Social marketing, pester power and reverse socialization

Social marketing is used to popularise positive ideas and bring about attitude change through empowering people to change. However, the ro le of pester power in social marketing has never been explored. Children use reverse socialisation strategies to get t heir parents to yield to their purchase requests, employing pester power. Pester power has generally been seen as a negative force, but can it be used as a positive marketing tool to initiate a social change? There is a possibi lity of using this pester power in a non-consumption context. The posit ive role of pester power is underexplored, and this research intends to provide a new insight in this regard. A case of social marketing has been identified that captures the success of a campaign, where pester power is used constructively to create awareness among mothers about self-examination and professional (medical) examination for breast cancer. Suitable modular descriptions of the underlying processes have been highlighted to indicate the role played by pester power and reverse socialisation in a social marketing context.