Social Marketing Approaches for Sustainable Development Goal

Dear Colleagues,

Social marketing plays a major role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It is most commonly defined as the use of commercial marketing strategies and technologies to address health issues and resolve societal problems by influencing mass behavior to promote actions that are advantageous to both society and the individual. Ultimately, the central aspect of the UN SDGs is the guarantee of social needs and ecological equilibrium while promoting a sustainable development agenda. Previous studies demonstrate that social marketing could be adopted to efficiently address these challenges, focusing on the behaviour of target audiences. Despite the fact that social marketing has been employed to effectively bring social change and sustainable development, there is an ongoing need for critical literacy to discuss the benefits and harms of such practices, especially in a changing world. For instance, sustainable marketing is observed to influence both sustainable competitive advantage and market performance (Hussain, Mu, Mohiuddin, Danish, and Sair, 2020).

This Special Issue (SI) focuses on investigating how and when sustainable marketing acts as a lever towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Indeed, the benefits of social marketing can go beyond influencing social behaviors, because of the importance of sustainable production and consumption processes seeking to concur with the growing awareness of sustainability and environmental issues among consumers (Meng, Mohiuddin, Cao, 2022). We aim also to enhance our understanding on the critical antecedents, dimensions, and consequences of social marketing and how social marketing may be used to sustain value creation and positive social change, including that businesses would benefit from social alliances in a period of social change for social marketing purposes sustainably.

For the purpose of this Issue, the focus will be on the extent to which the widespread adoption of social marketing tools will also contribute to the purpose of successfully overcoming environmental concerns, as well as assessing the effectiveness of social marketing interventions. In order to fully explore the importance of social marketing approaches for the Sustainable Development Goals, the contributions to this Special Issue should adopt a multidisciplinary approach. This includes conceptual, methodological, empirical, and case-based perspectives.

Prof. Dr. Muhammad Mohiuddin
Dr. Slimane Ed-Dafali
Dr. Saeb Farhan Al Ganideh
Dr. Bilal Khalid
Guest Editors

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