The Battle between Commercial Marketing and Social Marketing

The purpose of commercial marketing is to sell products that satisfy customers’ needs at a profit, without judging the rightfulness of those needs. Social marketing’s purpose is to modify or change consumer needs when they are harmful to the person, other persons, or society. Social marketing therefore acts as a corrective to harmful commercial marketing practices. With the rise of sustainability concerns, social marketing takes on the additional objective of urging persons in advanced nations to reduce their consumption on the grounds of “less is more.” Social marketers will mount more campaigns to discourage water consumption, beef consumption, heavy packaging with plastics, and so on. To preserve the planet, an emerging goal of social marketing is Degrowth.