Ethics In Marketing : Sea Change On Potemkin Village 9781845447885, 9781845447878

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16/09/2005

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ISBN 1-84544-787-5

ISSN 1352-2752

Volume 8 Number 4 2005

Qualitative Market Research An International Journal

Ethics in marketing: sea change or Potemkin village? Guest Editors: Charles Dennis and Lisa Harris

www.emeraldinsight.com

Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal

ISSN 1352-2752 Volume 8 Number 4 2005

Ethics in marketing: sea change or Potemkin village? Guest Editors Charles Dennis and Lisa Harris

Access this journal online _________________________

351

Editorial advisory and review board _______________

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Guest editorial ___________________________________

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Green marketing: legend, myth, farce or prophesy? Ken Peattie and Andrew Crane ___________________________________

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Advertising and children: what do the kids think? Terry O’Sullivan _______________________________________________

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Jigsaw puzzles: fitting together the moral pieces Stephen P. Hogan ______________________________________________

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Ethical and social responsibility issues in grocery shopping: a preliminary typology Juliet Memery, Phil Megicks and Jasmine Williams ___________________

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Defying marketing sovereignty: voluntary simplicity at new consumption communities Caroline Bekin, Marylyn Carrigan and Isabelle Szmigin________________

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CONTENTS

CONTENTS

Ethical perspectives on the erotic in retailing Tony Kent ____________________________________________________

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continued

Wine marketing: modelling the ethics of the wine industry using qualitative data Oliver Richardson ______________________________________________

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Customer relationships in the e-economy: mutual friends or just a veneering? Angela Ayios and Lisa Harris ____________________________________

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EDITORIAL ADVISORY AND REVIEW BOARD

Professor Russell Abratt Nova Southeastern University, USA

Professor Minoo Farhangmehr Universidade do Minho, Portugal

Professor Richard Bagozzi Rice University, USA

Professor Gordon R. Foxall University of Cardiff, Wales, UK

Professor Michael Baker Westburn Publishers Ltd, UK

Professor Audrey Gilmore University of Ulster at Jordanstown, N. Ireland, UK

Professor Sharon Beatty University of Alabama, USA

Ms Mary Goodyear International Market Research Consultant

Dr Alan Branthwaite CRAM International, UK

Professor Denise Jarratt Charles Sturt University, Australia

Professor David Carson University of Ulster at Jordanstown, Northern Ireland, UK

Dr Adam Lindgreen Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands

Dr Miriam Catterall The Queen’s University of Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK

Mr Rory Morgan Research International, UK

Professor Peter Chisnall Reviews Editor, IJMR, UK Mr Kenneth Clarke Market Research Consultant, UK Professor Leslie de Chernatony The Birmingham Business School, UK Dr Ko de Ruyter Maastricht University, The Netherlands Professor Richard Elliott University of Warwick, UK

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Professor Luiz Moutinho University of Glasgow Business School, UK Professor Clive Nancarrow University of the West of England (Bristol), UK Professor Nicholas O’Shaughnessy University of Keele, UK Professor Stanley Paliwoda University of Strathclyde, UK Professor Wolfgang Ulaga EDHEC Graduate School of Management, France

Guest editorial About the Guest Editors Dr Charles Dennis FCIM is a senior lecturer in marketing and retail management at Brunel University, London, UK. He has published widely on consumer behaviour and “why people shop where they do”. The textbook Marketing the E-business (Harris and Dennis, 2002) and research-based E-retailing (Dennis, Fenech and Merillees, 2004) were published by Routledge; and research monograph Objects of Desire: Consumer Behaviour in Shopping Centre Choice, (Dennis, 2005) by Palgrave. Dr Lisa Harris worked in retail banking for ten years and her PhD research examined the management of change in the banking industry in the early days of the Internet. She currently lectures at Brunel University and is running a research project reviewing emerging trends in multi-channel marketing. Lisa is a Trustee of the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s International Board and she also teaches marketing courses for the Student Support Group and Oxford College of Marketing.

Ethics in marketing: sea change or Potemkin village? While marketers might define marketing ethics as something like “moral principles governing right and wrong behaviour in marketing”, increasingly cynical consumers might well claim that the expression is actually an oxymoron. For example, as discussed by Rotfeld (2005) the marketing function can be heavily criticised for encouraging “conspicuous consumption” of unnecessary goods, bombarding customers with SPAM, disregarding customer privacy, wasteful packaging of goods, misleading pricing structures; the list of supposedly “unethical” marketing practices goes on and on. A number of excellent case studies can be found in Davidson (2003). With the rising brand profile of organisations such as Coop Bank or the Body Shop that have put ethics at the centre of their business operations, many businesses are “jumping on the ethical bandwagon” in their search for customer approval through similar differentiation. However, if the reality of their marketing operations does not live up to the ethical rhetoric that they preach, these businesses risk global exposure of their shortcomings on the Internet by disappointed customers or eager pressure groups (Golin, 2003). The very nature of ethical debate centres upon the “grey area” between the legal and the illegal. Recent legislation such as the Distance Selling Directive and updates to the Data Protection Act poses new marketing challenges across all industry sectors. But the law cannot keep up with rapid developments in technology. In the realm of the Internet for example, many of the ethical issues are still finding legal precedent and the law has yet to provide sufficient guidance on how business should behave. One hopeful trend for marketers is the evolution of new voluntary standards such as AA1000 (developed by the Institute for Social and Ethical Accountability), the Global Reporting Initiative (developed by a wide range of international organisations), and Project Sigma (a sustainability management standard under development by the British Standards Institution and Forum for the Future). This Special Issue of Qualitative Marketing Research: An International Journal provides insights from a range of perspectives as to how these pitfalls might be avoided and “ethical marketing” actually achieved in practice. It seeks to bring

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together the academic and business community in order to stimulate further debate and discussion of these contemporary issues and hence formulate a way forward for marketers. In particular it covers such diverse subjects as green marketing; advertising directed at children; the behaviour of “ethical consumers” in terms of their lifestyles and purchasing patterns; erotic retailing on the high street; wine marketing; and the role of new technology in empowering customer service employees. Each author has specifically considered the special theme of this issue, namely if the focus of their research has highlighted examples of truly “ethical” marketing, or if in fact the detailed analysis revealed just a Potemkin Village[1]. Most of the papers have been developed from those presented to the Ethical and Societal Issues in Marketing (Easi marketing) conference at Brunel University in May 2004. A further paper from this workshop on the subject of “de-shopping” (King and Dennis) will appear in the next edition of this journal. The contributions to this Special Issue can be briefly summarised as follows. Peattie and Crane review the history of “green” marketing since the early 1990s in order to understand how the marketing discipline can make a more positive contribution towards greater sustainability. Their findings indicate that much of what has been commonly referred to as “green” marketing is in fact a Potemkin Village, and not underpinned by a true environmental philosophy. This explains why the anticipated “green revolution” in marketing has yet to materialise in the form of radically different products and markets. O’Sullivan and Hogan both focus on marketing to children. O’Sullivan aims to enrich our understanding of debate and policy in this area by questioning the standard models of childhood implied within contemporary UK debate. His paper identifies a role for qualitative market research in establishing a more fully articulated account of childhood which extends beyond traditional assumptions based on positivist research. There are of course implications for marketers in gaining a better understanding of children’s experience of advertising, and Hogan notes how many commercial organisations find difficulty in creating the right fit between their moral and business responsibilities. Marketers often have to weigh up their moral responsibilities towards many different stakeholders, and this becomes more complex when young children are targeted by advertisers. Based on recent qualitative research carried out with the leading toy companies in the UK, the paper discusses the fit between what toy companies say and do in terms of marketing to children and assesses whether this behaviour represents a sea change or is just another example of a Potemkin Village. Memery, Megicks and Williams note that there has so far been limited investigation of the behaviour of consumers with regard to ethical business when making buying decisions. The paper reports the findings of a preliminary investigation into the influence of social responsibility on grocery shopping behaviour. It draws upon literature in the area of ethics, social responsibility, shopping and store image to determine factors that influence purchasing behaviour in this sector. An outline typology of key factors of concern to “socially responsible” consumers is developed. The findings suggest that three main areas of concern exist, relating to food quality and safety; human rights and ethical trading; and “green” issues, but this is perhaps a Potemkin Village. In fact shoppers make complex decisions about which shops to use and what products to buy based upon

a trade off between ethical factors and standard retail purchasing decisions such as location, price and merchandise range. Bekin, Carrigan and Szmigin consider another aspect of consumer behaviour in their participant observation study of “collective voluntarily simplified lifestyles” in the UK. Another Potemkin Village? The findings indicate that while some consumers found that voluntary simplicity re-instated their enjoyment of life, others found that certain goals remained unfulfilled and other unexpected issues arose, such as the challenges of mobility in the attainment of environmental goals. Although the communities studied here inhabited the extreme end of the voluntary simplicity spectrum, the authors demonstrate that their role in shaping the practices and attitudes of other consumers is clear. Kent considers the ethical implications of erotic retailing in the context of shops selling sexually arousing products to women. The paper has considerable originality in its field, assessing the moral implications of access to sexual imagery and products in the High Street and examining the boundaries of its acceptability in society. The findings demonstrate a typology of erotic retailing in terms of the inter-relatedness of commercial opportunity with social and cultural developments in the late twentieth century. A philosophical answer to the ethics of erotic retailing is proposed, and the practical implications concern future opportunities for a rapidly expanding field of commercial activity and a solution to the ethical problem of “selling sex”. Richardson similarly explores the marketing of product that carries inherent ethical issues – wine. Concerns arise at every stage: product, production and, of course, marketing. Using the Wine industry as a case study, the author posits a novel model as a framework: the “ethical cube”. Ayios and Harris investigate whether technological developments can be used in call centre environments to build lasting customer relationships beyond the usual focus on efficiency gains through automation which is the Potemkin Village of this field. The authors draw upon depth interviews to critically examine the ways in which caring attitudes and competent behaviour of call centre staff can contribute to building durable bases for customer trust. The findings demonstrate that a truly optimal application of technology can create a shared system whereby the knowledge of employees is applied in a positive way to build trusting relationships with customers. Multi-channel environments for customer interaction offer great potential for competitive advantage when the convenience of channel choice is creatively combined with competent and empathetic customer service. We hope that you will enjoy reading these papers and that the issues discussed will provoke further debate and investigation in this very topical business area. Charles Dennis and Lisa Harris Guest Editors

Note 1. “An impressive showy facade designed to mask undesirable facts” (www.wordsmith.org, 3/11/2003) [After Prince Potemkin, who erected cardboard villages to give an illusion of prosperity for impressing his lover Queen Catherine II on her visit to Ukraine and Crimea in 1787].

