Marketing Social Change: Changing Behavior to Promote Health, Social Development, and the Environment

This book provides a very good overview of social marketing. I use this as a text book in a graduate course that I teach and find it useful in giving students a clear idea of how social marketing relates to the broader topic of nonprofit marketing, without requring them to wade through all of the additional information that a more general marketing textbook would offer. Author Alan Andreason is a leading thinker on the topic of social marketing and has organized this relatively short book in a straightforward manner that makes it easy to separate the preparatory work from the actual execution of social marketing plans. The one complaint I have about this book, and the reason that I have not awarded it five stars, is that the examples used are less than exciting and I find that I need to supplement this book with additional titles so that my students get the bigger picture of how social marketing principles play out in various cultures around the world, not just in the United States. For those who are looking to expand their understand of social marketing in the developing world and in emerging economies, see also Marketing the Public Sector by Seymour Fine. Sadly, this great book is a bit dated, as it was published in 1992, but balanced with this Andreason book (or a comparable book by Philip Kotler) you will be able to give yourself a solid grasp of the topic.

This is the best book to give you grounding in social marketing. It also is a handy reference that you'll go back to again and again. It's well written and very accessible.