Page 159 - The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

CHAPTER SIX

Social Marketing as Social Control

James J. Chriss

Beginning in the late 1960s, marketing professor Philip Kotler, along with
various colleagues, starting talking and writing about marketing in a new
way. This new thing Kotler was talking about was broadening the concept
of marketing—that is, taking it beyond the business or firm settings in
which it had traditionally been located (Kotler & Levy, 1969). Traditionally,
marketing was simply a strategy for helping business firms convince po-
tential customers to purchase or use their products. In this sense, market-
ing had always been conceived as a form of persuasion if not outright
propaganda, and its advertising principles could be applied to mass audi-
ences using whichever media were considered most appropriate or effec-
tive (Lazarsfeld & Merton, 1949).
In simplest terms, marketing is a strategy for connecting potential
buyers—constituting a market—to a firm’s products or services. In com-
petitive open markets, where sellers hope to attract as many potential cus-
tomers to their products as possible, the employment of techniques of
persuasion and impression management is crucial. Rather than approach-
ing this in a haphazard or ad hoc fashion, by the 1930s firms started rely-
ing on the best scientific knowledge available about how to use persuasion
to maximize unit sales. Kotler and Levy (1969), drawing largely from the
earlier work of Robert K. Merton and his sociologist colleagues at Columbia
University, realized that the effective marketing strategies already devel-
oped for business firms could also be used to promote services provided
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by nonbusiness firms such as governments and nonprofit organizations.
But beyond the business of selling products or services to a customer base
while ensuring loyalty and satisfaction, nonbusiness firms are even more