Redefining social marketing with contemporary commercial marketing definitions

Social marketing is based on the adaptation of the contemporary commercial marketing theory and practice as a means of guiding and aiding social change campaigns. This paper draws on recent developments in commercial marketing theory and prior work in social marketing definitions to create a new definition of social marketing which integrates the commercial definitions of the American Marketing Association (AMA) and Chartered Instituted of Marketing (CIM) with established social marketing definitions from the past thirty years of social marketing conceptual development. The development of the definition is supported through the use of qualitative research technique of text mining which uncovered a core series of principles consistent to the historical definitions of social marketing. Finally, the new definition also introduces clarification of several key subcomponent elements as part of an expanded definition of social marketing. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.