Background Patients living with chronic disease often face multiple and interacting health risk factors, such as smoking, sedentary lifestyles, psychological distress, or exposure to disruptive health crises. Yet prevention programmes frequently remain organised around single diseases or isolated behaviours. Addressing these complex situations requires patient-centred and behaviorally informed approaches that account for patients’ varying capacities to understand health information, mobilise resources, and act on recommendations. Focus of the Article This article introduces LIFE — Literacy & Individualized Framework for Empowerment — as a conceptual and empirically informed segmentation framework for social marketing. LIFE differentiates patients according to two complementary dimensions: health literacy and empowerment. It supports the upstream strategic phase of intervention design by helping practitioners move from broadly defined target audiences to more differentiated patient profiles with distinct barriers, resources, and support needs. Research Question The study explores two questions: (1) How do patients with diabetes or pre-diabetes perceive and manage multiple health-related demands when facing either a disruptive health crisis such as COVID-19 or a behavioural risk factor such as smoking?. (2) How can social marketing strategies be tailored by integrating health literacy and empowerment as segmentation dimensions, while using behavioral science frameworks to identify intervention priorities? Methods A hybrid deductive–inductive qualitative design was used, drawing on Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Thirty semi-structured interviews were conducted across two qualitative studies. The first examined diabetes management during the COVID-19 pandemic among 18 patients with diabetes. The second examined perceptions and management of smoking-related risk among 12 diabetic or pre-diabetic current or former smokers. Data were analysed through inductive coding, consolidation into meta-themes, cross-study thematic integration, and interpretation through health literacy and empowerment. COM-B and Chronic Illness Management Theory were used as complementary lenses. Results Findings show that patients often recognised isolated health risks but lacked an actionable understanding of how diabetes, smoking, pandemic-related vulnerability, treatment routines, and everyday constraints interacted. Health literacy gaps concerned not only information deficits, but also patients’ ability to evaluate credibility, interpret relevance, and translate information into practical decisions. Empowerment emerged as the hinge between knowledge and action, while also being shaped by social, emotional, and material opportunity structures. The analysis identified four patient profiles: vulnerable patients, overconfident autonomous patients, patients dependent on healthcare professionals, and effective autonomous patients. Importance to the Social Marketing Field The article contributes to social marketing by proposing a segmentation-oriented framework for patients facing multiple health risk factors. LIFE extends segmentation beyond biomedical risk or socio-demographic categorisation by focusing on patients’ capacity to understand health information and act upon it. It also clarifies the complementary roles of health literacy, empowerment, and COM-B: health literacy and empowerment provide the segmentation logic, while COM-B supports behavioural diagnosis. Recommendations for Research or Practice LIFE can help social marketers, healthcare professionals, and public health authorities tailor prevention and self-management strategies to heterogeneous patient needs. Low-literacy/high-empowerment patients require clearer guidance that preserves autonomy; low-literacy/low-empowerment patients require proactive outreach and supportive opportunities; high-literacy/low-empowerment patients need confidence-building and support for translating knowledge into action; and high-literacy/high-empowerment patients require maintenance, relapse prevention, and peer-support opportunities. Future research should test the relevance, reliability, and predictive validity of the four profiles and examine whether patients respond differently to tailored messages or support formats.
