Marketing social norms: what can the 'social norm‘ approach bring to social marketing?

This paper is inspired by the observation that the 'social norm‘ approach, from social psychology, has something of a Cinderella role in social marketing. With this in mind, our objective is to review and examine the social norm approach, and its relevance to social marketing. The social norm approach consists of encouraging socially desirable behaviour change by telling people what other people do in the form of communications regarding majority or average behaviours. This approach has been employed by social psychologists and some niche practitioners to tackle social issues from student substance abuse to energy consumption. We first explore the origins of the social norm approach in psychology and social psychology, and we comment upon two key mechanisms by which social psychologists have contended that the social norm approach works. Using examples, we then provide a conceptually and empirically grounded guide to the implementation of social norm marketing campaigns. In our conclusion, we comment on the curious way in which the social norm approach appears to subvert generally accepted ideas about the types of information that should be communicated in social marketing campaigns.