Social Marketing: A Market-Based Approach to Public Health

Social marketing enhances public health outcomes by harnessing private-sector efficiencies and leveraging commercial infrastructure, strategic marketing, and consumer insights. Through established retail networks and healthcare providers, DKT ensures that millions of individuals have access to high-quality family planning products and services.

DKT’s social marketing model is designed to:

  1. Ensure the widespread availability of affordable, high-quality reproductive health products by developing robust supply chains to register, import, and distribute these products across retail outlets, pharmacies, and clinics.
  2. Drive demand for contraceptive products and services through integrated, evidence-based behavior change campaigns, promoting the benefits of family planning and safe sex.

DKT’s approach ensures that contraceptives are accessible and desirable. When individuals can easily purchase contraceptives from trusted retail locations, have confidence in their quality, and can choose a method suited to their needs, they are more likely to use them consistently.

To increase awareness and adoption, DKT employs mass media, and increasingly, digital and social media platforms, to educate consumers, destigmatize contraceptive use, and promote DKT’s contraceptive brands.

Collaboration with the Public Sector

In addition to private-sector distribution, DKT collaborates with governments to:

  • Ensure contraceptive security by supplying reproductive health commodities to public health programs.
  • Support service delivery and outreach initiatives, particularly in underserved areas.

Train healthcare providers to improve contraceptive counseling, service provision, and method integration.

Advantages of Contraceptive Social Marketing

  1. Consumer-Driven and Non-Coercive

Social marketing programs are voluntary and non-patronizing. Consumers purchase DKT contraceptives as they would any commercial product, ensuring informed choice and autonomy. Unlike donor-funded giveaways, these programs are free from coercion, as consumers independently decide to invest in their reproductive health. In fact, most consumers are unaware that these products originate from a nonprofit organization.

  1. Cost-Effective and Sustainable

Selling contraceptives at affordable, market-based prices offers several benefits:

  • Retailers earn a margin, incentivizing them to stock and actively promote these products.
  • Purchased products are more likely to be used, reducing waste and inefficiencies often associated with free distribution models.
  • Consumers often perceive purchased contraceptives as higher quality, making them more likely to trust and continue using them.
  1. Rapid Market Penetration

By leveraging existing commercial distribution networks and health service delivery infrastructure, DKT can rapidly scale up contraceptive access, ensuring availability at thousands of retail outlets and clinics in a short time frame.

Further Resources

For additional information on social marketing, visit the Resources section of this website. The Contraceptive Social Marketing (CSM) Statistics report provides insights into DKT’s global sales of condoms, injectables, emergency contraception (EC), oral contraceptive Pills (OCPs), intrauterine devices (IUDs), and other contraceptive products.