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References Davidson, K. (2003), The Moral Dimension of Marketing: Essays on Business Ethics, American Marketing Association, Chicago, IL. Golin, A. (2003), Trust or Consequences: Build Trust Today or Lose Your Market Tomorrow, Amacom, New York, NY. Rotfeld, H. (2005), “The cynical use of marketing to the unwitting consumer”, Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 22 No. 2.

The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/1352-2752.htm

Green marketing: legend, myth, farce or prophesy?

Green marketing

Ken Peattie Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK, and

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Andrew Crane University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK Abstract Purpose – To review the history of “green marketing” since the early 1990s and to provide a critique of both theory and practice in order to understand how the marketing discipline may yet contribute to progress towards greater sustainability. Design/methodology/approach – The paper examines elements of green marketing theory and practice over the past 15 years by employing the logic of the classic paper from 1985 “Has marketing failed, or was it never really tried” of seeking to identify “false marketings” that have hampered progress. Findings – That much of what has been commonly referred to as “green marketing” has been underpinned by neither a marketing, nor an environmental, philosophy. Five types of misconceived green marketing are identified and analysed: green spinning, green selling, green harvesting, enviropreneur marketing and compliance marketing. Practical implications – Provides an alternative viewpoint on a much researched, but still poorly understood area of marketing, and explains why the anticipated “green revolution” in marketing prefaced by market research findings, has not more radically changed products and markets in practice. Originality/value – Helps readers to understand why progress towards a more sustainable economy has proved so difficult, and outlines some of the more radical changes in thought and practice that marketing will need to adopt before it can make a substantive contribution towards greater sustainability. Keywords Green marketing, Sustainable development, Consumer behaviour Paper type Conceptual paper

Introduction What has happened to “green marketing[1]”? In these early years of the new millennium, it is now some 18 years on from the Brundtland Report and the “euphoric” discovery of the environment by marketing practitioners and academics. Over those years, we have seen much research, many product launches and campaigns, and many books, papers and conferences. Despite all this, green marketing gives the impression of having significantly underachieved. Even to the most casual observer, the 1990s largely disappointed in their billing as the decade that would precipitate a “green revolution” in marketing. That decade began with eminently hopeful forecasts about the emergence of a “green tide” (Vandermerwe and Oliff, 1990) of consumers and new products. Yet, this has clearly not materialised as expected. Instead, consumers have become disillusioned; many of the groundbreaking green products produced by specialist firms have left the market; the dramatic growth in green product introductions at the beginning of the 1990s has subsided; and companies have become

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cautious about launching environmentally-based communications campaigns for fear of being accused of “green washing”. This poses the question about what type of “story” the history of green marketing to date represents. Is it a tragic story of failure, or of a prophecy concerning the long-term future of marketing whose time has not yet come? Would it be better catalogued under “myths and legends”, or will it be best remembered for its elements of farce? In this conceptual paper, we seek to review and understand the green marketing story with reference to a landmark paper published 20 years ago in a leading UK academic marketing journal, the Journal of Marketing Management. Entitled, “Has marketing failed, or was it never really tried?” (King, 1985). This article was penned by a prominent marketing practitioner, King. Although not quite a horror story, King investigated the weak performance of marketing practice in the UK over the preceding 30 years. He placed the blame on four recipes for disaster or “false marketings” that companies had adopted. This paper follows King’s approach to try to explain the waxing and waning of green marketing during the 1980s and 1990s. It identifies five “false” approaches which have been labelled as “green marketing”, and appear to be typical of much industry practice, but which often have had little to do with either a marketing, or a green, philosophy. These, we argue, can help to explain the perceived failure of green marketing practice. In the final part of the paper, we conclude by offering a review of what has been learnt from the failure of these early manifestations of green marketing, and suggest how the theory and practice of green marketing might potentially be rewritten and advanced more successfully in future. The rise and stumble of green marketing? Despite some attention in the 1970s, it was really only in the late 1980s that the idea of green marketing emerged. Early academic treatments of green marketing spoke of the rapid increase in green consumerism at this time as heralding a dramatic and inevitable shift in consumption towards greener products (Prothero, 1990; Vandermerwe and Oliff, 1990). Like any (relatively) new marketing phenomena, it was soon the subject of a great deal of market research. Much survey evidence from reputable research bodies was cited as identifying heightened environmental awareness, a growing consumer interest in green products, and a pronounced willingness to pay for green features (Roper Organization, 1990; Mintel, 1991; Worcester, 1993). Practical evidence for this came in the form of the highly effective global consumer boycott of CFC-driven aerosols, and the international success of publications such as The Green Consumer Guide (Elkington and Hailes, 1988). There were two key responses to this: one was a burst of corporate activity in the area of green marketing; the other was an upsurge in green business research and writing amongst academics. Corporate interest in green marketing was indicated by early market research findings suggesting major changes and innovations. Vandermerwe and Oliff’s (1990) survey found that 92 per cent of European multinationals claimed to have changed their products in response to green concerns, and 85 per cent claimed to have changed their production systems. Green product introductions in the US more than doubled to 11.4 per cent of all new household products between 1989 and 1990, and continued to grow to 13.4 per cent in 1991 (Ottman, 1993). Similarly, the volume of green print ads grew by 430 per cent, and that of green TV ads by 367 per cent, between 1989 and

1990 (Ottman, 1993). Stories of companies such as the Body Shop, Ecover, Volvo, 3M, and even McDonalds became ever more cited in the green business literature to illustrate how and why green marketing initiatives could pay. Iyer and Banerjee (1993) responded to these developments by pronouncing that “green is in, no question about it” and throughout the 1990s writers continued to aver that the “green market appears to be real and growing” (Menon and Menon, 1997), and “expanding at a remarkable rate” (Schlegelmilch et al., 1996). Despite this optimistic picture, by the mid-1990s new market research evidence began to emerge which was less unequivocal about the growth of green consumerism. Mintel’s (1995) follow-up report on the environment recorded only a very slight increase in green consumers since 1990, and identified a significant gap between concern and actual purchasing – a picture replicated in subsequent management research (Wong et al., 1996; Peattie, 1999; Crane 2000). The frequency and prominence of green claims was also found to be in decline (National Consumer Council, 1996), and green products looked to have achieved only limited success (Wong et al., 1996). Specialist brands such as Ecover and Down to Earth failed to sustain the growth they enjoyed in the early 1990s, and the specialist green ranges of some major companies such as Lever Brothers and Sainsburys were discontinued. Although green product growth continued strongly in certain markets, such as food, tourism, and financial services, across the majority of markets there was no longer talk about the impressive growth in green product introductions. So, has green marketing failed to change how businesses behave and to move the economy towards sustainability? Some of the research evidence can be interpreted either way. Critics can point to a reduction in advertising claims as proof of its decline, while others might see this as an improvement on the late 1980s when a wave of often ill-judged advertising campaigns were mounted by companies in a way that drew widespread criticism. Similarly, a reduction in specialist products can be interpreted as a failure, or it can reflect the mainstream market improving its environmental performance to the point that reduces the demand for specialist green products. Perhaps the most damning market research evidence in the case for the decline of green marketing is the alarming cynicism being displayed by consumers about green products, green claims, and the companies behind them (Kangun et al., 1991; National Consumer Council, 1996). The marketing philosophy and process is built around the customer and the relationship between the company and the customer. If this is characterised by cynicism and distrust, then companies are unlikely to be able to bring customers along with them through the changes needed to move towards sustainability. Green marketing will not work in the face of consumer distrust, but then that distrust may be partly a product of the types of “green marketings” that companies have relied upon so far. Green marketing – guises and disguises For King (1985), failures in marketing in practice were often due to the existence of “false marketing”, the manifestations of which he categorised as “thrust marketing”, “marketing department marketing”, “accountant’s marketing” and “formula marketing”. What he meant by this was that much of what companies called “marketing” was not really marketing at all, in the sense of being underpinned by the principles and philosophy of marketing. It is interesting to look back at King’s

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categories because they exemplify several critical issues that have also dogged the development of green marketing which are as follows. Sales orientation King presented “thrust marketing” as a highly sales-based approach. In green marketing too, firms have frequently only used the environment as an additional promotional dimension without any attempt to analyse, or modify, the underlying product itself and its environmental impacts. Compartmentalism “Marketing department marketing” represented a lack of integration between marketing and other business functions. Equally, with green marketing, many firms have sought to address consumers’ needs, but their interest in the environment has been limited to the marketing department, or the production department, or some other individual function. This has prevented firms from developing a broad, holistic approach to green marketing. Finance orientation King’s notion of “accountant’s marketing” was characterised by a fascination with short-term profitability and limited concern for long-term brand building. With the environment too, many companies have been enthusiastic about green marketing when it has involved short-term cost savings (e.g. packaging reductions or energy savings), but lukewarm when it has come to investing money in order to develop more sustainable products and processes. Conservatism When King wrote about “formula marketing”, he meant that rather than embracing innovation and imagination, much marketing activity had emphasised control, risk aversion, and the use of tried-and-tested recipes for success. Clearly, much green marketing activity also has focused on avoiding any significant change, and focusing instead on marginal, incremental improvements to existing products and processes (for example through an emphasis on packaging reduction rather than on changing core products or production processes). Five routes to failure Reviewing King’s analysis, it seems clear that many of the problems that have hampered the development of effective mainstream marketing in the past have returned to hamper the development of green marketing as well. These problems have contributed to the emergence of five failed manifestations of green marketing. These are: green spinning, green selling, green harvesting, enviropreneur marketing, and compliance marketing. Green spinning Many of the firms that have most publicised their green stance have been those that have been in the frontline as targets for criticism, such as those in “dirty” industries such as oil, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and automotives. In response, they frequently went on a PR offensive, using glossy brochures, lobbying, and countless press releases

