A common misconception in social marketing is that price is not involved. The costs of social marketing can be significant when one measures the time, effort, and life-style changes that go into social change. The developers of social marketing programs must employ creativity and flexibility to meet the special demands of price management, especially since price is usually intangible and the marketer does not control price levels. There is no profit motive in social markets, other than a qualitative sense of social well being. Supply and demand can relate to social marketing.
Supply is the function of long-term costs to society of forgoing social change.
Demand is equivalent to the willingness and ability of members of the target audience to engage in attitudinal or behavioral change at various price levels. Price benefits the society at large, marketers have little influence on price, higher prices discourage social change, and prices reflect the incompatibility of the social concept with currently held norms and values. Advertising is one form of promotion, besides personal selling, sales promotion, and public relations, it also happens to be the most expensive. In social marketing organizations sometimes have difficulty in knowing if its advertising efforts are accomplishing their objectives. Most social agencies, if the objective is to influence how people think, will survey its intended audience and compare the results of the survey with some baseline.