The Role of Civil Society Organizations in Social Innovation as an Example of the New Social Marketing

Abstract

[Abstract]: The objective of the present case study is to describe to what extent the design and implementation of socially innovative activities and projects by Civil Society Organizations take into consideration the principles and tools of social marketing. With this objective, REAS (a Spanish Network of Alternative and Solidarity Economy Networks), and its online financial education platform economiasolidaria.org, has been selected as unit of analysis of the case. The empirical study developed reveals how REAS is effectively a nonprofit organiza- tion very oriented to the market, in the sense of adopting the concept of market- ing, and how marketing-mix variables (fundamentally, the variables product, place, and promotion) have been very important in the design, implementation, and dissemination of its online platform.