in order to persuade the sceptical public of their environmental credentials. Menon and Menon (1997) characterise the early response to environmental concern of many companies as typified by the establishment of specialist environmental functions, and in marketing terms, “public relations and publicity (begins) to play a bigger role in a firm’s marketing communications strategy to allay public concerns to mollify and, if possible, co-opt interest groups and regulatory agencies”. This reactive approach, focused on reputation management and risk management, suggests a compartmentalisation of green marketing within the PR function, a place where there is little opportunity to affect product, production or policy decisions. Nor is there much scope for developing a customer focus when so much effort is expended on putting forward the position of the company or industry. We can also identify in the green spinners a significant degree of conservatism. Their failure to actually go out and engage, debate with, and listen to various stakeholder groups suggests a rigid adherence to common practices and established mindsets. By seeking to deny or discredit dissenting voices, they made the classic marketing error of looking inward when many of the answers they sought were to be found by looking outside of the organization. Public relations is but one aspect of marketing, and companies basing their approach on this one element have clearly not embraced the philosophy of green marketing to any significant extent. Green spinning was always going to fail because unless they are involved and consulted, contemporary consumers and pressure groups are unlikely to be fully convinced by the protestations of commercial enterprises. Green selling The growth in market research identifying consumer concern about the environment during the 1990s meant that it was taken for granted in many quarters that “green would sell” and many firms responded by rapidly adjusting their promotional campaigns. This led to what we refer to as a “green selling” approach, namely a post-hoc identification of environmental features in existing products, thus prompting a (usually short-term) hop onto the green bandwagon. This reflected a typical sales orientation, since interest in the environment tended to be limited to promotional activity, with little or no input into product development. The same products continued to be produced, but green themes were added to promotional campaigns in order to take advantage of any environmental concerns of consumers. However, there was little market research by firms to track customers’ actual needs and responses. Even when these were investigated, the response was often focused on identifying the environmental benefits of existing products, rather than seeking alternatives to those products. This was obviously a very opportunistic response to environmental concerns. Marketing managers could scrutinise their products and production processes searching for an indication that their product was high in something environmentally good, and if not, at least low in something environmentally bad. It was this kind of mindset that led to the concern amongst regulators and consumer groups over the green claims that emerged in the early 1990s. Facile, meaningless, and unproven green claims were slapped on unchanged products in failed attempts to boost sales, leading to mounting consumer cynicism and suspicion, and concerns about a potential consumer backlash. It is therefore not surprising that green products have often underperformed significantly. Some firms identifying these trends have realised that their (and their suppliers’) claims lacked independent authentication, and have since

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attempted to develop certification programmes in order to regain customer confidence. However, problems remain. There are now a host of different logos allegedly certifying various environmental benefits, and consumers are understandably confused. Even in Denmark, a country with a population of highly concerned consumers, only 16 per cent could recognise the EU “flower” as an eco-label (DEPA, 2001). Mistrust of green claims also still endures to the extent that many firms will now choose not to make any green claims at all for risk of alienating customers. Failure to turn a selling orientation into a marketing one has therefore meant that green is now often seen as a fruitless marketing strategy amongst many major businesses, regardless of the environmental qualities of their products. Green harvesting Not all firms have tried to use environmental claims to boost sales, and in fact, many now are consciously choosing not too. However, short-term profit has remained the key objective of many firms and marketing managers. Not surprisingly then, when it started to become apparent that greening could create cost savings, many marketers became enthusiastic about the environment. Economies in terms of energy and material input efficiencies, packaging reductions, and logistics rationalisation provided strong incentives for firms to develop their environmental programmes. However, although this may have meant that products were now costing less to produce, these savings did not tend to filter through to customers in terms of cheaper, greener products. Indeed, on the contrary, green products have almost always been priced at a premium over conventional offerings. Sometimes this reflects the realities of the production costs involved, because of the internalising of traditionally external socio-environmental costs associated with a product. In other cases, it relates less to the costs involved, and more to pricing strategies that seek to establish green products as premium products serving niche markets. Overall, the tendency of green products to be perceived as expensive has severely hampered their market penetration. Having plucked the “low hanging fruits” of greening, many firms found themselves in a position where, if they were to move any further towards sustainability, they had to embrace more radical change and invest more management time and money to achieve it (Shelton, 1994). However, in green harvesting firms, we can usually recognise deep cultural fixations on cost reduction, short-term profitability, and shareholder value. In this, they tend to exemplify a typical conservative, finance orientation. There is, therefore, a profound reluctance in such companies to make strategic investments in green marketing initiatives, particularly when the market research data is equivocal. Hence, what happens is that greening starts to look less and less of an attractive option, the whole agenda loses momentum, and this particular guise of green marketing ultimately fails in the medium to long-term. Enviropreneur marketing Another failed approach to green marketing has been enviropreneur marketing, whereby a committed individual, section, or company seeks to bring innovative green products to market (Menon and Menon, 1997). Here we have seen the emergence of new green brands in a wide range of markets such as cleaning products, paper goods, cosmetics, and food. There are two types of enviropreneur marketing. Boutique enviropreneur marketing has involved the marketing of innovative green products by

small start-up firms that only produce ostensibly green products, such as Ark, Ecover, Tom’s of Maine and the Body Shop, which began to rise to prominence during the 1980s and 1990s. Corporate enviropreneur marketing by contrast occurred within large organizations that produce many non-green products as well as green brands. Hence, in the early 1990s, major mainstream firms such as Lever Brothers, Boots and Sainsburys supplemented their existing ranges with green brands. The fate of enviropreneur marketing is particularly instructive. The growth of many boutique firms stalled, and a large proportion of the corporate brands have been deleted and/or absorbed into conventional ranges. What transpired was that in their rush to bring greener offerings to market, and in their belief in the inherent worthiness of such products, the enviropreneurs appear to have made one fatal error they forgot for a time a key constituency – the consumer. Now of course, there were countless market research studies saying that consumers were ready, willing, and able to buy green alternatives. So, in that sense the enviropreneurs were just making a rational response to this evidence. But this misses the point in three important ways. First, much of the market research was poorly conceived and based on hypothetical situations, with too much scope for respondents to give unrealistic, socially desirable answers. Second, much of the research focussed on general environmental concern, while in practice it is concern about specific environmental issues that will drive the markets for specific green products. Third, few companies carried out the extensive product-specific market research necessary to ensure their products’ success. Knowing that consumers want greener products is not the same as knowing exactly which products consumers are going to want, what kind of price-performance trade-offs they may be willing to accept, and what marketing approach they will find respond to. Many of the enviropreneur firms were actually working from a production orientation. All their efforts were focused on producing the most environmentally benign products, rather than the products that consumers actually wanted. Thus, they ended up producing products that were perceived as either under-performing, over-priced, or just too worthy and “unsexy”. The average consumer would not understand that the reason their green detergents did not get their clothes “whiter than white” was that they lacked the optical brightener additives which conventional detergents deposit on clothes (which hardly qualifies as “cleaning” them). Similarly, they would not understand that green washing-up liquids would not produce a big fluffy bowl of soap bubbles because they lacked polluting, cosmetic sudsers. So, the enviropreneur marketers may have meant well, but whilst they had the right environmental goals, they were always destined to have problems establishing a significant market presence in the long-term because they failed to successfully research, understand or educate their customers. Compliance marketing Our final green marketing disguise is compliance marketing. This category includes those firms whose environmental initiatives do not go beyond responding to regulation (both planned and expected). Many such firms have seen simple compliance with environmental legislation as an opportunity to promote their green credentials. Hence we have had the rather curious spectacle of firms promoting the absence of banned CFCs as a customer benefit, or a US firm nominating itself for an environmental excellence award on the sole basis of complying with all relevant environmental laws.

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Clearly, compliance marketing is green marketing in a very conservative guise – the firm seeks to travel the path of least change and will only go beyond compliance when there is a very real expectation of imminent legislation. Some compliance marketers have however developed a more progressive approach, albeit reluctantly and not without a certain guile. A number of firms have adopted a “two-handed” approach where they simultaneously respond proactively to the pressures for change, and also reactively shore up their barricades against any further legislation. For example, some automotive firms have divided their efforts between clean car design (e.g. design for recycling or alternatively fuelled engines) and lobbying regulators in order to avert stricter greenhouse gas measures. Unfortunately for the two-handers though, pressure groups and the media have been quick to portray such strategies as hypocritical. In fact, there has probably been more attention focused on hypocrisy in green marketing than there has on any simple failure to comply with existing legislation. Whichever approach the compliance marketers have taken though, they have never had much hope of appealing to the environmental concerns of increasingly savvy customers, or of making any significant advances towards sustainability. Any progress will only come after a period of denial and counter-argument, and after they have been forced into change through legislation. The free market will thus never be able to turn our compliance marketers into genuine green marketers. Of course, this raises the question of what exactly genuine green marketing is. If this paper is premised on the idea that the five categories discussed here are false green marketings, then on what basis are we saying that something is neither “green” nor “marketing”? File under fiction – why most of the 1990s green marketing was not really “green” or “marketing”? The proponents of any management philosophy that runs into difficulties are prone to claiming “Ah, the problem is that people aren’t implementing it properly!” Clearly, this is a rather weak defence. Our critique of “green marketing” practice is not intended to be a rerun of this kind of defence, but an attempt to highlight how little of this activity has had to do with either marketing or the environment. Baker’s (1999) analysis of King’s “failed marketings” suggested four essential features of “real” marketing, which, perhaps except for the first, assume even greater importance in a green marketing context. It starts with the customer It is not easy to find evidence of companies whose green marketing strategies began with comprehensive market research into customers’ wants, needs, attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge. Indeed, some of the most successful green brands such as Body Shop and Ecover clearly did not start with the customer in the traditional marketing sense, in that they represented the vision of an entrepreneur rather than a reflection of the market. One interesting challenge in the green marketing agenda is to start with the customer, but then to think more broadly in terms of researching the needs of the company’s other stakeholders and considering future generations of customers as well. It has a long-run perspective The pursuit of sustainability needs to go beyond long-term to become open-ended. However, many green marketing initiatives have clearly been rather shortsighted, such

as the promotion of recyclable containers in areas that lack recycling facilities. Elkington et al. (1991) noted that many green technologies remain uncommercialised simply because their payback period is often longer than that of conventional alternatives. It is in this area that sustainability represents a major challenge to marketers. After decades in which the emphasis was on immediate benefits for the individual consumer, it is difficult to now balance this with an emphasis on delivering benefits to others in the future (including future generations of consumers). It involves full use of all the company’s resources Green marketing needs to be reflected throughout the company so that the actions or policies of any part of the company or its supply chain do not compromise the eco-performance of products. Such a holistic approach is fundamental to the greening of marketing (Peattie, 1995) but it has proved difficult to achieve in practice. Shelton’s (1994) research into major green pioneers revealed them running into problems because environmental concerns did not mesh well with traditional corporate cultures, and senior management lost interest in environmental initiatives once the “low hanging fruit” had been picked. It is innovative Regardless of the possible benefits of a radical “clean slate” approach, companies have still preferred an evolutionary approach to greening involving familiar “end-of-pipe” technologies. Innovation is being seen very narrowly in terms of product and production system technology. However, customer wants and needs can often be effectively met in ways that create environmental improvements by innovations in market structures and supporting services. This can allow needs to be met through renting rather than owning products, improving product longevity through service and maintenance, or reducing environmental impact through better product disposal. A mystery: why has progress been so difficult? Ten years ago, there seemed little to stop the progress of green marketing. Market research showed that consumers were expressing environmental concern, and wanted to purchase greener products from greener companies, even at a small financial premium. The emergence of the “win-win” philosophy articulated by the likes of Porter and Van Der Linde (1995) and Elkington (1994) gave companies good reason to move beyond their traditionally reactive and compliance-orientated approach to the environment. There was also an emerging literature that aimed to help companies to make their products and operations greener, and to capitalise on those changes through marketing. It is therefore something of a puzzle as to why the products and companies within the world’s economies today do not look more radically different to those that made up the economies of 1987, whose unsustainable nature was the focus of the Brundtland Report. This is not to say that all green marketing efforts have failed, or that there have been no examples of innovation, improvement, or radical change. There is a great deal of good practice in many markets that can be identified. However, it is difficult not to conclude that these represent exceptions rather than the majority. Although some green brands were significantly more sustainable than conventional offerings, the degree to which they made substantive progress towards sustainability is very

