There are significant differences between product, service, and social marketing. Product marketing is based on the four Ps-product, pricing, promotion, and place-and involves the selling of tangible goods. Product is the item being sold, pricing is how much it is being sold for, promotion is the process of encouraging consumers to buy it, and place is the venue where the item can be sold. An example of product marketing in the healthcare field is the marketing of pharmaceuticals, such as drugs to help smokers stop smoking. Smokers notoriously have difficulty stopping on their own due to the addictive nature of nicotine, and smoking cessation products such as the nicotine patch can be marketed as a means of making the job easier.
Service marketing is the selling of intangible services instead of physical products, with examples being massages or manicures. These services are nonreturnable, and they are more difficult to compare based on value than a product is. In the healthcare industry, a service would be a smoking cessation program that steps smokers through a number of actions that they can take in order to stop smoking. This intangible service would enable smokers to quit smoking by providing them with a program that works better than the things they have tried on their own, such as "cold turkey" quitting and nicotine gum.
Social marketing attempts to sell the public on some behavior change that is for their own good. Here, marketers are not trying to market a product for profit but are attempting to generate behavioral change society-wide. In the healthcare industry, an example of social marketing campaign would be a smoking cessation campaign that works to convince the public to stop smoking. This type of social marketing would convince smokers that smoking is bad for their health, convince them that stopping is doable, and provide information on how they can stop.
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