Greetings:
I am working on the design and animation a fair trade campaign (one of the elements of fair trade being to promote sustainable environmental practices) in Winnipeg, a city of 600,000 on the Canadian prairies. As currently envisioned, the campaign will initially focus on work with three leadership sectors (labour, faith communities, and university/college students) and then broaden out to the general public. The campaign will also include supply-side work and policy work, the latter focused on the procurement policies of public sector and large institutional players. As with other environmental products, there is a gaping disconnect between survey results on consumer willingness to buy fair trade products and actual purchase patterns. For example, a recent Washington state survey reported that 77% of respondents said that they are likely to switch to fair trade coffee if its cost and quality are the same as coffee of comparable grade and origin, with 69% saying that they would likely switch even if fair trade coffee costs a little more. It is estimated, however, that fair trade coffee has an average market share of 1.7%. I am very interested in securing: *formative research on consumer attitudes on and the perceived barriers to the purchase of fair trade or analogous goods; *information / advice on models / approaches not rely in economic incentives to support the increased purchase of fair trade products; and *reviews of the efficacy of different social marketing strategies to support the increased purchase of fair trade products. Any help you can provide in these areas would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Patrick Falconer
The Project Group
814 Dorchester Avenue
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Phone: (204) 475-7627
Email: [email protected]
Fair Trade Campaign Design
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Hello Patrick:
A few suggestions for information sources...
1) Transfair - Canadian independent licensing organization for fair-trade products. http://www.transfair.ca/
2) Bridgehead - very successful Ottawa Fair Trade coffee chain (Tracey Clark is the principal founder and owner). A news story link can be accessed at: http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/07/04/Consumers/Bridgehead_030704 (Bridgehead won the fight against Starbucks referred to in this story)
3) La Siembra cooperative - another very successful Ottawa Fair Trade products company. Their Coco Camino fair trade, organic chocolate bars are now distributed throughout the country, including in main-stream Loblaws grocery stores. http://www.lasiembra.com/
4) Peridar - An on-line Fair Trade products site. The owner is Nicole McGrath and she is a local here in Ottawa. http://www.peridar.ca/StoreFront.bok
5) Ten Thousand Villages - another example of a successful Fair Trade artisan store. Hope this helps. If you would like further info, please let me know, as I know some of the people involved in the references listed above.
Laureen Chung, P.Eng.
Consultant Marbek Resource Consultants Ltd.
Suite 300 - 222 Somerset Street West
Ottawa, ON. K2P 2G3
Tel. 613-523-0784
Fax. 613-523-0717
Email. [email protected]
Web site: www.marbek.ca
Patrick
Oxfam International is running a significant campaign on Fair Trade. Oxfam in Australia have used a multi faceted strategy to support this initiative. Have a look at http://www.oxfam.org.au/campaigns/ A major focus of the campaign in Australia has been Fair Trade Coffee which has been very successful at highlighting the issues and changing behaviour both at the personal, retail and wholesale level. It has worked as it taps into three key areas of human information behaviour ie. sense-making, appending knowledge, and the small world of the everyday. Broadly it has worked in the following ways: Sense-making Australians are very conscious of agricultural free trade issues as we have to compete on a very unlevel playing field of the highly subsidised markets in USA and Europe so the issue of fair trade makes sense; Appending knowledge because of the high profile that trade attracts in our media most people know something about it so they can append the campaign to their current knowledge base; The small world of the everyday most people share most knowledge in the small world of the everyday and this is where most learning takes place hence the caf culture of friends and the neighbourhood is ideal venue for knowledge sharing and behaviour change. In your city I suggest you find an issue which makes sense to people which they can append to their current knowledge of the issue and share in the small world of the everyday. If you find something like that you can use that as a platform to raise fair trade issues across a broader range of sectors and products later. Good luck.
Kind regards
Peta Wellstead
Freelance Information Services
PO Box 368 GUILDFORD WESTERN AUSTRALIA 6935
Ph +61 8 9379 8562
Fax +61 8 6278 2704
[email protected]