Consumer activism


Consumer activism is a process by which activists seek to influence the way in which goods or services are produced or delivered. Kozinets and Handelman define it as any social movement that uses society's drive for consumption to the detriment of business interests. For Eleftheria Lekakis, author of Consumer Activism: Promotional Culture and Resistance, it includes a variety of consumer practices that range from boycotting and ‘buycotting’ to alternative economic practices, lobbying businesses or governments, practising minimal or mindful consumption, or addressing the complicity of advertising in climate change. Consumer activism includes both activism on behalf of consumers for consumer protection and activism by consumers themselves. Consumerism is made up of the behaviors, institutions, and ideologies created from the interaction between people and the materials and services they consume. Consumer activism has several aims:
  • Change the social structure of consumption
  • Protect the social welfare of stakeholders
  • Satisfy perceived slights to the ego
  • Seek justice for the consumer and environment in the relationships of consumerism

    History

Historian Lawrence B. Glickman identifies the free produce movement of the late 1700s as the beginning of consumer activism in the United States. Like members of the British abolitionist movement, free produce activists were consumers themselves, and under the idea that consumers share in the responsibility for the consequences of their purchases, boycotted goods produced with slave labor in an attempt to end slavery. Other early consumer activism included the creation of consumer cooperatives in Northwestern England in 1844 as a measure against local monopolies and high commodity prices.
Activism on behalf of the consumer began around the 20th Century in the United States, in what scholars Tim Lang and Yiannis Gabriel term the "value-for-consumer" wave, and which sociologist Hayagreeva Rao calls the antiadulteration movement. At this time consumer organizations emerged in the United States, starting with a Consumers League in New York in 1891 which merged with other regional branches to form the National Consumers League in 1898. One of the first consumer protection laws in the United States and worldwide, the Pure Food and Drug Act, was passed in 1906 during the first wave of the U.S. consumer movement. More legislation around the world followed. During this time consumer-led activism like boycotts continued, largely in response to domestic and international socio-political concerns.
The publication of Unsafe at Any Speed by Ralph Nader in 1965 gave rise to a new type of legal-focused, anti-corporate activism. Whereas past activism had focused on the consequences of consumer actions and the protection of consumers, Lang and Gabriel argue the activism inspired by Ralph Nader and others is more confrontational toward the market. By the 1980s and 1990s, consumer activists increasingly turned to labels and certification schemes as tools to promote ethical consumerism. These market-based campaigns reframed private purchasing decisions as a form of political and ethical activism. From the 1990s and into the 21st century, consumer activism has been closely associated with sharp critiques of globalization and the damaging effects of concentrated corporate power.

