Fairtrade Towns Research Articles

Faith communities and Fair Trade Towns in the UK: Raising awareness of sustainable development

Abstract Drawing on my research of Luton Fair Trade Town, in this article I argue that faith communities, working in partnership with Fair Trade Towns, are well-placed to raise awareness of sustainable development. I will discuss the ability of faith communities to raise awareness and bring about change towards sustainable development, utilizing both social and spiritual capital. An analysis focusing on social capital highlights the ability of faith communities to bridge different sections of society, issues and geographies. Spiritual capital concentrates on the motivation to action and this can provide a challenge to the status quo and a vision of how society can work differently, offering a necessary contribution to working towards a sustainable future.

Hybrid consumer activism in Fairtrade Towns: exploring digital consumer activism through spatiality

ABSTRACT This paper aims to explore digital consumer activism through a spatial lens, in order to understand how digital and place-based consumer activism intersect and interact. The empirical context is provided by Fairtrade Towns activism in the UK, investigated through netnographic methods. Three main spatialised tactics of digital consumer activism emerged from the analysis: emplacing the digital space; territorialising ethical consumption; and materialising digital activism. Building on these, we theorise hybrid consumer activism as a form of consumer activism whereby activists display belonging and identity both in physical and digital ‘places’ draw boundaries around spaces of ethical consumption through localised and digital collective action, and form hybrid digital ties. This study contributes to existing scholarship by taking into account placed and spatialised dimensions of digital consumer activism and by questioning the dichotomy between digital and place-based activism through the concept of “hybrid consumer activism”.

Placing an ethical brand: the Fairtrade Towns movement

ABSTRACT This study explores the relatively new potential of places to ethically enhance their branding through accreditation under the Fairtrade Towns (FTT) scheme. It presents insights from a qualitative study of marketing practices across eleven UK FTTs, focussing on the activists who establish these initiatives to facilitate and promote FT consumption within their communities. FTT accreditation is revealed as a grassroots local branding initiative that can work symbiotically with the place brand through connections to other fundamental aspects of a place’s identity and character, or even by playing a ‘redemptive’ role. FTT status encourages a less introspective approach to place branding by connecting with distant producer communities and encouraging tourists and residents to reconsider their consumption in the context of the socio-environmental realities of global supply chains.

Campaigning for sustainable food: sustainably certified consumer communities

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between consumer movements and sustainability certification bodies in the development of food-related consumer campaigns.Design/methodology/approachThis paper adopts a longitudinal approach to the study of an empirical case, the Fairtrade Towns (FTT) movement in the UK. It combines netnographic analysis on the FTT’s online forum with interviews with members of the community and of the certification body coordinating the movement.FindingsThe author conceptualises Sustainably Certified Consumer Communities (SCCC) as a distinct sub-group of consumer movements whose identity coalesces around a sustainable certification and that mobilises supporters with the purpose of promoting social change through the marketplace. The longitudinal approach allows the identification of definitional elements, main practices and unresolved tensions of this concept.Originality/valueResearch addressing the social movement dimension of contemporary food-related sustainability certification is limited. The present study advances consumer research through the conceptualisation of SCCC and contributes to a new understanding of the political roles that market-oriented certification bodies can play in consumer activism. From a managerial perspective, it provides valuable insights into practitioners interested in fostering community engagement.

Fairtrade towns: Unpacking the dynamics of locally developed ethical retail geographies

One of the most significant recent developments in ethical retailing is the Fairtrade Towns initiative. Its emphasis on the promotion of Fairtrade consumption within entire urban landscapes, and the communities and organisations within them, represents a geography of consumption into which millions of consumers are actively or passively enrolled. This empirical research paper considers Fairtrade Towns as retail geographies that connect across scales, shaped by the local, and yet expressing ethics and care on a global scale. Within them, local activists are revealed to adopt a novel role as ‘citizen marketers’ promoting FT consumption by local consumers and institutions by both utilising their own social networks and adopting marketing practices more usually associated with industry professionals. The resulting evolution of Fairtrade Towns is shown to have passed through two stages. The first supporting the broader global ‘mainstreaming’ agenda of the FT movement, with the second more focused on a novel contribution of local ‘sidestreaming’ to horizontally interconnect a range of types of place within a locality. This process has enrolled novel types of place and space as components of a local ethical retail geography, but this is revealed to potentially generate both synergies and tensions across different types of local place and stakeholder.

