Social marketing is the application of commercial marketing methods toward a social problem in order to effect behavioral change. While social marketing boasts a long record, not all campaigns were successful, and the literature calls for theory building and testing. The purpose of this study is to empirically test one of the foremost behavioral change theories, the transtheoretical model (TTM), in a campaign to reduce underaged drinking. The results show TTM was effective in segmenting the market based on stage of change. TTM processes of change guided the development of the campaign messages based on the psycho/social needs of that segment. While ad recall and message frequency did not correlate to the outcome variable, and tests for moderating and mediating effects were insufficient, the effect of social attachment as measured by a social cohesion scale was found to be significant. These findings are important to government and non-profit funders as well as practitioners by establishing the TTM as a theoretical basis for market segmentation and message development.

Keywords: transtheoretical model, social marketing, social cohesion, ad recall