Putting it Together (Part IV)

This is the last section of the paper, and I broke it up for posting's sake because it also contains the main topic that I will be looking into - the "price" of social action.

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The Price of Social Action
While social actions may differ for different movements, the actions undertaken for social movements share a number of features giving the actions a high “price.” Generally, these actions:

• Have little direct benefit or actively harm the acting individual
• Have an indirect impact on achieving the overall goal
• Need to be done by a large number of people to be effective
• Need to be sustained over long periods of time

In his book The Logic of Collective Action, social scientist Mancur Olson argued that, “unless the number of individuals is quite small, or unless there is coercion or some other special device to make individuals act in their common interest, rational, self-interested individuals will not act to achieve their common or group interests” (Olson, 1965).

It is the role of social movement marketing to be that coercing force compelling people to act for the social good. However, to do this successfully the marketer must understand how the other challenges affect target audiences. The price of these challenges can be measured in terms of their psychological impact on individuals targeted by the campaign. While the core audience may sustain as a small number of individuals willing to pursue the cause no matter the cost or chance of success, to be successful, the communicator must minimize the perception of these challenges to a larger segment of the population. The social movement marketer must find ways to “lower the price” of action, in order to successfully “sell” those actions to the general populace.