Campaign spaces for sustainable development: a power analysis of the Fairtrade Town Campaign in the UK

This paper explores the role that Fairtrade towns and cities can play in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As the largest consumers of resources, cities have a crucial role to play in the transition towards sustainable development, both within and outside their geographical boundaries. In the UK, towns and cities have driven the expansion of the Fair Trade movement through the ‘Fairtrade Town’ campaign, but an exploration of the relationship with sustainable development is currently missing. By applying power analysis we investigate campaign material produced by the Fairtrade Foundation and the experience of local campaigners. Our findings suggest that Fairtrade Towns operate as campaign spaces for sustainable development, challenging multiple forms of power and mobilizing resources on interrelated levels. Providing a framework to foster social equity on a glocal level, Fairtrade Towns hold the potential to contribute to multiple SDGs, representing a systemic approach to sustainable communities and cities.

Expanding the boundaries of brand communities: the case of Fairtrade Towns

PurposeThis paper aims to further the authors’ understanding of brand communities, and their role in brand co-creation, through empirical and theoretical contributions derived from researching the marketing dynamics operating within a successful but atypical form of brand community, Fairtrade Towns (FTT).Design/methodology/approachThe paper reflects a pragmatic application of Grounded Theory, which captured qualitative data from key “insiders”, with a particular emphasis on FTT steering group members and their role as “prosumers”. Data were gathered via ethnographic involvement within one town and semi-structured interviews with participants in others.FindingsFTTs, as brand communities, demonstrate elements of co-creation that go beyond the dominant theories and models within the marketing literature. They operate in, and relate to, real places rather than the online environments that dominate the literature on this subject. Unusually, the interactions between brand marketers and consumers are not the primary source of co-creation in FTTs. Instead, factors usually identified as merely secondary providers of additional brand knowledge become key initiators and sources of co-creation and active “citizen marketer” engagement.Originality/valueThis study demonstrates how brand co-creation can operate in physical geographical communities in ways that are formal without being managed by conventional brand managers. It conceptualises FTTs as a nested and “glocalised” brand and demonstrates how steering group members facilitate the process of co-creation as prosumers. It empirically demonstrates how FTTs have evolved to become unusually complex brand communities in terms of the variety of stakeholders and the multiplicity of brands involved, and the governance of the localised brand co-creation process.

Influencing Fairtrade consumption through servant leadership: Bruce Crowther’s story

PurposeThis study aims to expand understanding of servant leadership beyond organisational boundaries by making an examination of its role in the establishment and growth of a social movement.Design/methodology/approachThis paper’s findings are developed from four sequential, semi-structured interviews and a narrated tour of Garstang with the founder of the Fairtrade Towns (FTT) movement. It follows a theoretical framework of servant leadership (SLship) from Spears (1996; 2009). Evidence is gathered through in-depth investigation of the activities of Bruce Crowther, the architect and driving force behind the FTT initiative.FindingsThe findings discovered how SLship operates in a social, place-based setting to influence Fairtrade consumption. The paper argues the success of the FTT movement is linked to Bruce Crowther’s leadership. The findings presented draw and expand upon Spears’ ten characteristics of SLship. Utilisation of this framework sees Crowther emerge as a servant leader operating at a community level to influence FT consumption via the FTT movement.Originality/valueThe paper makes a contribution to theory by identifying the novel characteristic of servant leaders that is exploring affinity and proffers it as an extension of Spears’ framework. It also provides valuable information about the impact and importance of SLship in the efficacious advance of ethical consumerism.

Fairtrade Towns as Unconventional Networks of Ethical Activism

The growing availability and consumption of Fairtrade products is recognised as one of the most widespread ethically inspired market developments, and as an example of activist-driven change within the wider marketing system. The Fairtrade Towns movement, now operating in over 1700 towns and cities globally, represents a comparatively recent extension of Fairtrade marketing driven by local activists seeking to promote positive change in production and consumption systems. This paper briefly explores the conventional framing of the role that ethically related activism plays in the operation of markets and in influencing market participants. It then presents key insights gathered from a grounded theory exploration of Fairtrade Towns as activist-driven marketing systems, revealing the atypical nature of the activism involved. The findings demonstrate how local activists leverage their social networks to exert pressure and generate support to promote ethical consumption. The study suggests that Fairtrade Towns offer a new role for activists as Fairtrade itself becomes more mainstream, and considers the role they are fulfilling as ‘informal’ local marketers. The marketing dynamics revealed represent a complex and distinctive form of relational activism that seeks to build Fairtrade markets and highlight their positive benefits, with potential lessons for other local ethical market-building efforts in future.