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doubtful. In one way, they may have acted as a “pressure valve” allowing concerned consumers to moderately change their consumption behaviour in a way that made them feel as though they were “doing their bit”. This reflects the concerns of Smith (1998), that green marketing has acted as a bridge between the gap that has emerged between people’s environmental concern and their desire to maintain the western consumer lifestyle. What we need is green marketing to act as a bridge between that current lifestyle and the marketing which both serves and drives it, and a future of sustainable marketing based around more sustainable production and consumption. After the first wave of green marketing activity, marketing scholars during the latter half of the 1990s began to move beyond the original green marketing agenda and its focus on the pursuit of environmentally-based competitive advantage. Ideas about what might constitute sustainable (or at least more sustainable) marketing began to emerge (Peattie, 1995; Van Dam and Apeldoorn, 1996). This indicates that more substantive progress will require a number of elements of marketing thought and practice to be reshaped, including: . A redefinition of the “product” – to encompass the means of production and the broader activities of the producer. Consumers who buy organic food or fair trade products are basing their decisions on issues beyond the tangible product. A greater focus on how the product is made will be required to promote more sustainable production and consumption. . A willingness to change markets – as well as changing products. A more sustainable economy will require more than new product development; it will require new types of market in which material flows become more circular through product take-back and recycling; where services are increasingly substituted for goods; and “alternative” forms of production and consumption (such as farmers’ markets) are created or rediscovered. . An emphasis on benefits from product use – rather than on the joys of product ownership. In many markets, more opportunities to use hired or community owned products would allow significant dematerialisation within the economy while still delivering the same level of consumer benefits. . Marketing communication that aims to inform rather than just impress – because communicating about environmental issues is difficult for marketers and involves complex issues without simple solutions, and messages which are difficult to reduce down to fit onto a label, or into a 30 second TV commercial (Prothero et al., 1997). However, given the lack of environmental literacy amongst consumers, progress will be difficult unless formal sustainable development education in schools is reinforced in the rest of society and life. . A focus beyond current consumer needs – which encompasses current and future stakeholder needs. Marketers can see a single-minded focus on the customer as a virtue but production and consumption decisions have significant impacts on non-consumers. . A willingness to manage demand and expectation – downwards! More sustainable consumption will only be achieved in many markets if demand and expectations about cost, availability, and convenience are managed downwards. This will be an unwelcome thought for many marketers, but

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realistic expectations about the nature, total costs, and consequences of consumption and production need to be instigated. An emphasis on cost instead of price – many key products such as cars, houses, and computers continue to be marketed through competition based around price, not competition in terms of overall costs of ownership and use. An emphasis on issues like energy efficiency within the context of total costs would mean that our homes and highways would probably look very different to the way they do now. Taking more responsibility – companies often shelter behind the idea that they are essentially the passive servant of consumers and their desires, but this prevents them from adopting greater social responsibility. Given the persistently low levels of environmental literacy amongst consumers, it is unrealistic and irresponsible of marketers to entirely devolve responsibility to them. More sustainable marketing will require a greater willingness among marketers to also consider consumer and societal welfare, and to take some responsibility for guiding their consumers towards more sustainable behaviour.

This agenda for change is a radical and challenging one for marketing in terms of thought, practice and market research. However, without addressing these issues, marketing will continue to act as an obstacle to progress towards sustainability. Such progress will depend on the combined efforts of marketing practitioners, researchers, scholars, and public policy makers. It will also depend on convincing consumers that the changes required are necessary and worthwhile, and that the benefits and motivations involved are genuine (Peattie, 1999). Conclusions How does this discussion help us to understand the story of the evolution of green marketing? It certainly highlights elements of tragedy in how the opportunities to make substantive progress towards sustainability have been squandered because of the inappropriate focus of much “green marketing” activity. Firms’ orientations have centred on production, selling, costs, legislation and PR, whereas the customer has frequently been of marginal interest. Moreover, firms have compartmentalised green marketing rather than developing a holistic perspective that embraces all aspects of the company, the product, and the means of production, consumption, and disposal. Without changes, cynicism and accusations of hypocrisy will continue unabated. Green marketing has also developed its own mythology, and within companies, legends abound about the difficulties posed by customers, colleagues, and corporate cultures when trying to develop greener strategies. The practical implementation of green marketing has often worked on the assumption that since greening was what customers wanted (or at least professed to want), marketers would follow their lead, and that the rest of the organisation would be happy to support them. This would work in a world of entirely marketing orientated firms, but neglects the internal environment. Internal resistance has often been widespread, and authors such as Walley and Whitehead (1994) and Shelton (1994) have shown that green strategies can become progressively more unpalatable for all but the most environmentally committed companies.

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The need to address sustainability is a serious issue, but there have also been moments of farce, particularly in terms of some of the early green marketing claims. Moreover, there has been an ironic element to much of the discussion about green marketing to date because, from a theoretical point of view, green marketing has been severely restricted by its emphasis on the purchasing component of the consumption process. Environmental amelioration has been largely portrayed as a question of consumers expressing their concerns by purchasing new greener products. The paradoxical proposition is that the way through the environmental crisis created by excessive and unsustainable consumption, is yet more consumption. In contrast, sustainable marketing also has to address non-purchase behaviour such as product use, sharing, maintenance, disposal, and take-back. Another view of the story of green marketing is that we are witnessing the early stage of an epic tale of great length. For such stories, readers need to exhibit patience and commitment to achieve the full rewards. So, it is likely to be with green marketing. However, at the moment such patience and commitment is often lacking. The tendency of commentators to over-simplify and oversell the “win-win” opportunities linked to green markets is not surprising since support would hardly be drummed up by stressing that it will be complex, difficult and involve compromises. However, the downside to this is that it has created unrealistic expectations leading to disillusionment and impatience on all sides. Moreover, the “win-win” philosophy has in turn created an expectation that green products would be environmentally superior to conventional products, while also being competitive in terms of price and technical performance. In practice, green marketing is characterised by a sloping playing field due to the socio-environmental subsidy that many conventional products effectively enjoy (by externalising social environmental costs) and the performance effects of removing harmful (but effective) product ingredients. Green products are therefore often thrust into an extremely difficult competitive position. Green marketers can therefore find themselves faced with several dilemmas. They can pursue radical change and try to be more genuinely sustainable, by internalising the environmental costs involved in production. This may be more than consumers are ready for. Unilever’s recent strategy of moving consumers away from consumption of endangered cod and haddock and towards more sustainable pollock and hoki, has progressed more slowly than hoped due to consumer conservatism. If green producers try to focus on the most environmentally concerned customers as a niche market, what good are they really doing? If they aim to move the mass market towards sustainability, how likely are they to succeed given the proven lack of understanding about sustainability among consumers, and their distrust of companies? In the face of these difficulties, it is perhaps unsurprising that much of what has happened under the banner of “green marketing” has had relatively little to do with either marketing or the environment. Green marketing should therefore not be written off as a prophecy unfulfilled, but recognised as one whose time has not yet come. Perhaps the answer to making more substantive progress towards sustainability does not lie with marketers at all, since the market’s current flaws make it incapable of delivering sustainability alone. The market needs to operate within a society in which sustainability is more than adopted as a public policy goal, but is actively pursued through policy implementation in terms of taxation, education, industrial policy, and

public spending and investments. Whilst the early predictions for growth in the green market may now look a little overstated, the predictions for growing environmental problems have not. The longer we take to address the issue, and to make progress towards more sustainable marketing, the greater the disruption and effort will be. The sooner substantive progress is made, the more likely the story will be to have a happy ending.

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369 Note 1. The terminology varies. We use green marketing here to keep to the language that was prevalent when the idea took-off, but authors have also used greener marketing, environmental marketing and sustainable marketing. The debate about the semantics involved can be side-stepped by considering them all as labels which describe a form of marketing which represents progress towards sustainability. References Baker, M.J. (Ed.) (1999), “One more time – what is marketing?”, The Marketing Book, 4 ed., Butterworth-Heinemann, London. Crane, A. (2000), “Facing the backlash: green marketing and strategic re-orientation in the 1990s”, Journal of Strategic Marketing, Vol. 8 No. 3, pp. 277-96. DEPA (2001), Evaluation of the Eco-Label Promotional Campaign 2001, Danish Environmental Protection Agency. Elkington, J. (1994), “Toward the sustainable corporation: win-win-win business strategies for sustainable development”, California Management Review, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 90-100. Elkington, J. and Hailes, J. (1988), The Green Consumer Guide, Victor Gollanz, London. Elkington, J. et al. (1991), The Green Business Guide, Victor Gollanz, London. Iyer, E. and Banerjee, B. (1993), “Anatomy of green advertising”, Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 20, pp. 494-501. Kangun, N., Carlson, L. and Grove, S.J. (1991), “Environmental advertising claims: a preliminary investigation”, Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, Vol. 10 No. 2, pp. 47-58. King, S. (1985), “Has marketing failed, or was it never really tried?”, Journal of Marketing Management, Vol. 1, pp. 1-19. Menon, A. and Menon, A. (1997), “Enviropreneurial marketing strategy: the emergence of corporate environmentalism as market strategy”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 61, pp. 51-67. Mintel (1991) The Green Consumer Report, Mintel, London. Mintel (1995) The Second Green Consumer Report, Mintel, London. National Consumer Council (1996), National Consumer Council Green Claims: A Consumer Investigation into Marketing Claims about the Environment, National Consumer Council, London. Ottman, J.A. (1993), Green Marketing: Challenges & Opportunities, NTC Business Books, Chicago, IL. Peattie, K. (1995), Environmental Marketing Management, Pitman, London. Peattie, K. (1999), “Trappings versus substance in the greening of marketing planning”, Journal of Strategic Marketing, Vol. 7, pp. 131-48. Porter, M.E. and van der Linde (1995), “Green and competitive: ending the stalemate”, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 73 No. 5, pp. 120-33.

