2006/12/01 by Geoff Moore, Jane Gibbon, Richard Slack · 76 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · Agricultural and Biological Sciences · #Global trade, sustainability, and social impact #Environmental Sustainability in Business #Organic Food and Agriculture #Macromarketing #Fair trade #Mainstream #Mainstreaming #Consumption (sociology) #Sustainable consumption #Sustainable development #Empirical research #Business #Economics #Marketing #Sociology #Political science #International trade #Production (economics) #Social science #Law
paper · open access · doi:10.1080/09652540600947961
published in Journal of Strategic Marketing 14(4), 329-352 (Taylor & Francis)
openalex publication_date 2006/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Following a brief review of the development and underlying purposes of the Fair Trade movement, the paper introduces perhaps the key issue for the UK Fair Trade movement currently: the mainstreaming of Fair Trade food products. The macromarketing literature, with its focus on sustainable consumption, ecocentrism and a consequent need to change the dominant social paradigm, is used as a framework for analysing the findings of an empirical study of this mainstreaming process involving interviews with and case study material from both Fair Trade organisations and the major supermarkets which have engaged with Fair Trade. The key question that the paper addresses is whether Fair Trade, particularly as it enters mainstream markets, provides an exemplar, from within the existing dominant social paradigm, of the kinds of actions that the macromarketing literature suggests are necessary to enable sustainable consumption. Implications for both the Fair Trade movement and for macromarketing are drawn out.