CONSUMERS PERCEPTIONS OF COMBINED “FAIR TRADE” AND “ORGANIC AGRICULTURE” LABELS ON FOOD PRODUCTS

Summary

Responsible, ethical, sustainable, citizen consumptions, those terms refer to new consumption behaviours more and more visible on supermarket shelves, society debates as well as in sociological and marketing research. This study is in the line with previous studies made on ethical consumption in the last ten years. We focused on the question “How do consumers perceive the combined ethical labels and particularly, the accumulation of « organic agriculture » and « fair trade » labels on the same product?” A qualitative survey, combining interviews and focus groups, showed the high diversity of representations and the interactions linked to those two concepts and their combinations for the consumers. If those two labels are used by food chain stakeholders as complementary, they have been differently perceived by consumers: more, some consumers perceived some contradictions between them. We can distinguish six different profiles of consumers on the basis of perceived specific interactions: from the total synergy to the contradiction between “organic agriculture “and “fair trade”.