Brand Orientation: A Case Study Approach within the Context of Social Entrepreneurial Businesses

International attention is increasingly being drawn to Social Entrepreneurial Businesses (SEOs). Basically, these new types of businesses aim to solve social, environmental or societal problems by using modern management practices and means of innovation. Compared with traditional non-profit organizations, many SEOs strive to work profitable: They have earned income strategies or are even profit-driven. Their founders are commonly called Social Entrepreneurs.Although SEOs are a popular field of research, so far little attention has been given to their different strategic orientations. Strategic orientations can be defined as guiding principles that influence the strategy-making and concrete behavior of organizations. Strategic orientations that have been researched intensively in the past include customer, market, competitive, employee, product, resource, entrepreneurial and – most recently – brand orientation.In this paper, a conceptual model of brand orientation in the context of SEOs is introduced. Then, a case study method based on in-depth-interviews with Social Entrepreneurs is used to illustrate and to discuss the model.