"PLACE" IN SOCIAL MARKETING
Social marketers mimic the use of the "4Ps" employed in the commercial marketing sector to think about and plan their programs. Often the "Product" for social marketing is not the tangible item found in commercial marketing practice, or even the services offered by various types of providers. Rather, it is a behavior they are encouraging people to adopt (get a regular breast cancer screening mammogram, eat 5 or more servings of fruits and vegetables), discouraging them from trying (teens and tobacco or other iillicit drug use), or stopping altogether (cigarette smoking, binge drinking).
The "Price" one pays for changing behavior becomes the intangible counterpart to the $$$ used in the commercial world- - though there are many areas of overlap as well. Some behavioral economic and psychological theories suggest that people weigh the relative benefits and costs of changing their behavior and these benefits and costs can range widely from person-to-person, from behavior to behavior, and I suspect even in different contexts or environments. Psychological benefits (increased self-esteem), social costs (peer disapproval), physical well-being or threats (safe or unsafe neighborhoods for playing outside), accessibility, and, yes, monetary incentives and costs are examples of variables that can influence decision-making and action.
The "Promotion" variable refers to the communications about the behavior - the pamphlets, posters, PSAs and publicity (the "other 4Ps) - that many people mistakenly equate with marketing. While an important element of the marketing mix, it is only one element.
A long way to get to the point about place (the 4th P). Last year's Innovations in Social Marketing Conference addressed "Place" in two different sessions because, in the words of the Chair, it is "...an important, unique, and often overlooked or dismissed aspect of social marketing." In reading the proceedings of these sessions in Social Marketing Quarterly (2004, Volume X:3-4), it was interesting to Note from my POV that all the presentations focused on Place as a message distribution or channel problem. This interpretation of Place actually subsumes the issue as a communications problem: of how, when, where and by whom (source) do we put our messages in front of our target audience so that they will attend to it, remember it, be motivated by it, and act in response to it.
For the next step in social marketing practice, think of Place not just as a distribution channel for messages and their related products (see the "other 4Ps" earlier), but as a location where people can try or engage in the target behavior (in marketing terms, where they can "buy" the product). After all, that's what we are marketing - not the pamphlet or PSA.
Here's an easy example with lots of current relevance to public health folks. Physical activity has many different behaviors that can be marketed (kudos to those of you who picked up on the nuance there), and we all can recite the many barriers and costs (reasons why) people aren't more physically active. And many of these barriers revolve around place issues: where can I go that's accessible, safe, and supportive for me to be more active. To address this issue, many programs are creating or modifying physical environments in their communities (they are changing the Place variable). Similar examples to encourage "disadoption" of cigarette smoking have included restriciting sales of tobacco products to minors and clean indoor air policies (they create places where teens can't buy cigareetes and people can't smoke). For those of you who are looking at increasing physical activity and preventing and reducing the prevalence of obesity, you might want to check out the recent publication from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Active Living Leadership Initiative on healthy community design.
5:44:14 PM 
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