Conceptualising a Relational Approach to Value Creation in a Government Service: Implications for Social Marketing

Social marketing is often used by governments to achieve social change goals such as reduction of smoking, increase in adherence to safe driving, increasing uptake environment and recycling programs and healthier lifestyles. A hallmark of many of these social marketing programs is the nature of the 'product' in the social marketing mix being more service-oriented than goods-based. Given the prominence of services rather than goods in the government marketing mix, it would seem appropriate that services marketing theory can be used to develop the field of social marketing. This paper draws together the services marketing theories of co-creation and value creation to offer a new perspective for governments in managing service-oriented social marketing programs. Specifically Sweeney's Value Development Model (2003) is combined with Hastings (2003) multirelational model to show the relationship between key social marketing stakeholders (customers and employees) for each stage of the value creation process