“Who Are My Customers?”: The Case of Social Marketing a Social Entrepreneurship Venture in India

Abstract

Social entrepreneurial ventures generally have lower profitability owing to poor value perceptions of their offerings, which negatively impact financial sustainability. A frequent antecedent is the negative view of marketing prevalent in the sector, requiring an attitudinal transformation. This study provides one such success story that demonstrates how a deliberate marketing-driven approach allowed social entrepreneurs in Eastern India to pilot a new venture with creative offerings that detected and filled a financially viable gap in the cultural clothing market. This paper makes a case for social entrepreneurship ventures to be market savvy in order to financially nurture their social mission.

Keywords:

• Consumers
• markets
• millennials
• sustainable social entrepreneurship
• social marketing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 http://bsmedia.business-standard.com/_media/bs/data/general-file-upload/2016-06/060216_01.pdf

2 https://www.bcg.com/en-in/publications/2017/marketing-sales-globalization-new-indian-changing-consumer.aspx

3 https://www.morganstanley.com/ideas/India-millennials-growth-sectors

4 http://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/india-s-millennials-to-be-catalyst-for-consumption-116060200033_1.html

5 http://www.goldmansachs.com/our-thinking/pages/macroeconomic-insights-folder/rise-of-the-india-consumer/report.pdf