An understanding of social marketing and behavioural economics is essential for anyone who is involved in planning or implementing behavioural change interventions. But there are often misunderstandings about the essential elements of social marketing and behavioural economics, how and when they should be used, and how each discipline relates to the other.
The seven most common misunderstandings include:
1. Behavioural economics is a subset of social marketing.
It isn’t. It is a discipline in its own right with a long history, which some economists date back to Adam Smith, writing in the 1750’s.
2. Behavioural economics is all about “Nudge.”
Well, up to a point. Behavioural economics has a long history (see 1) it just wasn’t always called behavioural economics (or even economics, in the early days). A lot of the findings of behavioural economics come from discovery of the anomalies in the assumptions and predictions of conventional models of economics. So Nudge is just the tip of the behavioural economics iceberg.
3. Social marketing and behavioural economics are mutually exclusive.
Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t - although they can be used together, sometimes they work better apart. Some elements from each discipline will be familiar to exponents of both social marketing and behavioural economics – such as the power of social norms. When it comes to choosing the right kind of intervention, it’s a matter of horses for courses.
No it doesn’t. Although social media can be a useful tool in behaviour change, there is a common misconception that social marketing is a subset of social media. Making things even more confusing, marketing types often talk about “social marketing media.” Whatever that is…
5. Effective behaviour change campaigns depend on getting the right information to the right people.
It would be easy to give the public information and hope they change behaviour but we know that doesn’t work very satisfactorily. Otherwise, as the famous quote goes, “none of us would be obese, none of us would smoke and none of us would drive like lunatics.”
6. Social marketing is expensive.
Not necessarily. There is strong evidence to show that well implemented social marketing campaigns can achieve cost-effective behavioural change. Measuring the rate of return on a social marketing investment, and capturing all the relevant costs, means that interventions can provide value for money.
7. Behavioural economics is cheap.
It depends what you mean by “cheap.” Interventions based on behavioural economics don’t usually require the processes that can make social marketing costly – like developing insight and segmenting the audience. So that’s how behavioural economics can save money – which is always going to be popular with the politicians and policy makers who control the purse strings. But re-designing processes and choice environments using behavioural economics is not free. So it all depends on what you mean by “cheap.” Because behaviour change is complicated and difficult, it’s unwise to expect any form of intervention to be “cheap.” Until you compare it with the costs of not intervening…
Find out more
There’s more thinking along these lines in our chapter on Behavioural Economics and Social Marketing: Points of Contact?, which appears in Volume II of Stewart, D. (Ed) Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing, to be published by Praeger/Santa Barbara, CA and Routledge, London, later this year.
For more on the relationship between behavioural economics and social marketing, and what it means in practice for behaviour change interventions, check out our new workshop for 2104 – Is A Nudge Enough?