Places where people matter: The marketing dynamics of Fairtrade Towns

Purpose The purpose of this study was to understand how Fairtrade Towns, a relatively new but rapidly expanding phenomenon that promotes social business in terms of the consumption of Fairtrade products, operate as a form of place-based marketing network. This paper, which underpinned a Keynote Address delivered at the Second Biannual Social Business Conference, explores how Fairtrade Towns combine the ‘people’ dimension of Fairtrade marketing with a place-based perspective. Methodology This project applied grounded theory and gathered data through long-term ethnographic involvement in one Fairtrade Town initiative, and interviews with 29 key participants across 11 other Fairtrade Towns. Findings The dynamics of Fairtrade Towns operating as marketing systems went far beyond just conventional ethical consumption behaviours driven by concerns for other people in other places. Elements of consumer citizenship linked to civic engagement, the exploitation and development of local social networks and social capital, and connections with local place identity all combine to create a form of place-based community marketing with a unique ability to connect people in producer and consumer communities for social benefit. Contribution This study demonstrates the need to understand phenomena such as Fairtrade Towns, not as abstract marketing systems, but as activities and processes driven by, and concerned about, real people in real places. It contributes to the growing appreciation of the need to understand particular aspects of social business from a multidisciplinary perspective. Keywords: Fairtrade, Ethical marketing, Consumer citizenship, Place marketing, Grounded theory

Grounded Theory as a Macromarketing Methodology

This article details and justifies Grounded Theory as a methodology for researching into significant and emerging macromarketing phenomena, through an exploration of its use to investigate the marketing dynamics of the Fairtrade Towns Movement. The paper describes the research journey undertaken from the initial consideration of Fairtrade Towns as an under-researched and challenging topic, through to the final production of new theory rooted in the reality of the research context. The philosophy and systematic processes that underpin Grounded Theory are explained, along with examples of how the key processes of data collection and analysis were undertaken. The insights generated in this paper demonstrate Grounded Theory as a suitable, yet underused, research approach available to macromarketers. It is revealed as a methodology that can bring rigor and confidence to research into emerging macromarketing themes, and the paper concludes by considering its potential for application in key spheres for future research.

Ciudades por el Comercio Justo: puentes entre Europa y América Latina

The movement for trade justice has already seven decades of development since its pioneering experiences. In Europe it has seen a rapid growth, professionalization and institutionalization. Its actors are working every day in marketing, awareness and advocacy. For this, they have stimulated the development of the “Fair Trade Towns” campaign, through which local public institutions become development actors, promoting and implementing the principles of fair trade also through solidarity public procurement. In Latin American and the Caribbean, producers have for decades played an active role at the first ring of this solidarity chain; however, it is time to build, gradually also in South, solidarity marketing circuits like those established in Europe or North America. To achieve this goal, cities should become one of the articulating elements between producers and citizens- consumers. The idea of this article is that the “Fair Trade Towns” campaign could represent an important tool to promote fair trade also in Latin American and the Caribbean, and also to strengthen new links between cities of the two continents.Keywords: fair trade, towns, small producers, consumers.

Fair Trade Towns USA: growing the market within a diverse economy

Fair trade is both a movement and a market, and the tension between these two domains reflects an ambiguity at the center of fair trade in the United States, resulting from long-standing debates within the contemporary movement. In practice, this ideological division produces a struggle between companies that offer a small number of fair trade products aside a vast number of conventional items, and those that sell only fair trade certified products. However, it also shapes the experience of on-the-ground fair trade advocacy work. This article uses Gibson-Graham's diverse economies framework to explore three arenas in which this is most clearly evidenced. First, some fair trade advocates are wary of Fair Trade USA's (FTUSA) power and strategies. They are aware that multiple fair trade certification frameworks currently exist; however they aren't always sure which ones are most desirable and why. This confusion can be problematic in Fair Trade Towns (FTT) advocacy work which involves convincing community members, institutions and governments to purchase more fair trade products. Second, in light of FTUSA's strategic marketization of fair trade and the entry of large corporate players into the U.S. fair trade market, fair trade advocates increasingly find themselves in the equivocal position of providing free labor and marketing for large corporations. Third, the efforts of some FTT advocates are stymied by the determined localvores in their community who are more focused on minimizing carbon footprints and supporting local farmers than promoting social justice and environmental stewardship in the developing world. These tensions raise important questions about the scalar politics of alternative markets and diverse economies.Keywords: fair trade, social movements, localism, ethical consumption, Gibson-Graham

Fairtrade Towns:Place(ing) Responsibility

This paper discusses the nature of place within the context of the Fair Trade Movement, and examines notions of responsibility and authenticity as key factors in the emergence of contemporary places. Fairtrade Towns are considered as the embodiment of socially constructed places that reflect a search for the authentic, combined with an extended responsibility which transcends space and encompasses what authors such as Barnett et al. (2005) and Massey (2005) have suggested to be ‘place beyond place.’ The Fairtrade Town, through its aim to influence patterns and processes of consumption, is consequently considered as a mechanism for place(ing) responsibility, for in effect enabling global citizenship to become part of the fabric of places and for enabling the authentic to return to the place of the here and now, rather than the other and then.