A systematic review of social marketing effectiveness

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review the effectiveness of social marketing interventions in influencing individual behaviour and bringing about environmental and policy‐level changes in relation to alcohol, tobacco, illicit drugs and physical activity. Social marketing is the use of marketing concepts in programmes designed to influence the voluntary behaviour of target audiences in order to improve health and society.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is a review of systematic reviews and primary studies using pre‐specified search and inclusion criteria. Social marketing interventions were defined as those which adopted specified social marketing principles in their development and implementation.Findings – The paper finds that a total of 54 interventions met the inclusion criteria. There was evidence that interventions adopting social marketing principles could be effective across a range of behaviours, with a range of target groups, in different settings, and can influence policy and p...