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The application of marketing to the promotion of social causes was proposed a decade ago. The authors position social marketing as an approach to social change, describe its evolution, and review social marketing applications and assess their impact.

A model of the development of naïve theories of price is presented and tested. The criterion used to account for price variations within a product category is product features at age five, product features and quality at age ten, product quality and buyer utility at age thirteen, and a combination of supply considerations and buyer utility/demand in adulthood. Five‐year‐olds do not justify their use of product features as a price criterion; however, older respondents all justify their price criterion by referring to a source of value. At age ten, variation in the amount of manufacturing inputs is the source of value which justifies the use of product features as a price criterion; at age thirteen, variations in the quality of manufacturing inputs justify the use of product quality as a price criterion; and in adulthood, relative scarcity and buyer preferences justify the use of cost and demand as price criteria.

The official Soviet ideology rejected most aspects of marketing, and yet there were marketing specialists in the Soviet Union, mostly in ministries, research institutes, and state enterprises involved with foreign trade. This article focuses on the development of marketing thought in the Soviet Union during the period 1961 to 1991, when the Soviet leadership was striving to increase Soviet exports, to push state enterprises to greater efficiency, and to deliver a higher standard of living. We report on the 1976 founding of the Marketing Section of the USSR Chamber of Commerce, and introduce eight early contributors to marketing thought. With the coming of perestroika and the end of the USSR, several early contributors continued to teach marketing and to publish marketing guides. We tell of the preparation and 1980 publication of the first Soviet edition of Philip Kotler’s Marketing Management.

This article examines the antecedents, activities, results, and prospects for institutionalization of two large social marketing programs currently in operation in Egypt: the National Control of Diarrheal Diseases Project, which promotes oral rehydration therapy to treat diarrheal dehydration, and the Family of the Future, which is recognized as one of the most sophisticated and effective contraceptive social marketing programs operating today. This examination of two health-related social marketing programs operating simultaneously in the same country can highlight the factors that contribute to successful programs.