Social marketing for social change

Development programmes can succeed only with people's participation. This requires effective communication support aimed at behaviour change. It is now increasingly realised that to involve the people, neither propaganda nor pedagogy will work. Effective communication requires new and scientific approaches of which social marketing is one with enormous potential. Social Marketing is a new concept to facilitate effective implementation of social development programmes. Though in essence an anti-thesis of commercial marketing, it draws heavily from its techniques and methodology. Social commitment rather than profit constitute the core of the social marketing strategy. Qualitative research and effective communication are two components which make the technique extremely useful in providing scientific and reliable basis to development support communication. The present book presents a case for social marketing as the most scientific and cost-effective communication technique for promoting reciprocal linkage between the programmes and the people to provide an impetus to social change. This book is based on the empirical data available from communication studies with which the author was directly involved, besides a number of success stories of communication and social marketing campaigns. These include, inter alia, a Social Marketing experiment in some ICDS Projects in Gujarat and Maharashtra, a study of communication support to social health programmes in Gujarat and Haryana, and an innovative programme for AIDS awareness among students in India.