The Untapped Potential of Social Marketing: How a Sample of Florida Cities Engage in Its Practice

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to investigate how cities are developing and implementing social marketing practices. Driven by a 2017 survey administered to a sample of Florida’s public officials, the research design of this study employs an exploratory data analysis including cluster analysis, univariate visualization, and bivariate visualization to information regarding public social marketing utilization. The findings of this study suggest possible confusion surrounding what social marketing actually is and how the practice can best be utilized within a strategic management context. This research adds value by contributing to a relatively nascent literature on social marketing within an American public administration context.

KEYWORDS:

• Social Marketing
• marketing
• strategic management
• strategic planning
• local government

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemental Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/01900692.2021.1950184.

Notes

1. The response rate is not a desired one; however, this research does not intend to generalize the entire population of the state, but rather focus on a sample of cities that are engaging in social marketing.

2. See Rogers (2010) work “Diffusion of Innovations” for more about this language. For more on social media usage in government, see Zavattaro and Bryer (2016).

3. See Berry and Berry’s (1990) seminal work on policy diffusion as a primer about this topic.