Make A Difference

The Community Shop is a subsidiary of a social enterprise, Enterprise Sinfin in Derbyshire. The shop follows a unique business model of getting stock in the form of donations from its well-wishers, which in turn are sold to the needy in the community at a minimal price. The shop reinvests the revenue it generates from the sales back into the business or community for the social benefit of the region. Jaz Greer, the Director of Enterprise Sinfin has been trying to create superior value to the residents of Sinfin region, by providing high-quality social service to the locality, which is highly affected with unemployment. The Community Shop is looking for opportunities to scale up and rolling out a retail business model that will make it sustainable and to resilient philanthropic funding and government grants. They are exploring options of venturing into new markets. Lack of promotion and lack of consistent revenue are the major concerns for the sustainability of the shop. There are many cases were social enterprises decide to go for commercial funding but lose focus of their vision and mission to serve the community once they start to commercialize. I have incorporated a blend of quantitative and qualitative research methods to look for linkages to other existing, new enterprises and business activities, and to help the shop expand its business and at the same time retain its social mission. The following dissertation is aimed to aid the Community Shop to improvise its operations in a more efficient manner and to help it to constantly deliver continuous social value to the society. The shop constantly needs to apply creativity to provide excellent service to the residents of the Sinfin region. In order to convince the various stakeholders, the Community Shop should primarily promote itself in a broader platform. Emphasis is given on true customer understanding which in turn helps the social enterprise to deliver superior value to the customers. Furthermore, a strategic entrepreneur exhibits qualities to generate wealth by combining effective opportunity-seeking behaviour (entrepreneurship) with effective advantage-seeking behaviour (strategic management). Thus, a social entrepreneur must inherit the qualities of a strategic entrepreneur to sustain the social ventures in the long run by creating wealth and competitive advantage