Societal marketing concept

Philip Kotler defined "Societal marketing" as the use of marketing principles and techniques to influence a target audience to voluntarily accept, modify or abandon a behaviour for the benefit of individuals, groups or society as a whole. In this type of marketing, people are placed before profits. Societal marketing in a developing country context has been widely used to promote social changes in for example family planning, public health and HIV/AIDS. This concept has become important because of changing consumer trends. People are now more concerned about the overall doings of a company. E.g: People are really concerned about the use of child labor by companies such as Nike and it actually influenced the sales of its products. That is why Nike is now trying to focus on the fact that it is not using child labor for its products and it is doing a lot for third world communities where its shoes are being manufactured.