Page 271 - The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

Public Support for Regulating the Public 247

community nor an endorsement of the new perspective. We are suggesting
that the view that “public health focuses on the health of populations. . . .
It reflects systemic forces . . . necessitating interventions that span many
levels of society” (Wallack & Lawrence, 2005, p. 567) is the view that is
driving a great deal of health policy. In essence, over the past few decades,
the conversation in the public health literature has evolved from making
the case that upstream approaches are often required, to defending the role
of modern public health advocates as agents of political change, to provid-
ing advice to public health agents regarding how to bring about political
change. And yet marketing is absent in most of these conversations, de-
spite the fact that both industry and consumers are greatly affected.

The Spectrum of Upstream Remedies

The range of restrictive remedies is large and amorphous. Examples of
such remedies include smoking restrictions, drinking and driving restric-
tions, helmet laws, seat belt laws, trans-fat bans, laws requiring gun locks,
age restrictions on various activities, vaccination laws for diseases that are
not highly contagious, and so on. To develop some structure to upstream
remedies, this chapter outlines a spectrum of the types of remedies that fall
within the scope of this paper and provides a set of concrete examples in
Table 9.2. Following Goldberg’s (1995) recommendation, which was reit-
erated by Goldberg and Gunasti (2007), the remedies are organized using
a consumer-centric/4P framework. In addition, we distinguish between
restrictions that are directly felt by individuals during the postpurchase
phase and those which are imposed on channel members prior to pur-
chase. We draw this distinction because changing the social condition by

table 9.2 Restrictive Market-Based Remedies in Upstream Efforts
Strategy for Deterring
Behavior Examples
Product
Prepurchase Ban all forms of product use Marijuana illegal
stage Require product features Gun locks, pool covers
Restrict to whom product is 21 to purchase alcohol,
sold training to drive ATV
No trans-fats in restaurant
food
Restrict product features
(continued)