Objectives and tactics

Consumer activism seeks to change how goods or services are produced in order to make the production process safer, more ethical, more environmentally friendly, and to make the products themselves safer and of better quality, or more available to consumers. Consumer activism challenges corporate practices in order to effect a change in production, or attempts to modify the behavior of consumers themselves. More recently, the politics of race and gender have taken centre-stage in consumer activism campaigns.
Scholars Robert V. Kozinets and Jay M. Handelman find that consumer activism needs three factors: "a goal, a self-representation, and an adversary." In this model, the goal is the change consumer activists wish to effect in the way goods or services are produced or in the way consumers approach consumption. Consumer activists may frame the purchase of a good or service as a moral choice, with the consumer partly responsible for aspects of the production. In this way, consumer activists attempt to influence the behavior of consumers by getting them to consider their consumption choices in an ethical light, and portray consumer activism as a movement among consumers, themselves included, for a common good. Consumer activists may also be part of various consumer organizations or portray themselves as members of a larger consumer movement.
The targets of consumer activism are often corporations that support causes or practices consumer activists find unethical. Corporations face consumer activism because of the way they do business or because of organizations they choose to support, financially or otherwise. Consumer activism may also target the state to encourage it to implement some form of regulation for consumer protection.
Consumer activist tactics can include boycotts, petitioning the government, media activism, and organizing interest groups. Boycotts are especially prevalent among consumer activists within environmental and animal rights activist groups. According to research from Eastern Michigan University, boycotts that are media-orientated rather than marketplace-orientated are preferred. A media-oriented boycott does not target actual consumption, by demonstrating in front of a storefront for example, but instead demonstrations are oriented to getting media attention, for example by demonstrating in front of the rival headquarters. Consumer boycotts damage a brand's reputation and can result in short term dips in a company's stock prices. While these dips may be forgettable in terms of the company's overall revenue, especially when the company may be among the top global brands, these boycotts can quickly gain attention and cause fast mobilization due to the rapid pace of information spreading across the internet and even be successful in causing policy change or restructuring of leadership if the boycott represents a major societal issue or movement instead of an isolated, independent effort. Daniel Diermeier, writing in the Harvard Review, argues that boycotts are most effective when the issue the boycott is targeting is simple and easy to understand, with low cost of mobilization and many alternatives for consumers to turn toward. Boycotts are occasionally criticized for being ineffective but the media appeal and a few big successes from groups like PETA have sustained their popularity. Consumer boycotts have also been an effective strategy for African Americans to gain equality in employment, access to public spaces such as shopping centers, or other various political objectives. As mentioned above the use of storefront sidewalks and window displays as a means for consumer activism can also be noted. Suffragists in San Francisco used these public spaces to access the vast network of consumers shopping in the downtown boutiques in order to “sell” suffrage to both the men and women of California. Using the displays and advertising techniques employed by retailers, the women of San Francisco were able to successfully use consumer spaces to campaign for their suffrage.
The Internet plays a major role in modern consumer activism, allowing widespread consumer interest groups to support each other in their efforts to resist globalized consumption patterns. This is especially true as anti-brand and anti-corporation groups seek to create a coordinated opposition as multinational and interregional as the opposed business. Often these communities centrally accumulate and share resources and information. In these and other strategies, consumer activists seek to increase the exposure of their cause and to gain political support. The speed, convenience, and propensity for coalition-building make the internet an ideal place for consumers to run their activism. The Internet allows for more mobilization by supporters, both inside and outside the group, to protest and get their message heard. At the same time, the internet and various platforms are part of a digital economy that favours and promote consumerism], which is contrary to classic aims of consumer activism.
Activist boycotts function under the model that a consumer's money serves as a vote of support for the business from which they bought something, a model which adds social responsibility for the consumer, as they must be knowledgeable about a company's and its competition's policies and stances in order to make the most informed decisions each time they make a purchase. The boycott tactic is not more often utilized by or slanted toward any specific political party in the United States as there are many boycott efforts that champion both conservative and liberal stances.

Movements

African American Consumer Activism in the 1930s

African American grassroots consumer activism in the 1930s focused primarily on securing their rights as consumers rather than with issues of consumer protection. Historically, African Americans have been excluded from opportunities to work white-collar jobs, instead finding themselves both sustained and exploited in domestic service and farming roles. Kelly Miller, a Howard University sociologist, referred to African Americans as “the surplus man, the last to be hired and the first to be hired”. The Great Depression exacerbated these economic vulnerabilities, and by 1933 nearly two million African Americans were out of work nationwide. In response, African American consumers put economic pressure on local white owned businesses by choosing to shop at African American owned businesses, thus using familiar boycott tactics on a mass scale across major northern cities. The “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” campaign turned the racial segregation of urban communities into an opportunity to economically support African American capitalists while simultaneously protesting the continued exploitation of African American labor by white employers. The campaign was considered successful in ushering an increase of African American employment rates, opportunities for advancement and promotion, and a strengthening of purchasing power. The movement also provided a basic template for direct-action Civil Rights activists to use in the 1960s, such as the Montgomery Bus Boycotts or lunch counter sit-ins.