The vast majority of marketing activities on the market is Commercial Marketing. This is because most of the organizations are profit-oriented businesses.
However, in addition to Commercial Marketing, many non-profit social organizations nowadays are using Social Marketing to approach their target audience.
Definitions of Commercial Marketing and Social Marketing
To start with, here are two short definitions of Commercial Marketing and Social Marketing.
Commercial Marketing
Commercial Marketing uses marketing strategies to meet the needs and wants of customers in a profitable way by providing what they want, when and where they want it. Commercial Marketing is empty of value meaning that morality and ethics does not play a big role.
For example, selling tobacco, alcohol, junk food. Commercial Marketing will support sales in the tobacco industry by arguing that smoking can help people to relax, it is easier to socialize with other smokers and that it creates jobs.
Social Marketing
Social Marketing uses marketing strategies to promote activities that seek to influence social behavior to benefit the society as a whole – do something good for all the people. Social Marketing is full of value meaning that morality and ethics play a big role.
For example, against smoking, drunk driving, teenage obesity. Social Marketing will focus its attention on arguing that smoking should be banned in public areas to reduce air pollution, prevent lung diseases and create less rubbish.
Main differences between Commercial Marketing and Social Marketing
The main differences between Social Marketing and Commercial Marketing include:
- Purpose. The purpose of Commercial Marketing is to sell products (tangible goods and intangible services) to customers in order to fulfill their limited needs and unlimited wants. The purpose of Social Marketing is to influence social attitudes to persuade stakeholders to change their behavior.
- Benefits. Commercial Marketing aims to satisfy individual needs and wants of customers in order to make profit. Social Marketing aims to satisfy the desires of the society in order to bring benefits to the general public.
- Main users. Commercial Marketing is used in the private sector by for-profit business organization. Social marketing is used in the private sector by non-profit social organizations and in organizations in public sector by the government and other governmental agencies.
In short, Commercial Marketing aims to reap the private benefits of marketing products to earn increased sales revenues and profits. Social Marketing is focused on bringing about social change using concepts from commercial marketing.
Similar to Commercial Marketing as Marketing aims to influence certain actions, Social Marketing has been adopted by the non-profit social organizations such as Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and charities.
