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This study aims to review the extent that social marketing principles are applied in interventions targeting children published in peer-reviewed journals between 2000 and 2014.

A systematic literature review was conducted to identify peer-reviewed social marketing studies targeting children under the age of 12 years as their main audience. Twenty-three interventions were identified and analysed using Andreasen’s (2002) social marketing benchmark criteria including behavioural objective, audience segmentation, formative research, exchange, marketing mix and competition.

All of the interventions analysed in this review targeted behaviours associated with either physical activity or healthy eating among children under the age of 12 years. Sixteen of the studies reported positive behavioural outcomes. None of the studies used all six of the Andresean (2002) benchmark criteria.

With growing concerns about the prevalence of obesity among children, social marketing is emerging as an effective approach to increase physical activity and healthy eating, which in turn may assist to lower obesity. Extending the application of the social marketing benchmark criteria in social marketing interventions will assist to increase effectiveness.

This paper presents the first attempt to review the extent that social marketing principles are used in interventions targeted at children aged 12 years and under.

This paper aims to extend research applying the principle of market segmentation to gain insight into changing the physical activity behaviour of children, particularly their walk to/from school behaviour. It further examined the utility of employing theory, specifically the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), for this purpose. Childhood obesity is a leading public health concern globally.

An online survey was conducted with 512 caregivers of primary school children. Caregivers were targeted given their control over children’s walk to/from school behaviour. Two-step cluster analysis, based on 14 geographic, demographic, psychographic and behavioural variables, was used to investigate groupings within the data set.

The analysis revealed three distinct segments of caregivers, each with unique beliefs about their children walking to/from school: short-distance frequent walkers, middle-distance sporadic walkers and long-distance non-walkers. Four variables were found to be highly important in distinguishing these segments: distance to school, current walk to/from school behaviour, subjective norms and intentions to increase their child’s walk to school behaviour.

The paper demonstrates the usefulness of behavioural, geographic and psychographic variables, as measured by the TPB, in distinguishing segments, offering an important contrast to prior segmentation studies emphasising demographic variables. This result provides empirical evidence of the value of using the four segmentation bases, extending beyond a demographic focus, and the importance of incorporating behavioural theory in market segmentation. In so doing, this research provides key insights into changing children’s walking behaviour.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to explore whether patterns suggested in Dirichlet theory can be observed in a single behaviour change context, namely, physical activity; second, to provide implications for social marketing practice based on the Dirichlet theory patterns observed in a social context of physical activity.

A total of 1,459 respondents residing within 20 kilometres of the Melbourne Central Business District participated in an online survey. The questions in the survey included items relating to respondents’ self-reported physical activity.

The results of the current study indicate that Dirichlet patterns can be observed in social contexts such as physical activity.

The sample in this study cannot be considered to be demographically representative of the target population and the physical activity categories selected for this study were limited to the most popular activities and a category level and whole of sample assessment.

To encourage participation in physical activity social marketers need to promote and offer a broad range of physical activity options to increase overall physical activity participation. This is a substantial change from current social marketing practice where one form of physical activity is typically promoted.

This research indicates that commercial marketing theories may be extended to a social marketing context thereby overcoming social marketing’s health myopia. The current study is the first to apply Dirichlet theory in full to a social marketing setting, namely, physical activity.

Underpinning this research is an acknowledgement of the increasing attention paid to the social issues raised by young peoples' alcohol consumption. Although earlier research has identified a number of factors contributing to alcohol‐related problems in Poland, only a handful of studies attempted to better understand drinking patterns and their influence on alcohol consumption amongst Polish people. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the roles alcohol plays in the life of young people in Poland.

All the data are collected on a university campus in Poland in late autumn 2007 from a group of ten university students. The research is conducted in three phases, using two research methods: focus groups and diaries. Purposive sample is used to establish two focus groups (Phases 1 and 3) each of which meet on two occasions, three weeks apart. In the first two week period between each focus group, respondents are asked to keep private diary (Phase 2) recording every occurrence that is, in their opinion, related to alcohol consumption.

The findings are themed around three major factors: quantity of consumed alcohol, frequency of consumption and location of consumption. However, the strongest issue is the pressure experienced by students around the social consumption of alcohol.

At a time when young peoples' alcohol consumption is attracting increasing attention from legislators and regulators, a better understanding of young consumers' behaviour may help government and other non‐profit organisations create well‐informed regulations, policies or educational programmes.

Although there is significant amount of research into detrimental effects of excessive alcohol consumption on physical and psychological health of people in Poland, little research goes into wider social issues or beyond the most visible biological consequences of drinking as anti‐social behaviour.

The purpose of this paper is to: first, illustrate how market segmentation using two-step cluster analysis can be used to identify segments in the context of physical activity; second, identified segments are used to offer practical implications for social marketers working in the area of physical activity.

A total of 1,459 respondents residing within 20 kilometres of the Melbourne Central Business District participated in an online survey. The questions in the survey included items relating to respondents’ health perceptions, health knowledge, attitudes, intentions to start a new physical activity, demographics, place of residence and self-reported physical activity. Two-step cluster analysis using the log-likelihood measure was used to reveal natural groupings in the data set.

This research has identified four distinctive segments in the context of physical activity, namely: Young Disinteresteds, Successful Enthusiasts, Vulnerables and Happy Retirees.

The study was conducted in March and some sports were not in season at the time of the study, therefore future research should extend the current sample to take seasonality and geography into account and to ensure the clusters are fully representative of the Australian population.

This paper contributes to the literature by outlining a two-step cluster analytic approach to segmentation that can be used by social marketers to identify valuable segments when developing social marketing programmes.

Social marketers set out to undertake interventions that benefit society. However, at times, there can be inadvertent, unintended consequences of these interventions that can be seen as unethical. Such ethical issues can arise from the context, process, method and outcomes of interventions and often bring to the fore the “social fairness” of social marketing. Given that social marketing is aimed at societal benefit, the authors believe that the issue of social fairness is an important one in the context of ethical social marketing. With that in mind, the purpose of this paper is to provide a discussion of the application of a normative ethical framework, labelled the integrative justice model (IJM) (Santos and Laczniak, 2009), to social marketing. This amounts to a macro-social marketing ethical framework.

Conceptual broadening of a normative ethical framework.

The authors hold that the IJM provides several helpful normative guidelines for improving the “social fairness” of social marketing. As such, the presented normative framework of macro-social marketing ethics provides useful guidelines for future development of social marketing codes of ethics.

The macro-social marketing ethics framework provides practical guidelines for social marketers to assess ethical issues in social marketing.

The macro-social marketing ethics framework answers the call of Carter, Mayes, Eagle and Dahl (2017) for development of ethical frameworks for social marketers. It provides a reconciliation of multiple normative frameworks to give a set of guidelines for social marketers that are clear and non-contradictory.