In response to the economic crisis in late 1980s, that provoked an unprecedented massive un employment, the Korean government enacted the social enterprise promotion act in 2007; it has approved 109 social enterprises and announced a plan to increase the number of social enterprises annually to 1000 by year 2010. Also, the Ministry of Labor increased its budget for to support this sector from 7.5 billion won in 2003 to 1.3 trillion won in 2007.
Since the Koreans in general have a lack of understanding of social enterprise, the profit, non-profit organizations and government roles are very important in order to raise awareness of the concept and promote their services and products. In this current situation, each stakeholder should play a larger role in providing support and development plans for social enterprises. Especially for Korean businesses that should take part in the development of social enterprises with more enthusiasm because it is important to have nonprofit organizations with the right set of mind that can specialize in handling social enterprise issues.
In order to promote the concept of social enterprise in a competitive business market in Korea, they need different approaches of marketing communication and strategies. Compare to other regions, the concept of social enterprise in Western nations are developed and well organized. Thus, this paper chooses three nations from the western nations-The United States, The United Kingdom and Italy to analysis the key elements of social enterprises and their marketing communication strategies via examining cases of social enterprises in each nation.
Two cases of global social enterprises from each nation are studied in order to find the differences of marketing communication strategies. For the United States-Little Kids Rock and DC Central Kitchen and for the United Kingdom-Cafe direct and Greenwich Leisure Ltd and for Italy-La Cordata Hostel and Spazio-aperto(labor insertion project) were analyzed and compared. Throughout comparing and analyzing case studies of each nation, the results will be implicated in the Korean case to find out the limits to apply and the most suitable cases for current condition in Korea.