Fair Trade Products Research Articles

The Fair Trade consumer as a citizen-consumer: civic virtue or alternative hedonism?

This paper aims to explore Fair Trade consumer orientations by focusing on the ‘citizen-consumer’ dimension. Those who buy Fair Trade products are often regarded as consumers who are motivated by social responsibility and an altruistic spirit. However, some studies show that such consumers are not necessarily altruistic or political, but rather hedonistic and individualistic. In order to examine what kinds of people purchase Fair Trade products, we analyse the Fair Trade consumer's attitude using social survey data from Japan. The result of this analysis demonstrates that the variables concerning ‘alternative hedonism’ (creativity, quality of products, post-materialism) have positive effects on response in purchasing Fair Trade products. On the other hand, the variables concerning ‘civic virtue’ (dedication to the public interest, altruism, social support) have no significant effect on it. This result shows that Fair Trade consumers do not always internalise the movement's principles, but pursue their individual lifestyle in different ways. In other words, consumers' ‘little narratives’ are not an obstacle to the realisation of ‘grand narratives’, but rather a condition of the latter.

Religion’s influence on consumer response to moral vs. justice message appeals

AbstractBuilding from past research on religion and self‐construal, this research is the first known research to explore the relationships among religion (Western vs. Eastern vs. nonreligious), moral vs. justice message appeals, and ethical consumption. In two studies utilizing the context of Fair Trade products, we show differences in the effectiveness of moral and justice message appeals to encourage ethical consumption based on one’s religious or nonreligious affiliation. Study 1 uses an Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) sample of 197 adults, finding through MANOVAs that moral (justice) appeals are the most effective at increasing purchase intentions for ethical goods among Western (nonreligious) consumers. Study 2 extends these questions to Western and Eastern religious consumers using a Qualtrics panel sample of 279 adults, finding through MANOVAs that moral (justice) appeals are more effective for Western (Eastern) religious consumers. Equally important, Study 2 results show that these effects occur regardless of religiosity level, emphasizing the need to understand consumers’ religious affiliation more so than religiosity level. Results from both studies also show that change efficacy positively influences Fair Trade purchase intentions which, surprisingly, encourages ethical disengagement. Results also examine the purchase motives of customers, finding nonreligious and Eastern religious consumers to be motivated by concern for others, while Western religious consumers are motivated out of concern for self. In sum, marketing practitioners desiring to encourage ethical consumption should use self‐based moral appeals (e.g., “do this because it is the right thing to do for yourself”) when targeting Western religious consumers or countries with predominantly Western religious followers, while using others‐based justice appeals (e.g., “do this because it is the fair thing to do for others”) when targeting Eastern or nonreligious consumers or countries mostly representing these affiliates.

Price Fairness: Two-Stage Comparison of Conventional and Fairtrade Prices

Besides theoretical considerations of price fairness, the article compares food prices—fairtrade and conventional. The first stage comparison of fairtrade and conventional producer prices reveals that fairtrade producer prices are twice as high as the conventionally traded equivalent. On the second stage, prices are compared on producer and consumer level for three products. The analysis predicts a massive price markup in retail. Sometimes fairtrade retail prices are higher than retail prices for their conventional counterparts, even though price differences have not been all that great for producers. This may be justified by a lower trading volume of the niche market, implicitly entailing higher costs.

Taking a Stand through Food Choices? Characteristics of Political Food Consumption and Consumers in Finland

This study looks at food as a realm of political consumption by examining buycotting and boycotting of foods for ethical, political or environmental reasons in Finland. The results of an Internet-based survey (N = 1021) showed that around half of the respondents often or occasionally both buycotted and boycotted foods. Multinomial regression models indicated that women, the highly educated, the political left, those who donated for charity, those whose food choices were motivated by domestic origin and ethical food production, and those who trusted that consumption choices, institutional actors and the media can advance ethical food production and consumption, were most likely to be active in buycotting and boycotting. Buycotters/boycotters were very active in buying local food but less eager, for instance, to buy organic or Fair Trade products or to reduce the use of meat or milk. The article concludes by critically assessing the complex relationship between buycotting/boycotting and sustainable practices and suggesting that consumers may be more willing to transform their eating patterns if other societal actors, too, make an effort to influence ethical food consumption.

