Social Business Revisited: Altruistic Temptation or Make-Believe Philosophy?

Abstract

Different People define social business in different ways. However, social marketing is just simply an incomplete and inefficient endeavor to enhance or to contribute to social welfare. Whether we talk about social marketing or social business, we are then talking, we are then talking about the buying and consuming of social buying/shopping of social products. Social products are those tangible and intangible outcomes of human efforts that can satisfy some basic human needs and thereby contribute to social welfare. But due to market imperfections, unawareness of the potential consumers about the utilities of the products involved, or the lack of purchasing power of the consumers, the demands for these products are less than what they should be to reasonably enhance the social welfare with a positive spillover effect. That is why, Socrates believed that individuals always should not opt for personal profit in exchange transactions, rather in some cases/situations, they should consider only the welfare of others. We may call it a humanitarian quality and/or an act out of temptation or spiritual weakness. This paper attempts to graphically explain the concept of social business, the process of behavior changes of the consumers, as well as a complete definition of social business in the context of present days.