An approach to understand social marketing unexplored potential

Abstract

This paper clarifies the definitions of the five different terms used by companies associated with Social Marketing in international journals. It reviews terms usually linked to social marketing practice, and discusses their different meanings for the sake of proper adoption by executives and scholars. The discussion is based on exploratory research and, as such, we adopted the literature review as the main approach of study. Two scientific databases were used in order to identify the most commonly used expressions, which were later reviewed and discussed, exploring their similarities, differences and relevance to the organizational environment. The conclusion is that Internal Marketing is directly related to employees and different stakeholders of the institution promoting or using this strategy or management philosophy, whereas Social Marketing is related to the changing behavior of the target markets.