Determinants of Fair Trade Product Purchase Intention of Dutch Consumers According to the Extended Theory of Planned Behaviour

The study reported in this paper investigated the determinants of fair trade (FT) product purchase intention among Dutch consumers according to the extended Theory of Planned Behaviour and determined whether the effects of those determinants differ between male and female consumers. To test the various research hypotheses, an online survey with 499 respondents from a Dutch research panel was employed. Results of the multi-group analysis using a structural equation modelling approach reveal that FT product purchase intention of both male and female consumers are predicated on moral obligation and self-identity. The impact of subjective norm on purchase intention is statistically significant for male consumers only. Analyses reveal that, indeed, the impact of subjective norm on FT product purchase intention is moderated by consumers’ gender.

ETHICAL CONSUMPTION REVISITED THROUGH THE ENVIRONMENTAL, SOCIAL, AND LEGAL DIMENSIONS

The literature on ethical consumption has expanded over time and has focused on studying the attitudes and behaviours of consumers with regards to different products and services, such as organic, Fair Trade, environmentally and social friendly products. In addition to this, some research has focused on studying consumers’ attitudes and behaviours towards pirated or counterfeited products. However, to the best of the author’s knowledge, so far research has not mapped the “objects” taken into account within ethical consumption research (i.e. the type of products or services bought by consumers). Hence, this research aims at mapping these elements in order to have a clear picture on what aspects the marketing literature on ethical consumption has focused on and, in this way, understand if there are products and services on which future research should focus on. In order to achieve this aim a scoping review has been carried out by analysing 195 papers published on ethical and unethical consumption. From the results achieved so far, it appears that research has mainly focused on environmental and social products and services, while limited research has been devoted to legally questionable objects (e.g. smuggled cigarettes, illegal drugs, etc.). It should be noted, however, that the analysis of collected papers is still on-going, thus the results here reported are incomplete.

A Study on the Effects of Consumer Self-Determination Psychological Needs and Perceived Influence for Fair Trade Products

A Study on the Effects of Consumer Self-Determination Psychological Needs and Perceived Influence for Fair Trade Products

How Do Consumers Face the Decision to Buy Fair Trade Products? A Marketing Approach

In this article, we propose and empirically test a causal model to understand how consumer social orientation, the credibility of nonprofit organizations, the perceptions of fair trade products, and the attitudes toward the fair trade brand interact and affect the buying intentions of fair trade products in a sample of 292 Spanish consumers. The findings show that consumer social orientation has the greatest effect on buying intentions, above consumers’ perceptions of fair trade products, the credibility of the trading nonprofit organizations and consumers’ attitudes toward the fair trade brand. Actually, consumers’ attitudes toward the fair trade brand have no significant effect on consumers’ buying intentions. The findings also demonstrate that the credibility of nonprofit organizations only influences consumers’ buying intentions indirectly through consumers’ perceptions of the functional utilities of fair trade products.

Consumer Preferences for Foodstuffs Produced in a Socio-environmentally Responsible Manner: A Threat to Fair Trade Producers?

In recent years there has been an increase in social awareness about environment, production processes and product origin amongst consumers. Particularly in the agro-food industry, fair and responsible consumption has been proposed as a feasible alternative to conventional product consumption. Fair trade products are usually produced in developing countries and then commercialised in the rest of the world. However, we may compare this concept to that of “ethical-sustainable production” in developed countries, depending on the level of environmental responsibility, the way the production processes are developed and other business practices, which are similar to those used in fair trade. The findings reveal that the origin (local/regional) and the type of production are two attributes that are highly valued by consumers, with the socially and environmentally responsible production system and fair trade products providing a positive utility compared to conventional products. Three consumer groups have been identified with differentiated preferences: the group we call “Fair Trade Consumers”, who allocate more value to the type of production; “Local Consumers”, who allocate more value to the origin of products; and “Price Sensitive Consumers”, who are less inclined to pay for products deriving from socially and environmentally responsible practices and fair trade products.

Human Values as Determinants of Fairtrade Consumption in the Czech Republic

Ethical consumerism is a growing field. It attracts increasingly more attention not only from the supply and demand sides, but also from researchers. Numerous surveys are trying to describe consumers’ behaviour; many studies are trying to identify and analyse what contributes to the higher ethical consumption. While this is also the case of the Czech Republic, empirical evidence focused on the effect of consumers’ values on ethical consumerism in the Czech Republic is still missing. Therefore, our goal is to examine the effect of consumers’ values on Fairtrade consumption in the Czech Republic. We measure the values through the Human Values Scale (developed by S. Schwartz) and use socio-demographic characteristics as control variables in a multivariate model. We find that Universalism and Power are values which can predict the frequency of Fairtrade purchases among Czech online Fairtrade shoppers. Along with Universalism, gender proves to be an important predictor too. While generalizing our results, we must bear in mind that our sample describes only those who do purchase Fair trade products on-line.

