Valéry Bezençon

The Fair Trade Journey: Conciliating Romance and Strategy Valéry Bezençon

Fair Trade has been developping from an alternative movement into a complex system dealing with a large variety of stakeholders such as transnational corporations, small-scale producers and activists. Within this context, the author first discusses a potential social rationality behind the behavior of economic agents. Why are Fair Trade and other social movements rising, whereas consumers and firms are usually considered as governed by rationality and profit maximisation? Then, the relations between the stakeholders of the Fair Trade system are presented and explained. From a managerial perspective, the author also analyses the strategies and interests of Fair Trade distributors in order to derive a typology. Finally, Fair Trade consumers are analysed in order to provide tools to improve segmentation and targetting, eventually increasing Fair Trade competitiveness over conventional products. Thus, this book builds on strategy, marketing and consumer theory to provide an integrated and pragmatic perspective on Fair Trade.