Understanding Societal Marketing

-
Thursday March 2, 2023 Building U7 - CIVITAS, Room 4066, IV floor, from h.11 to 13

Olena Vrublevska, PhD, Associate Professor

Ivan Franko National University of Lviv

Abstract

Analysis of societal marketing concept (“socially ethical” - in the Ukrainian-language scientific and educational literature) as one of the main approaches for doing business is presented.

The concept came as the result of new expectations of consumers and society to marketing practice, the diversion of marketing practice from merely commercial goals, and the expansion of the traditional concept of marketing in the direction of embracing societally significant tasks and impacts, initiated in 1969-1972.

Regarding weak differentiation of adjacent concepts and fields of marketing, which arose alongside it and are oriented towards the achievement of societal (social and environmental) goals, as well as the diversity of both Ukrainian and English terms that denote them, there is a need to analyse modern essence of such concepts.

The research aimed at the arrangement of knowledge and the set of concepts in marketing. Based on a comparison of English-language and Ukrainian-language terminology, considering the peculiarities of knowledge transfer in marketing and based on the latest research in marketing theory and international trends in responsible business development, conclusions are drawn regarding the place of the “socially ethical marketing” within the space of pro-societal concepts and directions of marketing.

The origins of societal marketing and social marketing are examined, the connection between societal marketing,sustainable marketing, and socially responsible marketing is investigated.

It is shown that reputation, being an indicator of the company’s ethics and the sum of its efforts, is a link between the corporate social responsibility and company’s marketing activities, which makes the corporate social responsibility to be considered as a marketing theme, and the marketers’ engagement in it as a necessity.