Marketing by Controlling Social Discourse: The Fairtrade Case

Peter Griffiths

Economic Affairs, 2015, vol. 35, issue 2, 256-271

Abstract: A non-conventional marketing strategy is used by the owners of a not-for-profit code of practice, Fairtrade. People buy Fairtrade-branded goods because of the social discourse around it – what friends, newspapers, teachers and others tell them about what it guarantees, what it achieves and what is its social acceptability – rather than because of the advertising. The social discourse is favourable to Fairtrade but bears little relation to observable fact. Methods used by the brand owners and others to control and manipulate the social discourse are identified.

Date: 2015
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