Marketing the Public Sector

The administrative officers of public and nonprofit organizations have become increasingly interested in marketing techniques during the 1990s. They reason that if commercial marketing methods can successfully move merchandise across the retail counter, those same techniques should be capable of creating a demand for such "social products" as energy conservation, women's rights, military enlistment, or day-care centers. The goal of this volume is to provide social sector executives with practical and effective guidelines on how to harness the power of marketing in order to improve service to their constituencies.

Marketing the Public Sector builds upon two decades of research in social marketing and represents the current state of the art. The authors demonstrate how the principles developed in earlier studies can be applied in actual situations. Included here are case studies of marketing plans prepared for hospitals, political campaigns, Third World social change, and community foundations that proved to be as effective as those in the private sector.

The case study approach is effectively supplemented by theoretical chapters that define first principles in essential matters such as product management, value determination, advertising, and analysis of market performance. This amalgamation of theory and application is suitable to middle-range social marketing sizes as well as full-scale projects that large agencies might undertake. The problems differ only in magnitude; no organization is too small or too large to adopt a consumer orientation. Marketing the Public Sector is not only a guide to marketing; it is also about communication, social change, propaganda, and education. It will be of great interest to sociologists; public sector administrators; and specialists in communications, public relations, fund-raising, and community affairs.