System influences in creating a sense of service safety for alleviation of vulnerability

Services are integral to social marketing programmes such as mental health, family and domestic violence, drug and alcohol, men’ health and breastfeeding, with scope to increase value through these services (Zainuddin & Gordon, 2020). Social marketing services contribute towards service users' health, wellbeing, and the fulfilment of social marketing goals (Russell-Bennett, Fisk, Rosenbaum, & Zainuddin, 2019). Within such service contexts, service safety comes to be expected as built-in a way that make users feel comfortable and that reduces their level of vulnerability and enable behavioural change. Despite this, the notion of service safety within service systems remain unexplored in the social marketing literature. Particularly, key drivers that influence emergence of service users’ perception of service safety is missing. This is concerning given that feelings of safety are important for service users to improve their well-being and reduce vulnerability, and service users seek resources from their service providers. In this conceptual paper, we examine the notion of service safety in social marketing services and consider its key drivers through a system perspective, to propose that achieving service safety will reduce the vulnerability experienced by service users.