Harnessing sustainable development from niche marketing and coopetition in social enterprises

This article reports on strategic practices within social enterprises to drive social, economic, and environmental value. Multiple case studies were conducted across diverse third sector organisations to examine how managers deploy commercial and social marketing activities to fulfil sustainable missions. Results showed social enterprises attract target audiences by engaging in inclusive forms of niche marketing. The organisations leverage relationships across their horizontal and vertical value chains to enhance their own resources and capabilities while advancing wider social and environmental interests. Deep collaboration between social enterprises and their stakeholders sometimes extends to forging alliances with competitors. This research contributes the first empirical evidence of how coopetition leads to competitive advantage in profit ‐ for ‐ purpose organisations, and it proposes a model to show how cocreation of shared value with actors across multilevels of interdependent systems paves the way for sustainable development outcomes to be achieved.

market entry (Nicholls, 2010). Yet limited scholarly attention is paid to how these organisations conduct their marketing and social marketing activities in ways that facilitate meeting their sustainable missions while they maintain operations. This paper is significant because it explains how social enterprises are able to satisfy these objectives. It provides empirical evidence that by adopting a holistic approach to cocreating value with key target audiences and offering unique solutions in the marketplace, these organisations can bring commercial gain while increasing joint impacts for resilience. A model of cocreation of social value is proposed. Then, a discussion of the implications for marketing and social marketing theory and practice follows with recommendations for future research.

| Using vertical and horizontal marketing for social good
Social enterprises evolved over a hundred years ago from businesses that were set up to serve social needs (Sepulveda, 2015). Over time, the inclusion or absence of international influences-cultural, political, social, and economic stages of development-caused more social enterprises to start up (Kerlin, 2013) in order to fill the gap in social services due to restricted funding sources (Dees, 1998). Although the majority of social enterprises are legally structured as not for profits, research shows that social enterprises tend to be selfsufficient with earned income as their greatest source of capital (Anheier & Salamon, 2006). In fact, they are willing to undertake projects in the face of constraints that are imposed by limited funding bases. They strive to overcome this restriction by incubating novel ideas and taking risks to accomplish their objectives (Dart, 2004;Emerson & Twersky, 1996;Kirzner, 1979).
As viable commercial entities, it is possible for them to bring in revenue to sustain their core operations while offsetting all or partial capital to support particular social and/or environmental agendas.
Thus, these organisations differ from traditional enterprises because they redistribute profits towards assisting society instead of returning shareholder or owner value (Dart, 2004;Talbot, Tregilgas, & Harrison, 2002). Their behaviour is driven by an interest in others' welfare that transcends how commercial businesses function (Santos, 2012), and their personnel, sustainable "intrapreneurs," distinguish themselves by redistributing economic gain to redress both social and/or environmental concerns (Schaltegger & Wagner, 2011).
Because they provide goods or services that directly relate to the general goal of benefitting their community, their modus operandi generally draws on a collective dynamic involving multiple stakeholders (Defourny & Nyssens, 2010). Through developing close cooperative relationships with their constituents, social enterprises exist as part of complex web, an organisational ecology (Searing, Lecy, & Andersson, 2016). This arrangement allows social enterprises to acquire resources and develop capabilities to satisfy their commercial interests balanced against their social remit (Hynes, 2009). However, there is a paucity of scholarly writing devoted to how strategic marketing (Mitchell, Madill, & Chreim, 2015b) and social marketing (Mitchell, Madill, & Chreim, 2015a) are employed by social enterprises for competitive advantage to accomplish their missions.
The majority of literature to date on how marketing functions within social enterprises usually refers to conceptualisations of marketing that progressed from recognising the exchange of products and services to promoting social change (Kotler & Zaltman, 1971).
