Social Marketing and Sustainable Futures

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Introduction  

Social marketing has long been positioned as a discipline capable of improving societal wellbeing by applying marketing principles to influence behaviour in socially beneficial ways. Early contributions that imagined marketing being used beyond the commercial realm (Kotler & Levy, 1969) laid the foundation for the field’s formal emergence in the early 1970s (Kotler & Zaltman, 1971). Over the decades, social marketing has advanced its understanding of how to encourage and sustain behaviour change (Andreasen, 2003), yet the contemporary landscape presents challenges of a fundamentally different scale.

Increasing environmental degradation, climate instability, resource pressures, and persistent social inequities highlight the need for social marketing approaches capable of addressing system-wide issues. While behaviour remains a central concern, scholars have argued that meaningful progress requires attention to macro-level structures (Kennedy, 2016) and the dynamic interactions among actors, networks, institutions, and infrastructures (Domegan, 2021). Social marketing is therefore being called upon not merely to promote individual behaviour change, but to support the creation of sustainable futures through coordinated, multi-level forms of change (Van Hau et al., 2025).

Moreover, this shift has been accompanied by growing engagement with systems-oriented and impact-focused frameworks that seek to guide, justify, and evaluate social marketing’s contribution to sustainability transitions. These include macro and systems social marketing perspectives (Kennedy, 2016; Domegan, 2021), emerging governance-oriented impact frameworks such as the UNSW Societal Impact Framework (UNSW, 2025), and theory-driven approaches including Better Marketing for a Better World (Chandy et al., 2021) or Co-create-Build-Engage (CBE) framework (Rundle-Thiele et al., 2021), which collectively emphasise public value creation, institutional change, and societal wellbeing. At a global level, these perspectives also align social marketing with broader sustainability agendas, including the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (Galan-Ladero et al., 2023), positioning the discipline as a contributor to long-term environmental, social, and economic resilience rather than short-term behavioural outcomes alone.

This Special Issue provides an opportunity to advance this conversation by showcasing cutting-edge research, conceptual development, and methodological innovation. We welcome work that critically examines social marketing’s evolving role in shaping environmental, social, and economic sustainability, and that considers how the field can contribute to societal transitions during a period of intense global uncertainty. We encourage conceptual and empirical (qualitative or quantitative) papers. 
 

References

Andreasen, A. R. (2003). The life trajectory of social marketing: Some implications. Marketing Theory, 3(3), 293-303.
Chandy, R. K., Johar, G. V., Moorman, C., & Roberts, J. H. (2021). Better marketing for a better world. Journal of Marketing, 85(3), 1-9.
Domegan, C. (2021). Social marketing and behavioural change in a systems setting. Current Opinion in Environmental Science & Health, 23, 100275.
Galan-Ladero, M. M., Sarmento, M., & Marques, S. (2023). Social marketing to achieve the sustainable development goals (SDGs) in 2030 agenda by the United nations. International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing, 20(3), 521-527.
Kennedy, A. M. (2016). Macro-social marketing Journal of Macromarketing, 36(3), 354-365.
Kotler, P., & Levy, S. J. (1969). Broadening the concept of marketing Journal of Marketing, 33(1), 10-15.
Kotler, P., & Zaltman, G. (1971). Social marketing: an approach to planned social change. Journal of Marketing, 35(3), 3-12.
Rundle-Thiele, S., Dietrich, T., & Carins, J. (2021). CBE: A framework to guide the application of marketing to behavior change. Social Marketing Quarterly, 27(3), 175-194.
UNSW (2025). UNSW Societal Impact Framework. University of New South Wales. https://www.unsw.edu.au/societal-impact/framework
Van Hau, P., Robertson, K., Thyne, M., Hamlin, R., & Rundle-Thiele, S. (2025). Reducing single-use plastics (SUPs) consumption: A synthesis of I and S level approaches. Sustainable futures, 10, 101087.

List of Topic Areas

• Critical reviews of social marketing's development and its relevance to sustainability
• Conceptual and theoretical contributions linking social marketing to sustainable futures
• Social marketing and its application to addressing environmental and social challenges
• Systems social marketing and multi-actor, multi-level approaches to sustainability
• Social marketing models and frameworks for climate action, circular economy, waste reduction, and resource stewardship
• Social marketing interventions promoting sustainable consumption and production
• Community-based social marketing and collective approaches to sustainable behaviour change
• Social marketing supporting policy development, institutional change, and governance for sustainability
• Ethical considerations in sustainability-focused social marketing, including autonomy, power, and representation
• Social marketing communication strategies for sustainability, including narrative, identity, and social norms
• Digital, AI-enabled, and technology-supported social marketing for sustainable behaviour change
• Segmentation and audience insight for sustainability-oriented social marketing
• Evaluation and measurement of social marketing's societal impact in sustainability contexts
• Social marketing applications in public health that intersect with sustainable futures
• Social marketing for prevention, long-term behaviour maintenance, and resilience-building
• Branding, value creation, and market-shaping activities within social marketing for sustainability
• Cross-cultural and international challenges in social marketing for sustainable futures

Submissions Information

Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Registration and access are available at: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ejm
Author guidelines must be strictly followed. Please see: https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/journal/ejm#jlp_author_guidelines
Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to “Please select the issue you are submitting to”.  

Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.

Key Deadlines

Closing date for manuscripts submission: ​30/10/2026​