Ethical aspects of the world trading system on the example of Fair Trade

The effect of globalization is not only an improvement of living conditions in developing countries, but also a widening of development disparities and economic inequalities between countries of the rich North and the poor South. The Fair Trade can be considered as a response to emerging problems of development. Therefore, it can be perceived as a form of assistance directed to the marginalized producers in the Global South by enabling them to manufacture, sell and distribute goods to markets in developed countries. This is an alternative to the existing formula of international trade; whose aim is to help producers in the South by integrating them into the current trading system under certain conditions. The idea is to create a new business relationship between producer and consumer, where the production and consumption are bound together in a new supply chain and where the economic benefits are distributed more fairly. It means that the prices of Fair Trade products are set at a level that would ensure a steady income to the producer and would lead to raising their living standards and prosperity. The ethical aspects of the Fair Trade system are clear. The problem is whether the Fair Trade standards can be used on a wider scale in the global economy, whereas there is an evident clash of certain ethical values with market economy rules based on maximizing profits and increasing efficiency.

Understanding ethical consumers: willingness-to-pay by moral cause

PurposeMoral issues such as environmental degradation and workers’ rights are no longer relegated to the political realm; today, they permeate the marketing of consumer products. Some consumer studies focus on organics, others on green goods and still others on fair trade products, but none include the full range of ethical consumption. This study, aims to investigate consumer willingness to pay for five distinct ethical narratives.Design/methodology/approachUsing original data from a national sample, this paper parses out five types of ethical narratives: fair trade, sustainable/green, American-made and two types of charitable partnerships. Using random assignment and an experimental design allows in isolating the effects of gender, age, education, income, political orientation and political involvement on how much consumers are willing to pay for each type of ethical product.FindingsThis survey experiment demonstrates that the fair trade narrative is the most valuable to consumers, followed by the charitable narratives. The two charitable narratives are universally appealing, whereas fair trade, green and American-made products appeal to three distinct groups of consumers. This paper demonstrates that there is not one sort of ethical shopper, but many.Practical/implicationsThis study examines what sorts of stories appeal to particular demographics. It will help socially and environmentally responsible companies better understand their target demographic and how to motivate their target audience.Originality/valuePrevious research yields conflicting findings about who values ethical products because each study focuses on a different form of ethical consumption. This study uses original data to investigate consumers’ valuations of five different types of ethical narratives. The results help in making sense of divergent findings in the literature and expand understanding of socially conscious shoppers.

The Role of Tree Domestication in Green Market Product Value Chain Development in Africa

Internationally, there is increasing interest in acquiring ‘green’ market, organic and/or fair trade products, also sourced from the wild. The latter is expected to come from well-managed (forest) systems. This has led to the development and implementation of programmes designed to reduce deforestation and forest degradation (for mitigation of climate change, and sustainable provision of environmental goods and services) (REDD and REDD+). Crucially, this approach needs to be extended to the many poor, hungry and marginalized smallholder farmers in developing countries so that they can benefit from this increased market interest, but also to allow them to improve their natural resource (management) basis. In this context, agroforestry tree domestication has made considerable progress in the last 20 years, especially in Africa, in providing planting materials of many new tree crops for food, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries and consumer markets across many agro-ecological zones. Tree domestication is an important element and the first necessary step in the development of sustainable tree production for introduction in agroforestry systems. These trees can then form the basis of Non-Timber Forest Production (NTFP) that can feed into livelihood development. In contrast to wild trees, planted trees can offer a more regular and continuous supply of NTFPs that then feed into local-to-global value chains and highly sophisticated markets that demand higher quality and greater uniformity. Together with research institutes, local farmers are now developing new, more performant cultivars of species of interest. They thus eventually help to create direct benefits from the processing and subsequent marketing of food and non-food products in local, regional and international markets. The latter activities also create business and employment opportunities in local cottage industries. Similarly, through the indirect environmental and ecological services provided by trees, food security can be greatly enhanced as agroforestry may improve the production environment of crops and thus close the yield gap (i.e. the difference between the potential and actual yield) of modern crop varieties. In this way, agroforestry adds income generation to agro-ecological approaches which together reverse the cycle of land degradation and social deprivation whilst at the same time transforming the lives of poor farmers. However, these benefits do not come without some risks: the loss of genetic diversity and local rights over genetic resources, and exploitation by unscrupulous entrepreneurs. Agroforestry developments should therefore focus on better access to ‘green’ business opportunities for poor smallholder farmers in Africa by maximizing the benefits and minimizing the risks.