Social marketing interventions were initially directed downstream using vertical marketing that aimed to correct social imbalances by advocating for voluntary individual approaches to behavioural change (Andreasen, 1994), predominantly for resolving health (Alves, 2010) concerns. However, these activities sparked controversy with critics who accused social marketers of victim blaming (Bennett et al., 2011;Wallack, 1993). Next, social marketers turned to upstream measures, concentrating on influencing institutions to alter policy or regulations to resolve pervasive societal issues (Hastings, Anderson, Cooke, & Gordon, 2005). Proponents perceived public health officials, and decision makers are solely responsible for overcoming social inequality and should therefore expend efforts to decrease barriers in order to create a more favourable climate for nurturing health and well-being (Andreasen, 2006;Wood, 2012). Over time, target markets enlarged to encompass the media, corporations, foundations, schools, and community activists (Gordon, 2013;.
Opponents argued that upstream social marketing is manipulative for attempting to control people's behaviour.
Then, a newer course of action developed at the midstream level whereby social marketers perceived the importance of factoring in the experiences of consumers. Responsibility shifted to suppliers to design services, facilitating a process of cocreating shared value to accommodate social needs (Russell- Bennett, Wood, & Previte, 2013;Zainuddin, 2013). Supporters argued when solutions include the recipient as a participant, it helps to "consumer-proof" interventions and garner their deeper commitment (Domegan, Collins, Stead, McHugh, & Hughes, 2013;Lefebvre, 2009). Citizens offer insight into what can work and how to shape it to obtain the best interventions (Cottam & Leadbeater, 2004). Stages of cocreation along the value chain began to account for the life cycle, from codiscovery to codesign until codelivery of services to obtain maximum impact (Domegan et al., 2013).
Social marketers asserted cocreative initiatives should deal with a host of social causes, particularly for environmental stewardship to advance in behavioural change (Beall et al., 2012). Nonetheless, more testing is called for to understand how the tools and processes can bring effective behavioural change, underlining opportunities for collaborative practice (Barczak, 2012). The majority of social marketing campaigns around sustainability focus on building awareness; yet efforts to change attitudes will not lead to long-term results unless they factor in complex barriers that exist at social, structural, and institutional levels. A program that applies community-based social marketing offers the potential to overcome such obstacles and promote sustainable behaviour if it is tailored to a hoped for outcome. It must include: choosing a specific behaviour to adopt, identifying the barriers and benefits to conforming to the desired result, developing a strategy that can move beyond the challenges to reveal the benefits, piloting the strategy, implementing the intervention, and then periodically monitoring the impacts to allow for any adjustments (McKenzie-Mohr, Lee, Schultz, & Kotler, 2011). Dibb and Carrigan (2013) also suggest organisations should continue to forge alliances with multiple stakeholders to leverage resources in the process of social change because engaging in systematic approaches offers mutual advantages. It can reduce organisational dependence on stakeholders. And for the community, this approach can increase their ability to contribute to solutions regarding their own welfare (Santos, 2012) while raising the likelihood that people will follow such strategies. Because they are not pressured into accepting a plan that may not suit them, they will be more willing to adopt the intended behavioural change (Uzzell et al., 2006), and it will be less likely to provoke an adverse reaction (Kubacki & Rundle-Thiele, 2013). A sense of empowerment in the community will be built because under these conditions, citizens have freedom to deploy their own skills, talents, and resources that may become embedded in innovative business models. Rather than focusing on individual deficits (Foot & Hopkins, 2010), assets can be exchanged, creating capacity for mutual benefit (Schau, Muñiz, & Arnould, 2009;Sheth & Uslay, 2007).
Today, practitioners from different disciplines enforce the concept that organisations exist in a state of interdependence with their surrounding environments (Laszlo, 1972). Stansinoupolos, Smith, Hargroves, and Desha (2013) utilised this holistic approach for sustainable design in engineering. Behavioural scientists similarly draw upon integrated systems today, believing that aggregated forces influence human behaviour and can drive communal benefit. Bronfenbrenner (1994), a psychologist, proposed that individuals interact within and across multiple layers of interdependent systems, termed a "social ecological model." He identified that each level of the model serves a different purpose and has its own corresponding set of rules, norms, and roles in which people interact. These systems operate as a complex and dynamic network (French & Gordon, 2015) that influences human development (Bronfenbrenner, 1994). At the base or microsystem, family, friends, and colleagues form bonds in their community when they follow pathways to obtain education or employment. In the mesosystem, people associate with others and create memberships in clubs and businesses. Higher up in the exosystem, government dictates people's behaviour relating to the rules of governance to be followed. In the macrosystem, people learn how to conduct themselves through religious organisations and institutions that guide people's actions. This model explains how governments, organisations, and individuals influence one another through their interactions within networks and which ultimately determine the consequences of individual behaviour change.