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Prothero, A. (1990), “Green consumerism and the societal marketing concept: marketing strategies for the 1990s”, Journal of Marketing Management, Vol. 6 No. 2, pp. 87-103. Prothero, A., Peattie, K. and McDonagh, P. (1997), “Communicating greener strategies: a study of on-pack communications”, Business Strategy and the Environment, Vol. 6 No. 2, pp. 74-82. Roper Organization (1990), The Environment: Public Attitudes and Individual Behaviour, Roper Organization and SC Johnson & Son, New York, NY. Schlegelmilch, B.B., Bohlen, G. and Diamantopoulos, A. (1996), “The link between green purchasing decisions and measures of environmental consciousness”, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 30 No. 5, pp. 35-55. Shelton, R.D. (1994), “Hitting the green wall: why corporate programs get stalled”, Corporate Environmental Strategy, Vol. 2 No. 2, pp. 5-11. Smith, T. (1998), The Green Marketing Myth: Tending our Goats at the Edge of Apocalypse, University of Toronto Press, Toronto. Van Dam, Y.K. and Apeldoorn (1996), “Sustainable marketing”, Journal of Macromarketing, Vol. 16, pp. 45-56. Vandermerwe, S. and Oliff, M. (1990), “Customers drive corporations green”, Long Range Planning, Vol. 23 No. 6, pp. 10-16. Walley, N. and Whitehead, B. (1994), “Its not easy being green”, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 72 No. 3, pp. 46-52. Wong, V., Turner, W. and Stoneman, P. (1996), “Marketing strategies and market prospects for environmentally-friendly consumer products”, British Journal of Management, Vol. 7 No. 3, pp. 263-81. Worcester, R. (1993), Public and Elite Attitudes to Environmental Issues, MORI, London. (Ken Peattie is a Professor of Marketing and Strategy at Cardiff Business School which he joined in 1986, and Director of the ESRC Centre for Business Relationships, Accountability, Sustainability and Society (BRASS). His interest in the impact of environmental concern on corporate and marketing strategies has led to a range of journal articles, conference papers, books and book chapters over the last 15 years. Andrew Crane is a Professor of Business Ethics in the International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility at the University of Nottingham. He has ten years experience of teaching and researching business ethics, social responsibility, and organizational greening and has published, spoken, and consulted widely on the subject. His work has been published in various international journals such as the Academy of Management Review, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Business Research, and Organization Studies. His most recent book (with Dirk Matten) is Business Ethics: A European Perspective, published by Oxford University Press in 2004.)

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Advertising and children: what do the kids think?

Advertising and children

Terry O’Sullivan Open University Business School, Milton Keynes, UK

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Abstract Purpose – To question the models of childhood implied within contemporary UK debate about advertising to children. The paper identifies a role for qualitative market research in establishing a more fully-articulated account of childhood, with implications for both policy makers and marketers. Design/methodology/approach – A brief literature review of contemporary sociological perspectives on childhood informs an account of controversy in the UK about the legitimacy of advertising to children. Adult versions of childhood from this debate are contrasted with children’s own accounts of their experience of advertising, drawing on a pilot study using informal qualitative methods. Findings – Illuminates the assumptions about childhood which divide industry advocates from their critics, and suggests that qualitative understanding of children’s experience of advertising should have a greater role in complementing the predominantly positivist research on which the debate draws. Research limitations/implications – Limited to recent UK discourse on children and advertising (which may restrict its extendability to non-European cultures), and draws on a very small pilot study. This does, however, point the way to future research using informal methods. Practical implications – Intended to enrich understanding of debate and policy on advertising and children, and to encourage the informed use of qualitative research in this area. Originality/value – This paper fills a gap in the predominantly empirical or polemical literature in this area by setting competing arguments in an ontological framework. Keywords Children (age groups), Advertising, Market research, United Kingdom Paper type Conceptual paper

Advertising and children: what do the kids think? Recent academic sociology has replaced the established understanding of children as adults-in-waiting with perspectives acknowledging them as agents in their own right (James and Prout, 1997; James et al., 1998). At the same time, children have been enjoying an unprecedented level of attention from marketers and marketing researchers (Goodman and Dretzin, 2001; Schneider, 1987, cited in Kline, 1993, p. 18). Lifelong preferences form in childhood – making the early teens a crucial battleground for brand loyalty (Lowden, 1999). Furthermore, a number of exclusively child-oriented industries depend on a very brief window of opportunity. Advertising to children arouses heated debate. Far from erecting a Potemkin Village to conceal their targeting of children, or enacting a sea change which might involve abandoning this controversial market, advertisers stoutly defend their right to “commercial free speech” (Earnshaw, 2001). They stress the benefits of consumer socialisation to render children “more comfortable in this commercial world” (Jackson, quoted in Swain, 2002). Against them stand industry critics, anxious to protect a vulnerable audience from a marketing machine which risks their well-being in its pursuit of profit (Dibb, 1993; Dalmeny et al., 2003). The brevity of opportunity for

Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal Vol. 8 No. 4, 2005 pp. 371-384 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 1352-2752 DOI 10.1108/13522750510619742

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products and services aimed at children amplifies the intensity of attempts to reach them, particularly through TV advertising in children’s programming. However, children’s programming represents less than 30 per cent of most children’s overall viewing (although an industry commonplace is that advertising to children funds their programmes) (Ofcom, 2004). Children watch a great deal more than programmes created specifically for their age groups. Their experience of advertising (and of consumption) extends far beyond products and services aimed explicitly at them. Yet television advertising has an iconic significance for both sides of the debate as a peculiarly visible component of promotion aimed at children. This includes other media, the internet, “word of mouth” crazes, and product placement. It also includes the content of much programming aimed at children whether advertiser-supported or not (either through characters merchandised beyond the programme itself, or as editorial on products and services aimed at children). Television advertising is distinguished from the mix by the relative ease with which it can be isolated, regulated, or even removed. This is a source of anxiety to the industry, if only because of the financial stakes involved. British children’s spending accelerated dramatically in the last three years of the twentieth century (Marketing Business, 2000). Confectionery self-purchases grew from £280-350 million. Music and CDs bought by 11-16 year olds rose to £510 million, while clothes, the largest single category for the shopper of 16 or younger, were worth £660 million. These statistics suggest that children as consumers are hard at work on the project of self – using their growing financial resources to express themselves through hedonic consumption from an early age (Hirschman and Holbrook, 1982). Prosaic essentials such as groceries, heating, accommodation and transport remain an adult responsibility. Thus the “consumer socialisation” argument does not quite capture reality, in spite of its considerable academic heritage (John, 1999). In fact children’s induction into consumption promises an extension of childlike pleasure, rather than an initiation into adult rational choice. Industry critics seek to expose the irresponsibility underlying this process. Recent controversy in the UK has turned on the role of television advertising in socialising obesity. Fuelled by serious concerns about an international “epidemic”, pressure to ban “junk food” advertising in children’s television programming is gaining political ground (Leonard, 2004). However much rational research cautions against too simplistic a linkage between promotional activity and children’s food choices (Young, 2004), “commonsense” insists on their inseparability. Convictions rather than evidence dominate this controversy. Fundamental to the position of either side are very different views not only of advertising, but of childhood itself. The objective of this article is to identify and analyse some of these views in the light of recent theoretical perspectives, and to argue that qualitative marketing research has an important role to play in establishing a more fully-articulated picture of childhood than has been acknowledged heretofore. This is particularly the case for research with children themselves, potentially giving them a voice which – to date – has been relatively under-represented in the debate. Aries (1962) revealed childhood as an invention of mid-eighteenth century Europe. Qualified by later scholarship, his analysis of childhood as historically-situated has had a profound effect. Yet there is little sense that childhood is constructed or culturally-relative in recent UK controversy about advertising to children.

Table I charts some influential ways of imagining childhood, catalogued by James et al. (1998). They divide their categories into “Pre-Sociological” and “Sociological” reflecting the difference between the essentialist approaches of the first categories (which continue to inform conventional wisdom about children), and the acknowledgement by the second (more recent) set that childhood can only be properly examined through the lens of social theory. The perspectives on childhood most apparent in current discourse on advertising and children derive exclusively from the pre-sociological formulations. The arguments and evidence mustered by the advertising industry and its critics depend on two broad understandings of childhood: grouped respectively around the naturally developing child and the innocent child. These are not the only formulations recognisable in the debate. For example, proponents of a particular cause, such as healthy eating, position children as a “Minority Group” oppressed by the marketing industry. But these two positions offer a useful starting point in looking behind the rhetoric to the versions of childhood being appropriated.

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Innocent child The innocent child motivates deeply-felt resistance to the commercialisation of children. Sleaford (2000) cites Monbiot (1998) in support of this view: “children’s advertising is the marketing of insecurity, a mission to generate self-consciousness among the only group of people who have, hitherto, been free from it.” Sleaford also cites Warner (1994) referring in even stronger terms to “the ultimate nightmare – not just the child as commodity, but the child as consumer . . . ”. Warner’s hyperbole is telling. In a world of moral relativism, the innocence of children represents an ultimate, an ethical ne plus ultra. The political incarnation of the innocent child is evident in the current Swedish ban on TV advertising to the under-12s, maintaining children as a “commercial-free zone”. The Swedish Minister for Education and Culture touches on the “Minority Group” view Pre-Sociological child

Sociological child

Evil child: prone to evil as the sparks fly upwards – in need of correction and discipline

Socially constructed child: (a reaction to the absolute decrees of positivist sociologists) denies essential forms or constraints on childhood, but runs the risk of abandoning “real” children Tribal child: treats children on their own terms, and their worlds as real locations Minority group child: a sociology for rather than of children, recognising the disservice done to them by social convention Social structural child: defines childhood by what the common “space” children occupy in the structures of societies in general

Innocent child: naturally good because young and unspoilt by life’s compromises Immanent child: neither good nor bad, but shaped entirely by experience Naturally developing child: the stuff of developmental psychology (which assumes that children are a “natural” – rather than social – phenomenon and that “development” is part of their natural characteristics) The unconscious child: in the context of psychoanalysis, the root of adult psychic disorder Source: James et al. (1998)

Table I.

