Exploring Catholic Social Teaching in a Social Marketing Context: History, Lessons and Future Directions

Social change through the use of social marketing has often grappled with the principle of “social good”. Building on the tradition of Klein and Laczniak (2009, 2012) in applying Catholic Social Teaching (CST) to commercial marketing, this paper outlines the points of similarity and divergence of contemporary social marketing frameworks with CST. As social marketing theory and practice moves away from its marketing parent discipline roots, this paper argues that CST with its focus on human dignity, subsidiary and the common good provides an increasingly relevant and compatible framework with which to evaluate ethical issues emerging in the social marketing domain. There is potential for social marketers to draw on the intellectual work underpinning CST to inform social marketing practice in engaging in the delivery of social benefit independent of the religious tradition.