Unintended consequences in demarketing anti-social behaviour: project Bernie

Unintended consequences are recognised as a potential risk for well-intentioned social marketing interventions and as a comparatively under-researched topic in the field. This case study uses an intervention tackling deliberate grassfires to explore the application of social marketing in a novel context, its potential effectiveness in demarketing antisocial behaviours and the potential of such interventions to generate positive and negative unintended consequences. The intervention’s evaluation confirms social marketing’s potential value in tackling ingrained antisocial behaviours within communities. It also revealed unexpected benefits accruing from changes within the target community, within the sponsoring fire service and in the relationship between the two. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of potential unexpected and unplanned consequences for intervention planning, conduct and evaluation

Grounded theory as a macromarketing methodology: critical insights from researching the marketing dynamics of Fairtrade Towns

This paper details and justifies Grounded Theory as a methodology for researching into significant and emerging macromarketing phenomena, through an exploration of its use to investigate the marketing dynamics of the Fairtrade Towns Movement. The paper describes the research ‘journey’ undertaken from the initial consideration of Fairtrade Towns as an under-researched and challenging topic, through to the final production of new theory rooted in the reality of the research context. The philosophy and systematic processes that underpin Grounded Theory are explained, along with examples of how the key processes of data collection and analysis were undertaken. The insights generated in this paper demonstrate Grounded Theory as a suitable, yet underused, research approach available to macromarketers. It is revealed as a methodology that can bring rigor and confidence to research into emerging macromarketing themes, and the paper concludes by considering its potential for application in key spheres for future research

Places where people matter: the marketing dynamics of Fairtrade Towns

Purpose The purpose of this study was to understand how Fairtrade Towns, a relatively new but rapidly expanding phenomenon that promotes social business in terms of the consumption of Fairtrade products, operate as a form of place-based marketing network. This paper, which underpinned a Keynote Address delivered at the Second Biannual Social Business Conference, explores how Fairtrade Towns combine the ‘people’ dimension of Fairtrade marketing with a place-based perspective. Methodology This project applied grounded theory and gathered data through long-term ethnographic involvement in one Fairtrade Town initiative, and interviews with 29 key participants across 11 other Fairtrade Towns. Findings The dynamics of Fairtrade Towns operating as marketing systems went far beyond just conventional ethical consumption behaviours driven by concerns for other people in other places. Elements of consumer citizenship linked to civic engagement, the exploitation and development of local social networks and social capital, and connections with local place identity all combine to create a form of place-based community marketing with a unique ability to connect people in producer and consumer communities for social benefit. Contribution This study demonstrates the need to understand phenomena such as Fairtrade Towns, not as abstract marketing systems, but as activities and processes driven by, and concerned about, real people in real places. It contributes to the growing appreciation of the need to understand particular aspects of social business from a multidisciplinary perspective. Keywords: Fairtrade, Ethical marketing, Consumer citizenship, Place marketing, Grounded theor

Unintended consequences in demarketing anti-social behaviour: project Bernie

Unintended consequences are recognised as a potential risk for well-intentioned social marketing interventions and as a comparatively under-researched topic in the field. This case study uses an intervention tackling deliberate grassfires to explore the application of social marketing in a novel context, its potential effectiveness in demarketing antisocial behaviours and the potential of such interventions to generate positive and negative unintended consequences. The intervention’s evaluation confirms social marketing’s potential value in tackling ingrained antisocial behaviours within communities. It also revealed unexpected benefits accruing from changes within the target community, within the sponsoring fire service and in the relationship between the two. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of potential unexpected and unplanned consequences for intervention planning, conduct and evaluation

Social marketing: a fresh approach to promoting sustainable lifestyles?

The discipline of social marketing involves the application of the philosophy, perspective and toolkit of the commercial marketer to key social policy issues. It is a relatively young, but rapidly growing, discipline. Many of its early successes have been in areas relating to personal health, where it has been used to influence individuals' behaviour to quit smoking, drink less, or exercise more. Social marketing initiatives have been less prevalent in environmental issues, although it has been applied to the promotion of behaviours such as energy saving and recycling. This paper looks at the potential for social marketing to promote more sustainable lifestyles, and to encourage new partnerships between commercial organisations and policy makers. Recently there have been calls from the United Nations for approaches to promoting sustainability which rely less on generating fear and guilt amongst consumers, and which are better at understanding consumers and engaging with them. Social marketing offers a ready-made approach that is ideally suited to answer this call. It also has the potential to encourage constructive public-private partnerships because it frames key sustainability challenges in a language and logic that businesses can relate to. However, the promotion of sustainability represents an issue of a size, scope and complexity beyond anything that has yet been tackled using social marketing. It therefore represents a major challenge to those who practice and promote social marketing, and to the policy makers for whom it represents a novel way of approaching the promotion of sustainable lifestyles. This paper combines insights from the evolution of social marketing, writings on sustainable lifestyles, and experience from the field of environmental marketing to explore some of the theoretical, cultural and practical challenges that the social marketing of sustainability will entail