Why People Don’t Take their Concerns about Fair Trade to the Supermarket: The Role of Neutralisation

This article explores how neutralisation can explain people’s lack of commitment to buying Fair Trade (FT) products, even when they identify FT as an ethical concern. It examines the theoretical tenets of neutralisation theory and critically assesses its applicability to the purchase of FT products. Exploratory research provides illustrative examples of neutralisation techniques being used in the FT consumer context. A conceptual framework and research propositions delineate the role of neutralisation in explaining the attitude-behaviour discrepancies evident in relation to consumers’ FT purchase behaviour, providing direction for further research that will generate new knowledge of consumers’ FT purchase behaviour and other aspects of ethical consumer behaviour.     

Drawing on “Producer-Tours”: A Technique for Addressing Consumer Uncertainty Surrounding the Consumption of Fair Trade Food Products?

Despite the global increase in both fair trade sales and awareness, actual market shares of some fair trade products remain disappointing. A number of authors have suggested various reasons for this, including the complexity of the situational context affecting actual purchase behavior (Carrington, Neville, &; Whitwell, 2010 Carrington, J. M., Neville, A. B. and Whitwell, G. J. 2010. Why ethical consumers don't walk their talk: Towards a framework for understanding the gap between the ethical purchase intentions and actual buying behaviour of ethically minded consumers. Journal of Business Ethics, 97: 139–158. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), the disconnect between producers and consumers (Dickinson, 2001 Dickinson, M. A. 2001. Utility of no sweat labels for apparel consumers: Profiling label-users and predicting their purchases. Journal of Consumer Affairs, 35(1): 96–119. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), and the problems associated with the depersonalization of ethics in mainstream distribution (Bezencon &; Blili, 2011). This article introduces the drawing method into the field of research on fair trade consumption. Using this method, this study explores student perceptions of both fair trade consumers and how fair trade works. In doing so, the drawing method unveiled two potential consumer types; namely, the dreamer and the angel. On this, we argue that our study reveals some of the possibilities inherent in the use of the drawing method to explore uncertainty surrounding fair trade consumption.     

An Exploration of Opportunities for the Growth of the Fair Trade Market: Three Cases of Craft Organisations

Businesses that maintain ethical standards have an advantage in the marketplace based on the increasing interest of consumers in products that have a social and ethical component. Fair trade organisations that adopt environmental, social and ethical principles in trading are in a good position to make the most of this growing interest in the market. However, it is unclear whether fair trade organisations are taking full advantage of emerging market opportunities for ethically traded products. This research explores this issue by describing the business strategies of three fair trade organisations that import and sell craft goods into Western countries and evaluates them in the context of this growing market. The research findings indicate that in order to remain in business, fair trade craft organisations have had to adopt better business practices in recent years, improving quality, customer service and product offerings to customers. However, growth appears to be limited, as distribution remains focused on a small, niche market. This paper explores the distribution strategies of two fair trade commodity organisations that are successfully reaching a wider customer base, demonstrating that fair trade products have a unique selling advantage in the mainstream marketplace. In conclusion, fair trade craft organisations are not exploiting this market opportunity to the degree they should and will need to explore wider distribution and alternative business strategies to expand their market share.Debora Randall completed her Masters of Management at Massey University, in Auckland, New Zealand. She is currently using her interests in business and community development to work towards practical economic solutions to poverty. She is living in Vancouver, Canada where she is working on a number of community economic development initiatives.     

Ethical Decision Making in Fair Trade Companies

This paper reports on a study of ethical decision-making in a fair trade company. This can be seen to be a crucial arena for investigation since fair trade firms not only have a specific ethical mission in terms of helping growers out of poverty, but they tend to be perceived as (and are often marketed on the basis of) having an "ethical" image. Eschewing a straightforward test of extant ethical decision models, we adopt Thompson's proposal for a more contextualist understanding rooted in ethnographic data. Our findings suggest that the fair trade mission of the firm is experienced as an over-riding ethical claim, which is often invoked to justify potentially ethically questionable decisions. Moreover, decision precedents emerge which can mean that the decision process is bypassed or hurried through. Finally we provide evidence that the significance of these precedents, and indeed, even moral intensity itself, could be actively shaped and constructed by organization members to support different, even shifting, conceptions of what is a morally acceptable decision for a fair trade company to make.     

The Dynamics of Fair Trade as a Mixed-form Market

This article analyses the Fair Trade sector as a “mixed-form market,” i.e., a market in which different types of players (in this case, nonprofit, co-operative and for-profit organizations) coexist and compete. The purposes of this article are (1) to understand the factors that have led Fair Trade to become a mixed-form market and (2) to propose some trails to understand the market dynamics that result from the interactions between the different types of players. We start by defining briefly Fair Trade, its different dimensions (including the “fair” quality of the products) and its organizational landscape, focusing on the distinction between the pioneer “Alternative Trading Organizations” and the second-mover companies. Then, we recall the theoretical emergence factors for each type of organization (nonprofit, co-operative and for-profit) and apply these emergence factors to the context of Fair Trade. This analysis allows us to capture the specificities of each type of operator with regard to Fair Trade and, thus, to have a better understanding of the dynamics in the sector. Such dynamics includes competition, but also conflict and partnership. Our analysis includes elements on ethical imitation, consumers’ behaviors, effects on welfare and the role of the government.     

