Social marketing role on smoking issue Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Social marketing role on smoking issue - Essay Example The paper then moves on to the marketing environment and consumer orientation. In order to develop a better understanding of how social marketing can influence the social issue a discussion on smoking and social marketing is given which covers a number of factors associated with it. In the end conclusion and recommendations are given. Even though the awareness about the ill-effects of smoking has significantly increased over the years, it remains a social problem today effecting millions of people worldwide. For instance, the number of smokers in the UK has dropped by 50 per cent since the 1950’s, still smoking caused around 1.2 million deaths in European region alone in 2000 (Bonas 2005). Many diseases have been associated with smoking, such as low birth weight, high death rate, cancer, heart attacks, stroke, etc. Smoking not only has a negative impact on the health of the smoker, but it also has adverse effects on the people who live around the smoker and the society as a whole, making it a social problem. The problem of smoking is not confined to one particular region but spread over the whole world, especially among the youngsters. According to a study conducted by Schaefer (1979), old smokers who quit are constantly replaced by smokers that originate in the younger generation. Moreover, status symbol was identified to be one of the main causes of smoking, i.e. smoking served as a status symbol which motivated the people to smoke (Schaefer 1979). Most of the people begin smoking during adolescence and the main motivation behind taking up smoking is said to be the frequent advertising of cigarette (Arnett 2001). Sandage defines social marketing as the â€Å"design, implementation, and control of programs calculated to influence the acceptability of social ideas and involving considerations of product planning, pricing, communication, distribution, and marketing research† (Sandage and Fryburger 1960,