Abstract
Objective: This article discusses the suitable application of social marketing principles in health education through a review of recent research.
Methods: The resources of the National Social Marketing Center (NSMC), the Center for Disease control and Prevention (CDC), and Weinreich Communications are cited as the main references.
Results: According to NSMC's reports, social marketing is defined according to eight criteria: “customer oriented”, “behavior”, “theory”, “insight”, “exchange”, “competition”, “segmentation”, and “method mix”. By utilizing these elements, an effective procedure to conduct social marketing will involve the following: “preliminary research”,“strategy”, “program development”, “implementation”, and “evaluation”.
Conclusions: With the rapid advances in information technology since the 1990s, a large budget is no longer necessary to conduct research that applies social marketing. As the use of social marketing in research is expected to increase in the future, referring to these criteria and procedures of social marketing will be useful.