Background Sending ‘dashcam’ footage of road incidents to traffic police is becoming increasingly common in the US and internationally. However there is little research examining the role of social marketing in promoting the involvement of the public in policing the roads. Dashcams, together with helmet cams (used by cyclists, motorcyclists and horse riders), mobile phones and other digital recording devices, are potentially valuable data sources for policing road use, and in response to increased unsolicited footage sent to UK regional constabularies, a scheme called Operation Snap was set up to encourage further reporting of risky on-road behaviours. Article Focus There are two key foci, one for professionals and the other for scholars. The professional focus of this article is to assess public attitudes to Operation Snap to provide insights that might inform social marketing planning, and in particular identifying audience segments, informing strategies and designing messaging. For scholars, the findings create an agenda for possible future research examining public involvement in road safety in general, and in particular examining how Operation Snap might work in different countries. For example, scholars could use this work to investigate how different cultural attitudes towards their police forces affect the success of public involvement in similar schemes within different nations. Importance to the social marketing field There is a dearth of published work examining how social marketing can help the growth of public involvement in road safety generally, and the growth of using dashcams in reporting incidents specifically. This article seeks to help fill this gap. Methods A representative survey of public attitudes and claimed behaviours was undertaken with a sample of over 2000 UK respondents. We analysed these the results using two behavioural models: the Knowledge-Attitude-Behaviour Model, and the Social-Ecological Model. Results Negative attitudes (for example issues of privacy) were only exhibited by a minority of respondents. Given the difficulty of challenging ‘motonormative’ views, it was encouraging that the majority of respondents had positive views of Operation Snap. However awareness and understanding of the scheme was low. Recommendations for research or practice Police constabularies made some use of tactical social media marketing, but in this paper we recommend a strategic role for social marketing that could support Operation Snap, with social marketing particularly useful for raising awareness and understanding, and promoting public reporting of risky behaviours. Our recommendations for scholars include conducting specific work on the extent to which car-norms (motonormativity) might interact with public dispositions towards Operation Snap. Scholars may also wish to examine other key success factors internationally for the scheme, for example the connection between public willingness to report incidents and levels of public trust that the police will act on reports sent to them.
Background and Situation Analysis Accessible online training may expand social marketing capacity, but evidence linking course participation to implementation remains limited. This longitudinal case study examines a free, comprehensive Social Marketing for Public Health curriculum delivered to public health teams across Latin America and the Caribbean. The training and course evaluation are the primary focus; salt-reduction campaigns implemented in Aruba and Sint Maarten in 2024 illustrate how the curriculum was applied and where support was needed. Priority Audience(s) The capacity-building audience was public health professionals in ministries and health organizations across Latin America and the Caribbean. The case study audience was working women in hotels within the tourism sector. Food-service staff, hotel management, and community partners were secondary audiences that influenced access to lower-sodium choices. Behavioral Objectives The training aimed to help practitioners select a behavioral focus and target audience, conduct formative research, develop a marketing mix, and plan implementation and evaluation. The case study focused on Aruba, which sought to increase the availability and selection of lower-sodium meals and to support lower-sodium food preparation, and on Sint Maarten, which promoted lower-sodium purchasing and cooking through workshops, supermarket prompts, and social media. Strategy/Intervention Planning and Development The five-module curriculum combined a self-paced prerequisite with four applied, tutor-supported modules and bilingual technical assistance. Curriculum implementation revealed gaps in research, segmentation, ethics, budgeting, governance, and evaluation. Social marketing tutors extended the research period and added instruction in study design, sampling, recruitment, data collection, analysis, and ethics. Aruba used local health checks, formative research, an external creative agency, message pretesting, and hotel activities. Sint Maarten adapted Aruba’s approach through workshops, supermarket prompts, and social media. Evaluation Methods and Results Course evaluation sources included post-module surveys, program records, 24 semi-structured interviews, and campaign documents. Twenty-nine participants completed the tutor-supported curriculum. Participants valued flexibility, clear resources, and expert feedback, while limited research experience, staffing, time, internet access, and local data constrained application. For the case studies, Aruba and Sint Maarten delivered staff briefings and cooking workshops, distributed materials, and used social media; pre-and post-surveys indicated improved knowledge. Findings demonstrate implementation, reach, learning, and the start of organizational institutionalization of social marketing. Recommendations for Social Marketing Practice Online training should be designed as an implementation pathway, not merely a content delivery vehicle. Programs should assess organizational readiness, require team participation and dedicated staff training time, strengthen applied research and ethics instruction, include budgeting and governance modules, provide structured technical assistance and implementation resources, and adopt a common evaluation framework. Training should also reinforce social marketing as a strategic practice by building competencies in audience insight, co-design, stakeholder engagement, and continuous adaptation, enabling practitioners to integrate evidence-based social marketing principles into routine organizational decision-making and program delivery.