| Social ecological model and coopetition for sustainable outcomes
Successful behavioural interventions linked to this framework were demonstrated in various contexts such as encouraging safer driving for young men (Tapp, Pressley, Baugh, & White, 2013) and enhancing physical activity for young women (Elder et al., 2007) except there is no documented evidence of applications emanating from work carried out in social enterprises. Further, this model has not been attributed to successful outcomes arising from coopetitive circumstances in social enterprises, that is, when stakeholders engage in diametrically opposing conditions of cooperation to create value coupled with competition to appropriate value (Solitander & Tidström, 2010). Prior research on coopetition already shows that businesses at times will consider forming an alliance with a competitor to acquire resources and capabilities, to learn from them, or to gain expertise (Osarenkhoe, 2010), despite the inherent tension arising from participating in these contradictory activities. Organisations are prone to act in this way when the exchange involves something that is distanced from a customer transaction (Bengtsson & Kock, 2015).
Coopetition is gaining scholarly interest due to its potential to harness synergies for maximising outcomes (Bengtsson & Kock, 2015;Brandenburger & Nalebuff, 1996). The literature cites evidence of small-to medium-sized nonprofits using coopetition for advantages of acquiring capital (West, Ford, & Ibrahim, 2015), however there is a research gap concerning social enterprises. Coopetition seems especially fitting as a tool for achieving profit for purpose in these organisations. Evidence shows when parties engage in complementary activities for specified projects, coopetition can deliver optimum value (Bonel, Pellizzari, & Rocco, 2008). Therefore, it is feasible for these organisations to use this mechanism to attain their intended results because they have resource constraints, so coopetition could be deployed for harnessing value.
Moreover, it is logical social enterprises would be open to engage in coopetition because they already relate with multiple parties across their value chains. They engage downstream with beneficiaries of environmental and social programs, upstream with government or regulators to influence policies, and these organisations cooperate or compete midstream to conduct transactions and relate with colleagues in their respective industries. Hence, in the course of exploring the nature of marketing and social marketing of social enterprises, this study sought to determine whether coopetition is employed as a strategy for competitive advantage in the marketplace to help them reach their sustainable missions.

| METHODOLOGY
The philosophical underpinning for the study was cocreation of social value theory (Domegan et al., 2013), which aligned with shared value being carried out by the organisations to fulfil sustainability initiatives for themselves and others. Researchers (Lovelock & Gummesson, 2004;Vargo & Lusch, 2004) asserted the process of cocreation is supported by evidence highlighting that people are becoming increasingly involved as collaborators in movements of participatory change (Lefebvre, 2012). Target audiences can suggest effective interventions (Cottam & Leadbeater, 2004) via policy, strategy, tactics, and operational delivery through bilateral or two-way communication, whereas researchers can discover what constitutes value for an organisation's circle of stakeholders in mutually beneficial social value propositions (Domegan et al., 2013) to ascertain how to implement strategies for reaching favourable outcomes. Justification comes from studies, which found that professionals should move beyond a "primary dependence on narrowly-focused social marketing campaigns or projects to include customer insight and understanding … to inform and guide broader policies, strategies and programs" (Beall et al., 2012, p. 111). Blaikie (2009, p. 265) suggested methodology "should be determined by the nature of the problem, the purpose of the research, and the type of research questions being investigated." Because this investigation centred on learning the subjective experiences of the ways social enterprises operate, an inductive research approach (Grix, 2010) was taken to gather empirical evidence using multiple case studies. They allow a researcher to synthesise various realities to construct an accurate portrayal analogous to the real world (Eisenhardt, 1989) by adhering to a recursive research design. Also, this methodology is suitable to guide an inquiry concerning a relatively unexplored domain of knowledge. Multiple case studies are better than single case study for accumulating a breadth of evidence of social phenomena to understand actual events (Yin, 2009), and it allows researchers to analyse cases within their own contexts to detect patterns, trends, and relationships (Grix, 2010). Multiple case studies also let research not be bounded to a particular topic (Cresswell, 2012), enabling the realities demonstrate how the research makes a theoretical contribution (Farquhar, 2012).
