Assessing Fairtrade Marketing Drivers and Market Prospects for Commodity Producers in Developing Countries

Fairtrade has received considerable research attention but little is known about marketing factors driving sales and its potential implications for sustained market access for commodity producers. To provide objective insights the paper draws on the analysis of supermarket data to establish the relationships between sales and marketing factors such as price, distribution and promotion. The paper demonstrates that increasing fairtrade retail sales growth is attributable to widened distribution and prevalent price increases. Thus, fairtrade commodity producers may not be guaranteed a ready market access in the UK in the medium to long term if the mainstreaming strategy is not reconsidered