Social Marketing’s Contribution to Macro-Social Policy and Economics, Beyond Upstream, Midstream, and Downstream Analysis

This chapter explores how social marketing can inform social policy selection and delivery and how social marketing is influenced by macroeconomic policy considerations. The added value of applying social marketing principles in an integrated way with social science evidence and understanding is also explored. Suggestions are made about how these complementary fields of understanding can be better harnessed to ensure that social policy is informed by citizen insight and is based on evidence about how to develop and deliver intervention programmes that are congruent with macroeconomic policy. The chapter examines the notion of up, mid and downstream social marketing and conceptions of macro-social marketing/positive social engineering and how these theoretical contributions delineate different levels at which social marketing principles can contribute to social policy. The case is made that to date such expositions have not explored the implications for social policy and strategy that flow from differing conceptions of what macroeconomics and social policy should deliver. Macroeconomic philosophy and the actions that flow from it, at every level of intervention, will be radically different depending on the economic philosophy adopted. The influence of macroeconomics is addressed in this chapter through an exploration of two basic and adversarial macroeconomic philosophies, Keynesian and Hayekian, and how these macroeconomic schools of thought have a direct impact on what type of social marketing approach is adopted and how it is applied at various levels of social policy. The chapter concludes by setting out a descriptive map that seeks to illustrate key macroeconomic and social policy considerations that need to be addressed when deciding the most appropriate approach to applying social marketing in any given political and economic system.