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of childhood, drawing on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, as she defines children as an “exposed group in society in need of special care and protection” (Ulvskog, 2001). Viewed as less experienced and more impressionable than adults, children need protection against harmful media content of all sorts. To the perplexity of the marketing industry, the seminar convened by the Swedish government in 2001 to address the issue of children and new media bracketed the harmful effects on children of advertising with those of media violence and pornography. In any defence of the innocent child, its shadow the evil child is never far away. Prone to wickedness, the evil child needs shielding from the urgings of advertising. Buckingham (1997) develops the idea of the child as “other”, categorised (in a way familiar to students of media effects literature) alongside the insane, the criminal and the socially-inadequate as particularly susceptible to depictions of violence in the media. Buckingham’s analysis, prompted by the moral panic following the 1993 James Bulger tragedy, does not mention advertising. But his account of childhood vulnerability as an example of dominant ideology is highly relevant to the advertising and children controversy: Children are largely defined here in terms of what they lack – that is, in terms of their inability (or unwillingness) to conform to adult norms. While this lack can be perceived in “positive” terms – as a form of innocence, an absence of guile or artifice, a child-like charm – such formulations are often merely patronising. Relative to adults, children are seen to lack the knowledge, the experience and the intellectual capacities that would entitle them to social power. (Buckingham, 1997, p. 33).

Protecting the innocent child from advertising thus conceals an impulse to protect ourselves as adults against the pester power of the evil child, obese with junk food, wild-eyed with video-game violence, rabid for the latest playground craze. Elsewhere, Buckingham (2000, p. 11) cites an analysis of moral panics in late twentieth century Britain (Jenkins, 1992) showing how a variety of campaigners have exercised a “politics of substitution” by re-profiling their causes around the figure of the threatened child (or “Minority Group Child” in James et al.’s typology). Thus concerns about deviant sexuality become redefined as concerns about paedophilia, or concerns about pornography are transferred to child-pornography. As Buckingham points out, whatever the merits of the arguments concerned, this political appropriation of children at risk makes it difficult to oppose the causes involved without appearing to be hostile to children. Thus, objecting to advertising to children can be read as a form of political substitution for objecting to advertising in general. Winston Fletcher, a robust defender of advertising, dismisses such protesters as “balaclava bolshies” whose agenda is resolutely anti-business (Earnshaw, 2002). Indeed, anti-capitalists as depicted by Klein (2000) might well identify with this faintly childlike image. Their playful strategies of culture-jamming and ironic consumption subvert advertising’s interpellation of consumers as children rather than as rational adults. Adult unease at this derives to some extent from the figure of the “Unconscious Child” – the unruly and potentially destructive “id” whose desires, fanned by the marketing and advertising industry, threaten the autonomy and self-determination on which adulthood rests. In this sense, protecting children from advertising protects adults in two largely

unacknowledged ways: from the pesterings of the external “Evil child”, and from the more insidious demands of the “Unconscious child” within. Naturally developing child The second broad understanding of childhood discernable in the debate is the naturally developing child. The Swedish ban on television advertising to children was inspired by the findings of a 1995 literature review which concluded that only by the age of 12 could children be guaranteed to have developed an understanding of the persuasive purposes of advertising (Edling, 1999). In spite of the UK television regulator’s definition of children as “people of 15 and under” (Ofcom, 2003), the lower figure recurs in defences of advertising to children as the age of reason (Brown, 2004). The review’s author, Dr Erling Bjurstrom, has since claimed to have been misinterpreted (Brabbs, 2000) but age-related cognitive development in younger children is still seen as crucial by industry defenders. The naturally developing child is thus pitted against the innocent child by the pro-advertising lobby. Children’s understanding of advertising, runs their argument, is part of their natural development. Sacrificing it to an unrealistic ideal of innocence by removing advertising may, in these terms, be prejudicial to child welfare by removing an important source of consumer socialisation. In the 1930s, Jean Piaget developed the classic formulation of the naturally developing child from work with his own children. He discerned four stages in their cognitive development: (1) sensori-motor (first 2 years); (2) pre-operational (from 2 to 7) (3) concrete operational (from 7 to 10). (4) formal operational (10 onwards)(Meadows, 1987). The crucial stages for the advertising debate are the pre-operational and concrete operational. Cognitive development theory has it that pre-operational children are unaware of perspectives on the world other than their own. At the mercy of their immediate perceptions, they accept things at face value, seeing an advertisement as a kind of public information broadcast. By the concrete operational stage, however, their thinking becomes more structured and they become capable of understanding that the world is not always as it appears. This allows them to become aware of the persuasive intent of advertising. Early studies of television advertising and children revealed a fit with this model, and were used by American psychologists to lobby the Federal Trade Commission for restrictions on toy advertising in the 1970s (Cohen, 1999). The initiative is chronicled in detail by Liebert and Sprafkin (1988), who reflect darkly on its defeat by a powerful advertising industry under the guise of self-regulation. In spite of the fact that UK references to it are rare, the American case offers many parallels: the entrenched positions (and mutual distrust) of the participants, the variety of research findings available to support different views, and the focus on cognitive development as a paradigm. Cognitive psychology is a particularly sympathetic approach for advertisers keen to justify their activities, because it represents the most ethically-respectable version of how advertising works. According to the cognitive model, we think about our decisions

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before we make them. Thus advertising offers us ideas and information, which we process and evaluate in order to make rational choices. Brown (2004) defends advertising to children on just such cognitive grounds: “Children are young consumers, interested in making choices and needing information about them”. The rival psychological school of behaviourism is less flattering to our intelligence. It holds that we react to stimuli rather than evaluating information or arguments. The resulting model of advertising is manipulation. By offering the appropriate cue, the advertiser can elicit the required reaction. Such a model has clear regulatory implications. Indeed – as suggested in the discussion of the unconscious child earlier – it effectively dissolves the difference between adults and children, making us all susceptible to unscrupulous string-pullers. Research which founds itself on cognitive processes, therefore, has an intrinsic attraction for advertisers. If Bjurstrom (1995) is the reluctant champion of the anti-advertising camp, the UK industry liberals have found a match for him in Professor Brian Young of Exeter University. The author of a standard study of advertising to children (Young, 1990), his findings suggest that significant numbers of children below the age of 12 understand the commercial process and persuasive nature of advertising. Research into cognitive development in children presents some interesting methodological problems. Younger children’s lack of linguistic facility, for example, may lead researchers to underestimate their actual appreciation of the meaning and intention of advertisements. Donohue et al. (1980) recorded much increased levels of understanding of television commercials amongst younger children by using a non-verbal response mechanism. After viewing the commercials the children pointed to pictures of people buying the product rather than pictures of people watching TV. Professor Young’s research, reported to the British Psychological Association in 1998, included re-editing a face cream commercial (Cohen, 1999). Two endings were shot – one showing how the cream made you more beautiful, the other demonstrating how it gave you impressive but unsightly spots. Most of the children (aged four to eight) realised that something was wrong with the second version, but only the older children pointed out that it would not sell much face cream. Young’s conclusion was that children’s understanding of the purpose of advertising grows as part of their cognitive development. Even though the younger children demonstrated an incomplete appreciation of this, the others were well aware of it at a much younger age than Swedish legislation acknowledges. While it makes the Swedish ban look extreme, this research suggests that children (particularly younger ones) need some kind of protection from advertising. Otherwise their “inexperience or their natural credulity and sense of loyalty” (Ofcom, 2003) will be exploited. The result, it is implied, would be to make them want inappropriate or unnecessary things – creating feelings of inadequacy and frustration, and promoting aggression or antagonism towards parents or carers. But does an awareness of what advertising is trying to do necessarily promote the ability to resist it? A cognitive approach would say yes, but cognitive approaches emphasise advertising’s rational, persuasive role in a way which is sometimes hard to square with our actual experience of it. It could be argued that cognitive skills are not the only defence against advertising. Achenreiner and John (2003) demonstrate that the “conceptual” impact of brand names on children actually increases with their cognitive development –

making them more susceptible to symbolic influence. Emotional competence is just as important as cognitive ability in dealing with advertising. Nevertheless, the need to find “scientific” evidence to back up positions in the debate confirms the importance of the naturally developing child to both sides of the argument. Brown (2001) throws down an empirical challenge to advertising’s opponents: “Those who wish to impose prohibitions must provide evidence to justify their case – they can’t, which is why this debate too often is elevated to an emotional one of an intuitive view of ethics and the protection of vulnerable groups.” But the complexity of what children are, and the role which television advertising plays in their lives, risks being lost in the quest for positive, empirical, scientific proof to back up arguments being conducted by adults on their behalf. Qualitative research, with its capacity “to document the world from the point of view of the people studied” (Hammersley, 1992, p. 165) holds out the prospect of redressing this balance. The tribal child The concept of the “actual audience” (Ang, 1991), the audience as “ever-more multifaceted, fragmented and diversified repertoire of practices and experiences” surely finds one of its most vivid embodiments in children watching (or not) television commercials. This perspective on the audience is now taken for granted in media and cultural studies, and has reached marketing (Elliott, 1999) yet it is curiously absent from the debate about children and advertising – perhaps because it resists the search for unequivocal evidence by either side. The version of childhood that corresponds to this kind of resistant but realistic audience is the tribal child, for whom television watching in general is part of a culture which adults can only guess at, unless they want to start listening to children more seriously in their research. Davies et al. (2000, p. 21) explore the gulf between the kind of television which children like watching, and what the rest of the world considers they ought to like watching. Their focus is on programming rather than advertising. But they make a discovery highly applicable to how children view (and use) commercials: “children’s assertion of their own tastes necessarily entail a form of ‘identity work’ – a positioning of the self in terms of publicly available discourses and categories.” As a way of imagining childhood, the “Tribal Child” owes its genesis to qualitative research traditions such as the classic ethnography of Opie and Opie (1959) which established a picture of children on their own terms. Mayall (1994) calls this “children’s childhoods”. By emphasising children’s own roles in constructing their childhoods, it gives a more active account of childhood than the alternative of “Socially-Constructed Child”, and is more fully-dimensioned than the “Minority Group Child”. It shares with the “Social-Structural Child” (James et al.’s fourth variety of “Sociological Child”) an affirmation of the self-sufficiency of the world of childhood rather than its deficit compared to the adult world. But, deriving from “insider accounts” of childhood, the “Tribal Child” offers a more finely-grained perspective than the large-scale social-structural alternative. Achieving a sense of how children engage with television advertising is difficult. Quite apart from getting them to talk about it, or observe them doing it, there is the ethical question of getting their consent and that of their parents or guardians,

