Social Marketing in the Public Sector - The Case of a Municipality in Croatia

Social marketing involves activities undertaken by individuals and organizations in order to achieve specific goals and can be used in non-profit and public organizations. Social marketing is the use of adapted standard marketing principles in order to change attitudes and behaviours of individuals and groups, to help minimize social problems and enhance the general welfare of society. The main objective of social marketing is to encourage positive social behaviour. The holders of social marketing can be institutions of public sector. Achieving better performance in public sector (in this case performance of municipalities in Croatia) on one hand and societal benefits on the other will be easier if the integrated approach of social marketing is used, applying marketing principles and techniques to influence the target audience. Taking into account a detailed theoretical analysis of specifics of social marketing, the main goal of this research is to determine to what extent the Municipality of Pakoštane applies the concept of social marketing in their work and to their key stakeholders and how much of the local population, as the most important stakeholder, is satisfied with the functioning of their local municipality. The final goal is to make recommendations and practical guidelines for improving the application of social marketing for municipalities and to highlight the existence of a clear link between the needs of citizens and improving public performances. Research results showed that the Municipality of Pakoštane isn’t familiar with the concept of social marketing and does not apply the concept of social marketing in their work. It is recommended to apply a given concept in dealing with psychosocial problems of the local population (addiction, delinquency and vandalism), by changing the behaviour of individuals. The cooperation of the Municipality with other stakeholders, such as schools, religious communities and the police, would be helpful in solving this problem. The Municipality of Pakoštane doesn’t successfully balance the relationships with their key stakeholders. Although the Municipality recognizes the relevant stakeholders, and each stakeholder is formed according to the special relations strategy, the research shows that the municipality isn’t successful in their actions. In this case, the recognized problem is the lack of interest and lack of information of the local population which is necessary to be changed because only informed citizens can participate in the decision-making process. When stakeholder engagement strategies are developed, the municipality should be guided by certain principles influencing the stakeholder engagement strategy and the characteristics of the stakeholders. The importance of theoretical and practical side of this chapter is also reflected in the possibilities of implementing the concept of social marketing to the other municipalities in Croatia, with the aim of improving public performance and better meeting the needs of citizens.