Cover -- EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD -- Guest editorial -- A national policy process on social marketing -- The importance of shared beliefs for social marketing programmes -- A tale of complexity -- Using system dynamics modeling to evaluate a community-based social marketing framework --...

Purpose – Unlike other sub‐areas of marketing, such as sports marketing, business‐to‐business marketing or even religious marketing, social marketing attracts a very diverse group of disciples, many of whom have little or no background in the discipline of commercial marketing. At the...

Purpose – The reason for this paper is to better understand why many social marketing campaigns produce poor results and to propose a model to guide social marketing strategic planning to improve program outcomes. Design/methodology/approach – This is a conceptual paper which discusses a new...

Purpose – The paper aims to explore the apparent tension between upstream and downstream social marketing and propose these should be treated as contiguous and complementary. Design/methodology/approach – An environmental, population‐based framework is used to explore the varied roles...

Purpose – The paper aims to discuss the thorny issues of industry‐funded social marketing campaigns. Can the tobacco industry be trusted to educate our children about the dangers of smoking? Is a brewer the best source of health promotion? The paper argues for transparency and critical...

Purpose – Social marketing has evolved differently in the developing and developed worlds, at times leading to different emphases on what social marketing thought and practice entail. This paper aims to document what those differences have been and provide an integrative framework to guide...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature and role of the critical dimension social marketing and its place within marketing scholarly thought. It is posited that such activity can be defined as “critical social marketing” and a formal definition is offered....

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to shed light on concepts of validity and validation of social marketing research (SMR) with a view to enhancing SMR design and to inform SMR practice. Design/methodology/approach – The paper defines and presents concepts of validity in a manner that...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to argue that integrated marketing communications (IMC) must be used in social marketing, like it is in commercial marketing, by illustrating that IMC principles are effective in social marketing contexts within an education setting. Specifically, the...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to highlight the potential value that direct‐to‐consumer (DTC) prescription drug advertisements can provide to social marketers as examples of effective persuasive health communication. Design/methodology/approach – Modern medicine increasingly...