Applying Social Marketing in Health Care: Communicating Evidence to Change Consumer Behavior

Philip Kotler and Gerald Zaltman argued that the same marketing strategies that have been so successful in selling products and services to consumers could also be used to promote socially beneficial ideas, attitudes, and behaviors.1 Kotler and Andreasen2 describe social marketing as ‘‘differ-ing from other areas of marketing only with respect to the objectives of the marketer and his or her orga-nization. Social marketing seeks to influence social behaviors not to benefit the marketer, but to benefit the target audience and the general society.’’ In the context of health, social marketing attempts to increase healthy behaviors in a population by using proven marketing techniques used to promote commercial products. Andreasen3 refers to healt