The Semantic Ambiguities of Fair Trade: A Micro-mythanalysis of the Imaginaries of Consumption

Philippe Robert-Demontrond & Nil Özçağlar-Toulouse. Paper published in Recherche et Applications en Marketing, vol. 26, n° 4/2011.

illustration-fairtradeOver and beyond questions of familiarity with the offering, purchase intention and willingness to pay, fair trade actors are currently questioning  the motivations of consumers and the cognitive representations that they develop. Pursuing the same track as the initial academic investigations into this problematic, this study examines the semantic content of the signifier “fair trade” by clarifying the various semio-narrative programs associated with it. An original method of inquiry, the micro-mythanalysis of discourse, is proposed and the findings, drawn from ten types of narrative, are discussed.

Full paper available on: http://rme.sagepub.com/content/26/4/53.short