How Marketers Reach Young Consumers: Implications for Nutrition Education and Health Promotion Campaigns

Family Economics and Nutrition Review, Fall, 1998 by Vivica Kraak, David L. Pelletier

Social marketing originates from marketing theory with one important difference--the changes in a population's behavior result in the "profits" for individuals and society. For nutritional well-being, the "profits" are to produce healthier children who will become more productive and healthy adults, while simultaneously serving to reduce health care service needs and related costs. Social marketing provides a framework from which behavior-change strategies are formulated and translated into specific and integrated interventions aimed at certain behavior changes. Interventions may include mass media campaigns, interpersonal communications, public policy interventions, school-based interventions, and the use of community-based coalitions to implement a variety of organization-based actions (1,20).

Social marketers point to the success of this approach because it offers benefits people want, reduces barriers people face, and persuades instead of just informs. The 1995 Gallup Organization Survey, Food, Physical Activity, and Fun: What Kid's Think, revealed a large discrepancy between what children understood and said were healthful eating principles and what they practiced (3). Social marketing proponents believe a successful social marketing campaign for young consumers is not about selling preformulated ideas about desirable nutrition habits. They believe it is about creating food and nutrition concepts that conform to a particular target group's expressed desires, values, and tendencies (1,20).

In conducting a comprehensive analysis for a successful campaign that uses social marketing principles, campaign developers seek to identify the basic components of business marketing within a public health context. Four marketing "P's" can be used as a foundation for planning a social marketing program:

* Product: this may be defined not only as a service but also as an idea, concept, social cause, or behavior change;

* Place: the distribution channels that will be used to get the product or messages to the target audiences;

* Price: the social, behavioral, psychological, and geographic costs for the consumer to adopt a behavior; and

* Promotion: the communication tools used to increase acceptance and use of a product, tools such as advertising, public relations, and consumer incentives.

Politics is added as a fifth "P" that evaluates the political environment within which a campaign functions. If there is weak internal agency support or external community or government support for a social marketing campaign, the probability is low that the campaign will be successfully implemented (25).

These principles are well-illustrated by the USDA Team Nutrition Campaign. The mission of this campaign is to build skills and motivate children to make healthful food choices by reaching them through multiple channels, in a language they speak, and in ways that are engaging and entertaining. No one message or single delivery strategy will adequately meet the communications objectives of this type of campaign. Thus, the Campaign uses social marketing principles to reach children through the mass media, in schools, and at home to impart knowledge and build skills children need to make healthful food choices (5).