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and the practical question of getting access to them in a reasonably natural setting (Lewis and Lindsay, 2000). Much of the research into children and advertising discussed by Liebert and Sprafkin (1988) took place in an institutional context (e.g. summer camp or school). I wanted to use a domestic setting in order to explore attitudes more naturally and informally. The chance came with a sleepover involving my two smallest sons respective best friends. Research using family members (in spite of Piaget’s example) is, of course, rife with ethical complications. The friends parents gave consent for me to interview them using a tape recorder, and I explained to the children themselves that I would be very grateful if they could help me by spending some time talking about television advertising. I divided them into friendship pairs – one of two 8 year olds, the other of two 9 year olds, and conducted two interviews – one after the other. After some general questions about advertising, I showed them a commercial break from airtime in a rolling format show linking cartoons appropriate to their age group (Appendix). I watched them and recorded their speech while they watched it, and asked them questions about the ads after they had seen the break. The interviews, about 15 minutes each, concluded with a few more questions and the final reward of some confectionery (at least one confirmed example of unhealthy eating as a consequence of exposure to television advertising). The idea of a reward for participation proved an important one – I was not prepared for how boring the children would find the process. The advantage of this domestic approach was that it offered a reasonably natural environment, and allowed comparisons to be made between the older and younger viewers. In the event the methodology also had a number of weaknesses. Audio recording turned out to be difficult in itself because of the level of the children’s voices, and observation was limited by the need for them to watch the material as unselfconsciously as possible. The lag between the recording of the commercials and the interviews meant that references to film tie-ins (an important part of advertising to children) were out of date. The decision to select an entire break was driven by the desire to see how advertisements were experienced in context rather than separately. But it neglected the programming environment which could, of course, affect the mood in which the material was received. These are useful pointers to future data gathering, e.g. more careful microphone placement, and mechanical observation of researchers and participants engaging with television (and each other) in real time over a considerably longer, and less structured, period of activity. The children told me about their favourite ads to begin with, revealing that the level of their enjoyment had little to do with either their interest in the product or their understanding of the advertisement itself. Interviewer:

What adverts do you like?

Julio:

[sings current Halifax building society ad jingle – TOM joins in. Both boys sing it happily with a sense of enjoyment and irony]

Julio:

. . .Terms and Conditions Apply. That’s a good one.

Interviewer:

What’s it for?

Tom:

I don’t know. . . Halifax.

Julio:

Yes Halifax.

Interviewer:

Do you know what “terms and conditions apply” means?

Julio:

No.

Interviewer:

Why do you like that advert?

Julio:

Because it’s a good tune. (eight-year-olds)

On one level the children are appropriating such advertising for their own enjoyment – they are tangential to the marketing intent of the campaign in question. On another level they become a kind of social sounding board for it – adopting catchphrases or jingles into their playground culture in a way which promises the material (or part of it) a more general diffusion into culture at large. Television advertising – whatever its intended target – is also harnessed as a parlour game where you win by knowing (or being able to remember) what the advertisement is for: Julio: You’ve got to guess, you’ve got to guess when they come on. (eight-year-old)

Arguably this is an illustration of cognitive processes at work, but not related to interpreting or evaluating the message – just playing with it as a tribal activity. On the other hand, there was also quite detailed recall of advertising directed at children as a segment. Interestingly (in view of the idea of an early initiation into the project of self) one of the most extended passages of recall concerned grooming products aimed at children: Roy: Like this l’Oreal thing where they show these shampoos and styling gel for these children, em like, there, these shampoos that don’t hurt your eyes, children’s eyes. And they’ve got this children’s styling gel. (nine-year-old)

Playing the videotaped commercial break evoked active responses and discussion between the children as they watched it. The Kelloggs Variety commercial had both pairs singing along – with the same kind of ironic enjoyment displayed in the younger children’s spontaneous rendition of the Halifax jingle (. . . terms and conditions apply). The Barbie commercial was greeted with scornful disgust, which perhaps muted the boys response to the ATB Quad bike ad which followed it immediately. Talking about the Action Man advertisement after the break, revealed that in spite of adhering to the industry wisdom of “fast-paced, fast-action programmes” (Murray, cited in Cohen, 1999) the ad’s style had not succeeded in engaging the older boys’ attention: Interviewer:

How could they have made the advert more interesting? What happened in the advert again?

Roy:

Well, what it does, is he starts off climbing a mountain. And then he ends up skating, then he chops these icicle things, and then he pushes X off a cliff. It would be better if he actually killed him.

Interviewer:

How would he kill him?

Roy:

By getting a shotgun and shooting a bullet in his head. (nine-year-old)

Roy’s Tribal ending is violent, powerful and extreme – rather like the games of cowboys and Indians, or cops and robbers, into which the Action Man brand has

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ventured in product extensions. Possibly, Roy’s Tribal response resists the attempt of the brand to colonise this traditional playground territory. The children used advertising to situate themselves and others in their social hierarchy and as a source of gender solidarity. Discussions of the advertising aimed at girls was particularly dismissive. Age differences were important too – with a sense of the appropriateness of particular toys for particular ages: Alan: Action Man is about, 7, or 6. Roy:

That Playmobil and car thing would be about 8-12. Maybe. (nine-year-olds)

The hostility displayed even by seven-year olds to television advertising is something which researchers have commented on (Griffiths, cited in Cohen, 1999) and the interview with the older pair bore this out. Commenting on the Playmobil ad, the nine-year olds were cynical: Interviewer:

What did you think of those two kids?

Roy:

I don’t like it how they always go “WOW!” and then, when you see it, one of these morphing things, and then quickly speeding it up and then when you actually get it then it takes ages to do it.

Interviewer:

They’re not that good then?

Roy:

They’re all right

Interviewer:

What do you think those two kids were called in the advert?

Alan:

Dumb and dumber. Sad and sadder. (nine-year-olds)

This was one of several instances in the interviews with both pairs where the children displayed amused contempt for the advertising – a telling piece of consumer socialisation itself. The most recently-publicised Advertising Association figures claim an increase in public approval rates for advertising in the UK to over 75 per cent at the millennium (Advertising Association, 2000). This still leaves something like one in four adults as indifferent at best. In research carried out at almost the same time, the Chartered Institute of Marketing found that 17 per cent of adults agreed that advertising to children should be banned, and 75 per cent wanted more restrictive regulation (Marketing Business, 2000). More recently 73 per cent of respondents wanted a ban on advertising “junk food” and sweets to children (Kings Fund, 2004). To some extent this is a research effect from quantitative survey interviews. The more reflective technique of qualitative research yields more complex answers. Parents in a 1998 qualitative survey acknowledged that media (including advertising) was an influence for good as well as for bad in their children’s lives, having responded far more negatively to an initial quantitative survey questionnaire (McCarraher, 1999). In conclusion, to adopt a metaphor in keeping with the tribal child, advertisers are folk devils for both children and adults. On the one hand, they are the high priests of showy rituals of consumption, on the other they are objects of terror and blame for moral discomfort with aspects of consumer culture. Ironically, perhaps the greatest threat they present to children’s welfare is as an adult distraction. Exorcising the folk

devils of the advertising industry may let policy makers off the hook of solving less emotive but more fundamental problems which disadvantage children. Using qualitative methods to map the world of children, including their consumer behaviour, may yield more insight into questions about advertising and children than any amount of positivist empirical research. There is a need for fresh work in this area (Moore, 2004). Marketing researchers and academics have an opportunity to respond through choosing methodologies which aim to meet children on their own territory, as participants and even as co-researchers (Warren, 2000). Used unreflectively such techniques risk destroying the very world they explore through incursion and control. But used empathetically and cooperatively they have the potential not only to inform policy but also to help develop products, services and, indeed, advertising which reflect and respond to children’s authentic needs and wants. References Achenreiner, G.B. and John, D.R. (2003), “The meaning of brand names to children: a developmental investigation”, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Vol. 13 No. 3, pp. 205-19. Advertising Association (2000), press release, 28 July, available at: www.adassoc.org.uk/ pressoffice/newsreleases/nr75.html (accessed 20 August 2004). Ang, I. (1991), Desperately Seeking the Audience, Routledge, London. Aries, P. (1962), Centuries of Childhood, Jonathan Cape, London. Bjurstrom, E. (1995), Children and Television Advertising. A Critical Study of International Research Concerning the Effects of TV Commercials on Children, Konsument Verket, Stockholm. Brabbs, C. (2000), “Will kids be cut off from ads?”, Marketing, November 30, p. 22. Brown, A. (2001), “Television advertising directed to children. How do we create a “fair play” situation?”, paper presented at the seminar Children and Young People in the New Media Landscape, Stockholm, 12 and 13 February, available at: www.eu2001.se/eu2001/calendar/ meetinginfo.asp?iCalendarID ¼ 1335 (accessed 18 August 2004). Brown, A. (2004), “The ethics of marketing to children”, speech at the Marketing Society in the North West, 18 February, available at: www.adassoc.org.uk/speeches/ ab_msnw_speech_180204.html (accessed 20 August 2004). Buckingham, D. (1997), “Electronic child abuse?”, in Barker, M. and Petley, J. (Eds), Ill Effects, Routledge, London, pp. 32-47. Buckingham, D. (2000), After the Death of Childhood, Polity Press, Cambridge. Cohen, D. (1999), “Toy Story”, New Scientist, October 30, pp. 38-41. Dalmeny, K., Hanna, E. and Lobstein, T. (2003), Broadcasting Bad Health, International Association of Consumer Food Organisations/The Food Commission, London. Davis, H., Buckingham, D. and Kelley, P. (2000), “In the worst possible taste: children, television and cultural value”, European Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 3 No. 1, pp. 5-25. Dibb, S. (1993), Children: Advertisers Dream, Nutritionists Nightmare, National Food Alliance, London. Donohue, T.R., Henke, L.L. and Donohue, W.A. (1980), “Do kids know what TV commercials intend?”, Journal of Advertising Research, Vol. 20 No. 5, pp. 51-7.

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Earnshaw, M. (2001), “The creeping threat to consumer information and freedom to choose”, Incorporated Society of British Advertisers, October, available at: www.isba.org.uk/ public_documents/the_creeping_threat_me.pdf (accessed 20 August 2004). Earnshaw, M. (2002), “The real consumer is our boss”, paper presented at the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers Conference, March, available at: www.isba.org.uk/ public_documents/2002-AC-Malcolm-Earnshaw.pdf (accessed 20 August 2004).