For this study, a purposeful sampling strategy (Creswell, 2012) was undertaken using a set of criteria. First, the organisations were screened to ensure they represented heterogeneous, established businesses by virtue of operating for at least 5 years. Second, these businesses needed to demonstrate strategic marketing, and social marketing activities are implemented for affecting sustainable change through an intensive, nationwide search of reputable sources such as consulting Australian Stories of Social Enterprise (Kernot & McNeil, 2011). A profile of the social enterprises appears in Table 1. Sixteen founders, executives, or marketing managers who were deemed sufficiently qualified to secure relevant information to answer the research question were selected. After they were contacted to solicit their participation as respondents, common research methods in case studies (Creswell, 2012) were employed to collect data, combining a demographic survey and semistructured questions into a protocol (Herbst, 2017).
Data collection took place in the regions where the businesses were situated so information could emerge within their normal environments, simultaneously observing business activities without interfering with the way operations were conducted (Yin, 2009). The interviews were recorded and transcribed thereafter in the beginning of 2015. More than 300 pieces of secondary data were also procured from business databases of Australian Bureau of Statistics, ABI/INFORM, and Google Scholar, including company data, government documents, and privately generated industry reports. This data helped to triangulate the findings for carrying out a rigorous study (Farquhar, 2012). For the analysis, initially, the researcher manually reviewed the transcripts, notes, and secondary material line by line to generate descriptive and manual coding using recursive cycling (Eisenhardt & Graebner, 2007) for convergence and categorisation of the data to detect patterns and themes. Then, all pertinent data were organised into discrete marketing categories seen in Figure 1 in NVivo to make comparisons between the cases for enhancing generalisability of the study (Burns, 2010).
This process was repeated for the social marketing data pool to arrive at underlying classifications displayed in Figure 2. Again, the analysis was carried out, moving from open to higher level axial coding until theoretical saturation led to interpretation of the results.

| Strategic marketing
It is important to briefly review the purposes and activities of the social enterprises (summarised in Table 2)  Hepburn Wind is a community cooperative mostly composed of local homeowners who generate renewable energy from wind power (Hepburn Community Wind Park Co-operative Limited, 2014). It also funds projects through a community-benefit sharing scheme.
Human Ventures is a creative arts agency. One side of the business offers client services whereas the other side runs digital arts programs in regional towns of Central West Queensland to address social voids and unemployment that cause a migration of youth to seek opportunities elsewhere (Human Ventures, 2014).
Infoxchange is an ICT company that was originally based on assisting the homeless to find available shelter using online technology. Their focus evolved into the diffusion of digital technology by connecting databases of wider governmental agencies and nonprofit organisations. The company also works to bridge digital proficiency and inclusion for the disadvantaged through past coordination of classes in housing projects to teach digital literacy skills (Infoxchange, 2014).
Perth City Farm is a branch of a nonprofit parent company, Men of the Trees. It cultivates produce in an urban setting and teaches permaculture principles to the public in a multipurpose community space (Perth City Farm, 2014). Weekend markets are held there, and space is available for temporary or permanent venue hire in this popular hub.
Resource Recovery and RRA are subsidiaries of Great Lakes Community Resources. What began as a rubbish collection operation for one council led to sorting, recycling, and upcycling of resources    Additional ways to build mutual impact were through working with tenants or residents nearby on special projects. Perth City Farm teamed up with a neighbouring homeless shelter and tertiary institute to advance horticulture education. Specifically, they cooperated to build specialised enclosures for harvesting oyster mushrooms. The experience facilitated bonding with organisational members, and it created a vehicle for students to acquire accreditation for personal and professional growth.
Although it was essential for the organisations to offer quality products at competitive prices to succeed in the marketplace, what really set these organisations apart was tailoring their products and services to meet consumer needs after consulting with them. Thus, niche marketing was employed by the social enterprises in a way that products were not designed to be sold "at" end users but in conjunction "with" buyers so consumers would be more responsive to sales.
