Food security has become a major social concern. Social entrepreneurs seeking to address this social concern aim to produce safe food products which cause no harm to either consumers or the environment. To achieve these social goals social enterprises apply business principles and practices one of which includes a marketing orientation. This involves thoroughly researching and understanding the targeted consumers so as to best satisfy their needs. This chapter reports on a study of organic food consumers so as to assist social enterprises aiming to target and satisfy their needs.
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Social entrepreneurship has emerged as an important realm of entrepreneurship during the last decade (Coker, Flight, & Valle, 2017) . Social entrepreneurs recognise social problems and use entrepreneurial principles to create, organise and manage ventures to achieve social change (Basargekar & Rawat, 2015). Social enterprises are thus organisations but which have both profit and social objectives, where profits are used to address social concerns (SocialEnterpriseUK, 2016). As Bocken, Short, Rana, and Evans (2014, p. 53) explain “they [social enterprises] are ‘for-profit’ enterprises, but the profit motive is secondary to delivery of the social mission”. The social enterprise must be profitable and sustainable, but instead of profit back into the pocket of the stockholder, it is reinvested into the business (Moorthy & Annamalah, 2014). The ‘social mission’ that social enterprises seek to address may relate to a wide variety of social concerns such as poverty, inequality and environmental deterioration (Basargekar & Rawat, 2015; Doherty, Haugh, & Lyon, 2014).
There is a growing social concern for the quality of food products and how they are farmed and processed (Aarset et al., 2004). The recent outbreak of listeriosis, a serious foodborne disease, has been ongoing since the start of 2017 in South Africa (WHO, 2018). Internationally, food-related social problems such as foot-and-mouth disease, mad cow disease and others have caused concern among consumers regarding the quality of food (Chen, 2007; Yadav & Pathak, 2016). Hodgins and Fraser (2018) found that social enterprises in their study managed to successfully addressed food security in food-insecure communities. These authors explain that “the rising popularity of social enterprise to address food inequalities in [alternative food networks] (AFN)s demonstrates the permeation of social justice concerns into business, or business into social justice, in the transformative way” (Hodgins & Fraser, 2018, p. 157).
In addition to the social concern for food quality and security, there is growing concern about the deteriorating physical environment. Agriculture is considered a major cause of environmental degradation especially in terms of the global decline in biodiversity (Puech, Baudry, Joannon, Poggi, & Aviron, 2014). According to Woodward (2019) the concepts of food quality, human health and the type of farming used are inextricably linked. The practice of organic agriculture has been identified as a pathway to sustainable development and enhanced food security (Kisaka-Lwayo & Obi, 2014; Willer, Lernoud, & Kemper, 2018). “Organic farming is characterised by the ban of chemical pesticides, chemical fertilisers, growth hormones, antibiotics, and genetically modified organisms (GMO)” (Puech et al., 2014, p. 50). Currently only 1.2% of the agricultural land globally is organically cultivated and of that, only 3% is in Africa (Willer et al., 2018) but local markets for organic produce in African countries like Kenya, Uganda and South Africa are said to be growing (Parrott, Ssekyewa, Makunike, & Ntambi, 2006).