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.

KEYWORDS:

• Fairtrade
• ethical marketing
• branding
• tourism
• grassroots

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ken Peattie

Ken Peattie is Professor of Marketing & Strategy and Head of the Marketing & Strategy Section at Cardiff Business School. His research interests are in sustainability marketing, social marketing, social enterprise and CSR. He has published three books, numerous book chapters and over 60 refereed articles on these topics in journals including Journal of World Business, California Management Review, Journal of Marketing Management, Journal of Business Research, Public Policy and Marketing, and European Journal of Marketing. His book, ‘Sustainability Marketing: A Global Perspective’, co-authored with Prof. Frank-Martin Belz, was 2010 Business Book of the Year for the German Business Research Association.

Anthony Samuel

Dr Anthony Samuel is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing and Strategy at Cardiff  Business School. His qualitative research in marketing systems and dynamics encompasses cross-disciplinary perspectives in the role of place in marketing and sustainable/ethical consumption. Anthony is a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Macromarketing and his work has been published in the European Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Business Ethics, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, the Journal of Macromarketing and Tourism Management.