed with post‐project measures of attitudes toward working on interdisciplinary teams and pre‐ and post‐project comparisons of declarative marketing knowledge, environmental awareness, environmental attitudes, and environmental intentions. A post hoc comparison of the commercial marketing knowledge of a control group and Foundations students was also conducted.

End of semester surveys showed that Foundations students understood and were able to apply social marketing concepts, enjoyed the SMP project, appreciated the value of working in interdisciplinary teams, and believed that future SMP projects should include students from other disciplines. Foundations students also reported significant increases in environmental awareness, attitudes, and intentions, and commercial marketing knowledge. Contrasts with a control group revealed that adding social marketing concepts to an introductory marketing course did not impede Foundations students' learning of commercial marketing concepts.

The paper provides evidence that incorporating a social marketing project into an introductory marketing course is an effective method for introducing students to social marketing concepts, therefore advancing the social marketing discipline. Changes in student environmental attitudes and intentions to act to preserve the environment also suggest that a SMP project can be an effective method of doing social marketing.