The Role of Personal Values in Fair Trade Consumption

Research in the U.S. on fair trade consumption is sparse. Therefore, little is known as to what motivates U.S. consumers to buy fair trade products. This study sought to determine which values are salient to American fair trade consumption. The data were gathered via a Web-based version of the Schwartz Value Survey (SVS) and were gleaned from actual consumers who purchase fair trade products from a range of Internet-based fair trade retailers. This study established that indeed there are significant interactions between personal values and fair trade consumption and that demographics proved to be useless in creating a profile of the American fair trade consumer.     

Fair trade and global cognitive orientation: a focus on Spanish fair trade consumers

In the past few years, there has been an increase in the ‘ethical consumer’, characterized by more reflexive values like solidarity, social responsibility, multiculturalism and ecology. This idea has found support in the appearance and development of proposals like fair trade, along with others, such as responsible consumption, the recycling business or sustainable development. In a parallel way, also during the past few years, various analysts have pointed out that the phenomenon of globalization is changing not only the aspect of the world but also our way of perceiving it, which is progressively becoming a ‘global orientation’. In the framework of these two tendencies, this paper examines the extent to which ‘global orientation’ is also a characteristic of consumers of fair trade products. The paper presents a two‐phase exploratory study. The first phase, of a quantitative nature, showed the greater global orientation of Spanish consumers of fair trade products, and it obtained a typology of them. This typology showed, however, that not all the clusters of consumers of fair trade products have a high global orientation, which reveals that the relationship between this dimension and the consumption of fair trade products is not a direct, straightforward one. The subsequent qualitative study examined the components of this global orientation in each of the three clusters where the consumption of fair trade products was the highest. The results showed that the purchase of fair trade products is influenced by the ‘global orientation’ of the consumer, although other factors, such as a sense of social responsibility and trust in international non‐governmental organizations, can condition this influence.     

The Influence of Perceived Importance of an Ethical Issue on Moral Judgment,Moral Obligation,and Moral Intent

The study extends and tests the issue contingent four-component model of ethical decision-making to include moral obligation. A web-based questionnaire was used to gauge the influence of perceived importance of an ethical issue on moral judgment and moral intent. Perceived importance of an ethical issue was found to be a predictor of moral judgment but not of moral intent as predicted. Moral obligation is suggested to be a process that occurs after a moral judgment is made and explained a significant portion of the variance in moral intent. Electronic supplementary material   The online version of this article (doi: ) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Russell Haines is an Assistant Professor of Information Technology at Old Dominion University. He received his B.S. and Master of Accountancy from Brigham Young University and his Ph.D. from The University of Houston. His research interests are in laboratory experiments, ethical decision- making, supply chain decision-making, and computer- mediated communication. Marc D. Street is an Assistant Professor of Management at Salisbury University in Salisbury, Maryland. He received his B.A. from the University of Maryland, College Park (1983); his MBA from the University of Baltimore (1993); and his Ph.D. from the Florida State University (1998). His primary research interests are in the areas of decision-making and business ethics. Dr. Street’s research has been published in journals such as Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Journal of Business Ethics, and the Journal of World Business, among others. Douglas Haines is Associate Professor of Marketing and Department Chair of the Department of Business in the College of Business and Economics at the University of Idaho. Before acquiring his Ph.D. at the University of Oregon, he worked for 15 years in various positions at the H.J. Heinz company including Vice President of the Weight Watchers Foods Division of Heinz USA. His research interests include decision making, particularly in the marketing channel context, inter firm relationships, and the development of the market for biodiesel and other alternative energy sources.     

论我国跨境电子商务平台的海关法律责任

跨境电子商务平台创造了外贸机会,但也使传统海关管理相对人的责任界限模糊不清。未参与实际交易的跨境电子商务平台承担独立或补充责任已成为国际惯例。2016年海关总署《关于跨境电子商务零售进出口商品有关监管事宜的公告》成为我国关于跨境电子商务平台监管方面最全面系统的法律规范之一,但依然存在义务不明晰和责任承担缺乏上位法的依据等问题。例如跨境电子商务平台的知识产权保护归责原则和发现违规/走私行为的举报义务,有待制定《电子商务法》和修改海关法律规范,引入行政执法合作和纠纷解决合作法理,赋予平台准行政权的管理职权和预裁定的司法职权。     

美国对外贸易政策的演进及对我国贸易政策制定的启示

本文分析了美国对外贸易的重要作用和对外贸易的发展情况，研究了美国对外贸易政策的演进过程，并从中得到如下启示：对外贸易政策必须根据国际和国内经济形势适时转变；顺应国际贸易制度发展需要，增强我国贸易政策的法律化；在致力于多边经济合作的同时，我国应加强区域和双边经济合作。