In search of dignified work: Gender and the work ethic in the crucible of fair trade production

ABSTRACTAfter building the first worker‐owned free trade zone in the world, the women of the Fair Trade Zone in Ciudad Sandino, Nicaragua, rejected fair trade and elected to go their own way. The small cooperative's decision, as well as their claim to be seeking “dignified work” (trabajo digno), does not express the existing norms and conventions of a local moral economy. Rather, it stems from an alternative work ethic that was formed through their particular experiences of fair trade production—one that rejected the logic of reproducing capital at the expense of social life and sought to preserve their workplace as a forum for dignity. Here, alternative work ethics unleash the inventive play of ethical labor and give rise to unruly subjects. [gender, labor, the work ethic, cooperatives, development, fair trade, Nicaragua]

Are consumers willing to go the extra mile for fair trade products made in a developing country? A comparison with made in USA products at different prices

We investigated whether fair trade messages (fair labor/environment-friendly production) can counterbalance the negative country of origin effect on brand evaluations and increase willingness to pay premium prices. Our findings suggest that fair trade messages led consumers to evaluate a product made in a developing country as favorably as a product made in the U.S. While brand attitude and brand trust were higher for a fair trade product made in a developing country, consumers hesitated to buy a product with a fair trade message when the premium price was 15% higher than the base price product with no fair trade message. We discussed implications of these findings.

Improving Quality and Competitiveness of Agriculture in South Halmahera through Fairtrade Product Concept

Improving Quality and Competitiveness of Agriculture in South Halmahera through Fairtrade Product Concept

 CERTONTO: TOWARDS AN ONTOLOGICAL REPRESENTATION OF FAIR TRADE CERTIFICATION STANDARDS

The global fair trade movement, to secure fair deal for producers, has been supported by the labeling initiative, which promotes sales of fair-trade products by expanding their distributions into major consumer segments through product-labeling. Fair-trade certifications, practised in compliance with the fair trade standards set by Fairtrade International (FLO), are carried out at the producer end of the supply chain. Given the varieties of products and producers, however, these certification activities are subject to ambiguous or inconsistent interpretation of the FLO standards. In this paper, we propose an ontological representation of the standards called CertOnto. We aim at defining eventually a set of ontological vocabularies for describing the concepts of actors and their roles, the compliance criteria, producers, products, activities, context and situations, all of which are involved into a basic decision problem for CertOnto: Given a producer, or a product, should it be fairtrade-certified or not? With regard to this problem, we emphasize the difficulties of verifying the accuracy of information captured by CertOnto-FLO, and show that, from technical perspective, computingwith CertOnto-FLO in general is challenging (at least NP-hard).

An Application of the Norm Activation Model to Fair Trade Product Purchase Decision-Making Process: The Moderating Impact of Cultural Cluster

An Application of the Norm Activation Model to Fair Trade Product Purchase Decision-Making Process: The Moderating Impact of Cultural Cluster

The Impact of Fair Trade on Smallholders' Capacity to Adapt to Climate Change

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to assess to what extent producers' participation in fair trade can increase their adaptive capacity and make them more resilient to climate change. Based on the adaptation deficit framework of Fankhauser and McDermott (2014) and an expert interview with 39 producer organizations from Latin America, Asia and Africa, we first determine the perception and the impacts of climate change on fair trade producers' organizations. We then analyze how fair trade is helping producers to increase their adaptive capacity. Our results suggest that fair trade affects the adaptive capacity of smallholder farmers in developing countries in two ways. First, it can work as a growth policy and affects the disposable income, which is then partly spent on adaptation measures. Second, by increased knowledge exchange, a higher degree of social capital and a better access to the international community, it makes the supply of adaptation more efficient. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

The role of brand utilities: application to buying intention of fair trade products

The authors focus on the ethical consumption and propose a model of buying intention of fair trade products, including the utilities of the fair trade generic brand as direct determinants. The authors measure the functional and symbolic utilities provided by this brand, together with the attitude towards the commercialising organisations, consumer concern and perceived knowledge about fair trade issues. The model is tested through a structural equation model on a sample of members (students, lecturers and staff) of a ‘Fair trade University’. The results confirm that perceived functional utility is the most important antecedent of the buying intention, while the symbolic dimension has a significant but weaker explanatory power. Conversely, the consumer attitude towards the organisation has no influence. The authors also highlight the importance of communication and concern to stimulate consumer behaviour.