The effect of social enterprise’s consumer emotional connection on consumer behavior

The concept of social enterprise has gradually become more important every year due to the uprising for global sustainability. Social enterprise is a business that aims for acheiving dual-mission consisting of financial mission and societal mission. Each social enterprise focuses on different societal mission to create different social impacts. There are many kinds of world problems that social enterprises are working on such as environmental issue, poverty, lack of education, food and water security, etc. However, there are a lot of challenges for social enterprises to compete in commercial world as well as accomplish all of the goals they aim for. One of the difficulties that social enterprises have been facing is the maketing challenge. In order to achieve the financial goal, social enterprises need to differentiate themselves from traditional commercial enterprise by producing good quality products along with developing strong branding and communication strategies by leveraging their uniqueness of being a good business for society.As we know that in buying decision process, consumers do not only evaluate product by its function but emotion also involved. To create emotional connection with consumers is an important concept to build a strong brand. Accordingly, the objective of this research is to help social enterprises improve their branding and communication strategies by studying the relationship of social enterprise’s consumer emotional connection and their behaviors. This research used both qualitative and quantitative methods. The exploratory research gathered information by doing in-depth interview and secondary research. The descriptive research were conducted through online questionanaire. Due to time constraints, the participants were selected using non-probability convenience sampling through personal connection. The in-depth interviews were conducted with 15 interviewees who were current consumers of Doi Tung, Doi Kham, Lemon farm and TOMS and potential consumers of social enterprises. The sample size of survey was 225 respondents who were current consumers and potential consumers of social enterprise. For the quantitative data, Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to analyze the data in form of frequency, correlation analysis, mean, and regression analysis. Key findings from this research emphasize the important of consumer insight which is the critical factor for developing an effective maketing strategy. This study can be used to help social enterprise understand the reason for making the consumer connected with the brand. Moreover, this research truly intended to bring attention from marketers and public to be more aware of social enterprises.