This led to the development of innovative product lines for competitive advantage as products and services were fit for purpose.
The social enterprises employed different approaches towards other marketing mix elements. For instance, in pricing, the social enterprises catered to broader target audiences to generate more income streams by offering two-tiered price schemes, dependent upon a client's ability to pay. Cross subsidisation was also implemented as a strategy to funnel surplus from the profitable side of a business to offset expenses associated with its social counterpart.
Place seemed to hold as much significance for the social enterprises as locals. Therefore, many of the organisations acted to build or maintain their sustainable surroundings. Hepburn Wind is situated in an area that is renowned for its beautiful environment, so it is a sensible location for generating clean power. Similarly, Resource Recovery is situated in a lovely coastal hamlet, so the company offered bush regeneration to restore its natural landscape for future generations, whereas Perth City Farm's founders yearned for establishing an urban farm, so they transformed a toxic scrap metal and battery recycling yard into a fertile agricultural zone.     Some of the social enterprises administered broader activities to promote health and well-being in nearby marginalised populations. Resource Recovery held workshops in their new purposebuilt community centre, bringing in experts to speak on a gamut of topics from handling finances to learning better parenting skills.

| Strategic social marketing
Similarly, Ashoil and Ashlinen helped Aborigines to improve their general living conditions such as helping to install bores so remote communities could harvest their own food stocks to become more self-sufficient.
These interventions helped the organisations to reach their missions, which aligned with their stakeholders' values. Further, they brought tangible and intangible outcomes such as seeding jobs and businesses, building self-esteem and a sense of belonging, and giving a voice to those most disadvantaged in society.
If they get past the e-waste line … they end up in refurbishing …. So these kids actually get a sense of accomplishment, and there is no rocket science to it actually. Just like any human being, they need to feel useful (WorkVentures, Respondent 1).
In return for treating people equally and bestowing them with skills, participants wanted to share their newfound skills with colleagues, friends, or families. Moreover, the programs generated a ripple effect for the social enterprises in sales alongside other forms of support due to the tremendous feeling of goodwill that was generated by being associated with socially responsible organisations.
It also creates a lot of goodwill for the company that donates it (the used cooking oil) to us because now they are seen as a better, more responsible company as opposed to before where they were disposing of it in an unkind manner (AAC, Respondent 1).

| DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
The overall evidence lends direct support that exchanges along the product value chain using niche marketing and coopetition in upstream, midstream, and downstream directions render cocreative social value (Mueller, Chambers, & Neck, 2013) for the social enterprises and their stakeholders. Indeed, findings revealed the dynamics of actors working in cooperation and competition led to attaining synergies that translated into positive outcomes (Osarenkhoe, 2010).    Table 3 from the case data, Abbotsford Convent set standards in the redevelopment of heritage structures.
They needed to apply for special approval to retrofit their buildings by appealing to local and state governmental bodies and working with Heritage Victoria to perform not only modifications to improve dilapidated buildings but also to add energy efficient equipment that conformed with building codes. Hepburn Wind also needed to establish new policy standards concerning generation of renewable energy.
They applied to their state energy regulator to be granted permission to connect to the electricity grid.
In return for community participation, acting on behalf of the social enterprises to accomplish these arduous tasks, both parties At the meso level, the social enterprises associated with fellow staff and members of broader industry and community networks (Bronfenbrenner, 1994) to enhance economic and social assets through sharing with opinion leaders and associates (Hastings & Domegan, 2013;Lagarde, 2012). Findings show relationships may be extended with competitors for competitive advantage in the marketplace. Service-dominant logic (Russell- Bennett et al., 2013;Vargo & Lusch, 2004) applies in these types of exchanges to account for achieving quality liaisons for mutual value. Yet it is important to remember companies will also compete against fellow industry players for sales at this level on matters of price, service, or quality (Bonel et al., 2008;Osarenkhoe, 2010).