Background and Situation Analysis Transportation accounts for 28% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, with single-occupancy vehicle (SOV) commuting representing a behavioral challenge on some university campuses. At a large public university in the southeastern United States, most upperclassmen live off-campus and frequently commute by car despite access to a fare-free city-operated bus system funded in part by student fees. Formative research revealed that driving was perceived as the social norm and default option, associated with convenience, flexibility, and independence. Informational barriers, confusion between commuter buses and inner campus shuttles (ICS), and distrust of transit technology further limited bus adoption. The Dukes Ride campaign was developed to address these barriers using community-based social marketing (CBSM) principles within institutional and infrastructure constraints. Priority Audience(s) The primary audience was off-campus undergraduate commuters who rely on SOVs. A secondary audience included first-year students, targeted early to establish sustainable commuting norms before off-campus transitions. Indirect stakeholders included transportation, housing, student leadership, and sustainability partners. Behavioral Objectives The intervention sought to (1) decrease reliance on SOV commuting among off-campus students, (2) increase awareness and understanding of commuter bus routes, (3) strengthen intentions to use fare-free buses, and (4) increase adoption of bus commuting as a primary or supplemental mode of transportation. Strategy/Intervention Planning and Development Using intercept surveys (n = 176) and focus groups (n = 56), the campaign identified benefits, including cost savings, sustainability, and reduced parking stress, and barriers, including knowledge gaps, perceived inconvenience, norms, and structural constraints. (1) Product : Fare-free commuter bus routes with maps, tailored housing packets, route cards, and instructional videos. (2) Price : Reduced psychological costs through education, route clarification, and incentives tied to pledges. (3) Place : Materials distributed through housing complexes, housing fairs, bus shelters, tabling events, and a campaign webpage. (4) Promotion : School-spirit branding, credible campus figures, social media, Dukes Ride Week, pledges, incentives, and cross-campus partnerships. Evaluation Methods and Results Three tracking surveys ( N = 453 across three time points) assessed awareness and perceptions. Unprompted campaign recall increased from 23% to 53%, and aided recall of the campaign name increased from 8% to 32%. Agreement that bus rides are fare-free significantly increased ( p = .011), although the effect size was small and baseline agreement was already high. Convenience and environmental perceptions remained stable. Self-reported primary transportation mode remained stable, suggesting limited evidence of behavior change during the first year. Follow-up pledge survey findings indicated high satisfaction among riders but limited recruitment of new users, suggesting reinforcement effects more than behavior change. Given the cross-sectional design and low pledge follow-up response rate, findings should be interpreted cautiously. Recommendations for Social Marketing Practice Transportation-focused CBSM campaigns should pair branding and normative messaging with navigation support, reliable transit tools, and structural supports . Institutional partnerships and visible leadership endorsement enhance credibility. Sustained implementation, infrastructure alignment, and stronger evaluation designs using longitudinal tracking or objective ridership data are necessary to move from awareness gains to durable behavior change.
Background This study extends the discussion of partnership tension in social marketing, a common phenomenon in the field. Despite their prevalence, understanding these tensions remains underdeveloped, with discussion predominantly focusing on the private sector, which is often more complex in social marketing partnerships. Focus of the Article This study explores how partnership tensions are conceptualized in social marketing. Research Questions The following three research questions are addressed. • How are partnership tensions conceptualized within social marketing? • What are the root causes of partnership tensions in social marketing? • How are partnership tensions addressed in social marketing? Program Design/Approach This is a conceptual study. Importance to Social Marketing This study advances understanding of partnership tensions in social marketing by positioning them as embedded elements of behavioral change efforts. As social marketing increasingly relies on downstream, midstream, upstream, and system-level partnerships, tensions arising from contradictory logic, power asymmetries, and competing interests are inevitable. Yet, despite the centrality of partnerships, these tensions remain conceptually underdeveloped. By theorizing six distinct types of partnership tensions, this study enhances conceptual clarity and supports more reflexive and effective partnership practice within complex social marketing systems. Method A systematic literature review is used to achieve the objectives. Results The results of our study highlight the urgent need to conceptualize ‘partnership’, including a discussion of the role both controversial and non-controversial organizations play in partnership tensions. Recommendations for Research or Practice This study provides a foundation for developing more robust, empirical investigations of partnership tensions, thereby extending the knowledge base. The results are based on a small sample of 14 articles identified through the review. As a result, this conceptual study provides valuable insights but cannot be considered holistically generalizable.
