Marketing Position of Social Ventures

Based on the definition of social ventures, social ventures are a different, better solution to a social problem than exiting solutions where the value accrues primarily to the public or society as a whole and is financially sustainable over a long period of time. It can be inferred that the attributes of these products are either quite different from or much stronger than those existing in the market. For instance, as mentioned in the previous class, in the Plumpy’ nut case, compared to its competitors, it contains a lot of nutrition that can satisfy the nutrition needed by a child for one day. Most of the energy bar in the market can relieve hunger to a certain degree but may not be nutritious enough. Also, the social venture founded by the guest lecturer, Mark Heckmann, differentiates it from the university career center in the way that it has a pool of the skills owned by students rather than the programs existing in companies. This has both pros and cons. On the bright side, the competition may not be severe since there are few similar products in the market. On the other side, it may not be accepted by customers in a short time, which leads to financial problems.

There are several messaging applications in China. However, WeChat is the most successful one. Before WeChat, the applications in the market enabled people to send text messages from other platforms in addition to mobile phones. They were free and the account was associated with mobile phone number. It seemed to be convenient enough and WeChat had no market. However, WeChat found a new cut into the market. It combined the social network applications and messaging applications together. The target customers are whoever has a smartphone. Chinese people nowadays are more accustomed to sharing interesting stuff in social network platforms rather than sending messages to a particular friend. Also, compared to social network platforms, it protects the privacy of users since the contents can only be seen by the contacts. Therefore, WeChat achieves success. It makes communication among people more efficient and safer. However, it was not accepted by customers at once since the existing applications could satisfy their needs. Also, the way to make profits was not clear and it relied on other products of Tencent to finance WeChat. After one year, WeChat starts to make profit from advertisements and public accounts.

Generally, social ventures must differentiate itself from existing products and at the same time, it has to meet the demand of the market. Since social ventures have social impacts, the products must meet the basic needs of customers. For instance, Plumpy satisfies nutrition needs and WeChat achieves efficient communication. From the financial perspective, they may also have some fancy attributes that make customers willing to use the products. Plumpy is tasty and WeChat combines social network platforms.