European Social Marketing Conference 2024

5. Theories and methods

Future direction

Social marketing is a solutions-focused field that aims to alleviate pressing issues for the betterment of society and our planet. Theory is underutilised in social marketing, and a key weakness of social marketing theories is the focus on individuals, which is stigmatising. A theory focused on what social marketers can do may better support practitioners. This paper presents the HITS social marketing theory. HITS provides 9 actions across 4 domains, that together are expected to increase rates of behaviour change.