Midstream strategies, as reflected in the case findings are presented in Table 4. These included affiliating through industry memberships and other associations and participating in joint product development or coproduction (Mariani, 2007). Ashoil and Ashlinen personnel affiliated with numerous indigenous groups to share knowledge of their profit-for-purpose business model, thereby engendering wider respect from these target audiences for mutual advantage. That is, by cooperating, they were able to secure more business as far down as Perth with redistribution of mining uniforms and simultaneously, hire formerly unemployed indigenous workers, breaking a cycle of disadvantage.
Due to significant challenges that were faced by locals, the social enterprises also embedded targeted interventions to achieve significant breakthroughs in their communities such as offering programs or apprenticeships through arrangements with governmental agencies or educational institutions, an alignment that helped to nurture economic and human capital for individuals, aided by neutralising threats or overcoming external barriers (Osarenkhoe, 2010). Thus, Perth City Farm teamed up with its neighbours, a tertiary institute and local job service agencies, to offer new education programs on horticulture.
They jointly fostered certification and employment opportunities for participants, and they instilled a sense of belonging within the communal spaces where students learned and applied principles that were taught to cultivate produce. WorkVentures similarly organised apprenticeships with other employers whereby nearby disadvantaged youth learned computer skills for permanent job placement. Resource Recovery also acted inclusively to hire marginalised aboriginal locals to assist them in upcycling rubbish due to industrial ecology partnerships that were forged, so the waste of one business was used as input for the remanufacture into new products (e.g., plastics into outdoor products, pallets into mulch, and food waste into compost) to beget organisational and community development.
Coopetition is receiving widespread attention in strategic management, and its merit is recognised within the field of entrepreneurship (Bouncken, Gast, Kraus, & Bogers, 2015) due to its ability to forge strategic alliances for gain (Thomason, Simendinger, & Kiernan, 2013 This study also contributes to theory by carving out a model in Figure 3 of how social enterprises can operate viable businesses to achieve goals towards sustainable development, using elements that function interdependently. First, a company will share a common social purpose with its stakeholders to fulfil certain social, economic, and environmental missions. Second, an organisation will factor in inputs: two-tiered price schemes, shared funding arrangements or cross subsidisation to pay for social endeavours, also joint businesses arrangements will be created with firms lying in close proximity or among fellow industry players, and collaboration will occur with other actors in its value chain, particularly by working with consumers to cater niche products or customised services to fit their needs. Third, the social enterprise will engage in coopetitive practices in marketing and social marketing to apply community-based social marketing interventions for behavioural change such as upskilling people. Fourth, by joining forces with a cross section of business, government, and community members, even being willing to enter competitive situations, which can make relatively smaller organisations vulnerable (Bengtsson & Johansson, 2012), it can enable the social enterprise to boost their capacity to capture economic, social, and environmental benefits through achieving a synergy for collective impact. Thus, being willing to take this risk can translate into a stronger community and company.
The implications of employing niche marketing and coopetitive practices by pioneering businesses are that best practices can be achieved that bring recognition for greater commerce. There is potential as well for replication by other social enterprises in seeding new ventures. Resource Recovery started up its consulting branch, RRA, due to increased demand for its specialised waste management practices, and AAC extended its subsidiaries from Ashoil to Ashlinen to fill niches in the mining sector. Furthermore, activities by the social enterprises to teach skills opened up job opportunities for their community members. Participants in a Human Ventures workshop subsequently launched a thriving digital media company. And many individuals that learned computer skills were consequently placed in positions with the social enterprises or their associates.

| RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
Although multiple case studies are criticised for their small scale since looking at a limited number of cases might compromise results due to a lack of validity (Burns, 2010), the findings did not constitute isolated instances. Consistent inferences were drawn from the scope of heterogeneous, mature social enterprises across Australia. Further, the researcher interviewed respondents from both rural and metropolitan regions using triangulation of data to ensure robust results. This research now adds cases of coopetition within the third sector that are likely to have parallels in the international marketplace, which could be tested for confirmation and fresh insight from other modern developed nations. New scholarly research on social enterprises could also evaluate what are the determinants of success to maintain effective long-term partnerships for reaching sustainable development goals. Another investigation could explore how to uphold the desired outcomes of behavioural change interventions by community members.