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Edling, A. (1999), “Ethics and public policy: The Swedish law and guidelines on TV advertising to children”, paper presented at the Conference on TV Advertising and Children: Ethics and Public Policy Advertising Associations Food Advertising Unit, London, 23 November. Elliott, R. (1999), “Symbolic meaning and postmodern consumer culture”, in Brownlie, D., Saren, M., Wensley, R. and Whittington, R. (Eds), Rethinking Marketing, Sage, London, pp. 112-25. Goodman, B. and Dretzin, R. (2001), “Frontline: merchants of cool”, Public Broadcasting Service, 27 February, available at www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/view (accessed 20 August 2004). Hammersley, M. (1992), What’s Wrong with Ethnography, Routledge, London. Hirschman, E.C. and Holbrook, M.B. (1982), “Hedonic consumption: emerging concepts, methods, and propositions”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 46, pp. 92-101. James, A. and Prout, A. (Eds) (1997), Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood, 2nd ed., Falmer Press, London. James, A., Jenks, C. and Prout, A. (1998), Theorising Childhood, Polity Press, Oxford. Jenkins, P. (1992), Intimate Enemies: Moral Panics in Contemporary Great Britain, Aldine de Gruyter, New York, NY. John, D.R. (1999), “Consumer socialization of children: a retrospective look at twenty-five years of research”, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 26, pp. 183-213. Kings Fund (2004), “Public attitudes to public health policy”, research report, Opinion Leader Research, Health Development Agency, National Health Service, June, available at: www. kingsfund.org.uk/pdf/publicattitudesreport.pdf (accessed 20 August 2004). Klein, N. (2000), No Logo, Flamingo, London. Kline, S. (1993), Out of the Garden, Verso, London. Leonard, T. (2004), “Children bombarded with junk food adverts”, Daily Telegraph, 1 May, available at: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml ¼ /news/2004/05/01/njunk01. xml (accessed 20 August 2004). Lewis, A. and Lindsay, G. (Eds) (2000), Researching Childrens Perspectives, Open University Press, Buckingham. Liebert, R.M. and Sprafkin, J. (1988), “Television advertising and children”, The Early Window, 3rd ed., Pergamon General Psychology Series, Pergamon, New York, NY, pp. 162-86. Lowden, S. (1999), “Managing international brands”, paper presented at Advertising and Academia, the Fourth Annual Marketing Educators’ Forum, Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, London, 14 September. Marketing Business (2000), “The playground packs more punch”, December/January, p. 11. McCarraher, L. (1999) Conference on TV Advertising and Children: Ethics and Public Policy Advertising Associations Food Advertising Unit, London, 23 November. Mayall, B. (Ed.) (1994), Childrens Childhoods Observed and Experience, Falmer, London.

Meadows, S. (1987), “Piagets contribution to understanding cognitive development: an assessment for the late 1980s”, in Richardson, K. and Sheldon, S. (Eds), Cognitive Development to Adolescence, Psychology Press/Open University, Hove, pp. 19-32. Monbiot, G. (1998), “Rip off the children: greedy, ruthless sales pitches will ruin many Christmases”, The Guardian, 4 December. Moore, E.S. (2004), “Children and the changing world of advertising”, Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 52, pp. 161-7. Ofcom (2003), Advertising Standards Code (Independent Television Commission) Section 7: Children, available at: www.ofcom.org.uk/codes_guidelines/broadcasting/tv/advertising/ advertising_standards/children?a ¼ 87101 (accessed 20 August 2004). Ofcom (2004), Child Obesity – Food Advertising in Context: Childrens Food Choices, Parents Understanding and Influence, and the Role of Food Promotions, available at: www.ofcom. org.uk/research/consumer_audience_research/tv/food_ads/?a ¼ 87101#8 (accessed 18 August 2004). Opie, P. and Opie, I. (1959), The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Sleaford, H. (2000), Unpublished Briefing Document on Children and Advertising for The Childrens Society. Swain, G. (2002), “Pester power”, The Sunday Times, 29 December, p. 16. Ulvskog, M. (2001), speech at seminar Children and Young People in the New Media Landscape, Stockholm, 12 and 13 February, available at: www.eu2001.se/eu2001/calendar/ meetinginfo.asp?iCalendarID ¼ 1335 (accessed 18 August 2004). Warner, M. (1994), “Little devils: keeping childhood innocent”, The Reith Lectures, BBC. Warren, S. (2000), “Let’s do it properly: inviting children to be researchers”, in Lewis, A. and Lindsay, G. (Eds), Researching Childrens Perspectives, Open University Press, Buckingham, pp. 122-34. Young, B. (1990), Television Advertising and Children, OUP, Oxford. Young, B. (2004), “Does advertising to children make them fat? A sceptical gaze at irreconcilable differences”, paper presented at the Conference on Children as Consumers: Public Policies, Moral Dilemmas, Academic Perspectives, The Royal Society, London, 20 February, available at: www.consume.bbk.ac.uk/conference/ childconsumer/Brian%20Young%20paper.doc (accessed 20 August 2004). Further reading Archard, R. (1993), Children: Rights and Childhood, Routledge, London. Franklin, B. (1995), The Handbook of Childrens Rights, Routledge, London.

Appendix List of TV commercials on Videotape (recorded 16 December 2000, Yorkshire Television, during Diggit) . Action Man (Ice Extreme) . Kelloggs Variety . McDonalds: 102 Dalmations offer

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Playmobil Space Adventures Titan Tron Live Super Makeover Creation Princess Bride Barbie Majorette ATB Quad Tigertoys Interactive E.T.

(Terry O’Sullivan lectures in marketing at the Open University Business School. His research interests are in ethical aspects of marketing and marketing as applied to non-profit and cultural organisations).

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The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/1352-2752.htm

Jigsaw puzzles: fitting together the moral pieces

Jigsaw puzzles

Stephen P. Hogan Brighton Business School, University of Brighton, Brighton, UK

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Abstract Purpose – Fitting ethical responsibilities into day-to-day business practice represents a challenge for marketers who have to operate at the customer interface. When young children are the target market the puzzle becomes more complex. Based on a case study of the toy industry, this paper examines the moral issues of “care” and “vulnerability” and evaluates toy company practice. Design/methodology/approach – The paper builds upon Ross’ proposed prima facie duties of benevolence, fidelity, and nonmaleficence (1938), which it argued are particularly relevant when vulnerable consumers are involved. The supporting fieldwork is based on qualitative interviews with senior managers in 12 leading UK-based toy companies and compares the findings with other documentary evidence. Findings – Evidence of some ethical responsible practice was discovered although this appeared to be primarily driven by external forces rather than company philanthropy. Although the companies argued that targeting children directly is supported by their human rights, this practice will always attract criticism on moral grounds because of children’s widely accepted vulnerability. The study identifies a paradox that it is parents who fund most toy purchases but are often overlooked in the marketing process who are vulnerable as well as their children. Originality/value – This paper adds to the limited literature on ethical issues in marketing to children and provides empirical evidence from an important children’s market. The paper seeks to provide a balanced account of where the toy companies are adopting a responsible approach and where they still need to improve their moral credentials. Keywords Marketing, Ethics, Children (age groups), Toys Paper type Research paper

Background to the research There can be little doubt that we are living in what Smith (1995) describes as the “ethics era”, at a time when ethics as an issue appears to be on most company’s boardroom agendas. What has led to this more morally and socially responsible climate is not clear, but it appears to be being driven by an increasing number of customers who are as concerned with how companies behave and respond as they are with the satisfaction derived from their products and services. Concerns over limited natural resources and environmental pollution, employment practices (particularly in emerging nations), and a growing resentment to perceived corporate greed (in terms of high prices, salaries, and profits), may be important contributing factors. Many managers, however, appear to be struggling to get to grips with ethics. It represents a challenging puzzle for some companies who are not quite sure of the importance of the moral pieces of the jigsaw or how they fit with the other business pieces to make the final picture. Indeed, some still appear unsure whether they actually belong in the same box at all. The players with vision of the final picture have recognised that a sound ethical policy is a key component of ultimate success and represents an opportunity for competitive advantage rather than a problem, particularly in markets where there is little product differentiation. For players who

Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal Vol. 8 No. 4, 2005 pp. 385-398 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 1352-2752 DOI 10.1108/13522750510619751

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consistently overlook the moral pieces, the warnings are clear and, as Sternberg (1994) points out, when the underlying ethical questions are ignored, it is not usually the problems but the business that disappears. So can players turn to the instructions of the ethicists for clear guidance and help? An immediate difficulty is philosophers’ failure to agree on what ethics is as the definitions following illustrate: (1) Human actions from the point of view of their rightness or wrongness (Bourke, 1951). (2) Body of principles. . .that could serve as an adequate guide for wise choice (Baylis, 1958). (3) Inquiry into theories of what is good and evil and into what is right or wrong. . . (Beauchamp and Bowie, 1997). Assuming that one gets beyond the question of whether ethics concerns human actions, principles or theories, or a combination, another problem is that much of the literature is too abstract (Stark, 1993), beyond the understanding of most business managers (Smith, 1995) and inadequate for the rich, complex context of marketing (Robin and Reidenbach, 1993). Within business, marketing is the function that is probably most commonly charged with ethical abuse (Murphy and Laczniak, 1981). In marketing, as in life, the potential for ethical conflict occurs when people perceive that their duties towards one group are inconsistent with their duties and responsibilities towards some other group, including oneself. Marketers, acting at the interface of organisations and customers, are often faced with difficult moral decisions and have to weigh up their responsibilities towards many different stakeholders. Holding functional responsibility for external communications, marketing attracts criticism in some quarters that it is unfair, manipulative, wasteful and intrusive, and that it encourages materialism and greed. Marketing decisions become even more difficult and controversial when vulnerable populations such as young children are involved. Marketers operating in child-targeted markets are always under careful scrutiny from consumer groups, the media, governments and others and have to make a continuous effort to demonstrate their integrity. Concerns over marketing to children has attracted the interest of governments over the last few years across the European Union, following Sweden’s well-publicised ban on all national TV advertising to children under 12 years of age, and many have been reviewing the adequacy of the national controls. The traditional toy market is heavily reliant on children and fulfils an important social role in supplying the tools to encourage children’s play, fundamental in developing the behaviours or skills required in later life (Kline, 1993). The market in the UK is valued at £2.1 billion at retail selling prices (British Toy and Hobby Association, 2004) with the key sectors being infant and pre-school toys, games/puzzles, dolls, action figures and vehicles, but not electronic games which form a separate industry. Toy companies are facing difficult market conditions. Children appear to be deserting traditional toys by the age of seven with Christmas wish lists then favouring products such as clothes, mobile phones, consumer electronics and electronic games (Mintel, 1998). Toy consumers have come to expect both value for money and constant

innovation in toys resulting in short product life cycles and pressure on company margins. As one toy manager commented:

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There are only two emotive words in marketing today that the consumer is interested in, “new” and “free”.

Such challenges need to be recognised to understand the context in which toy companies make their moral decisions. If pursuing a more responsible approach puts further pressure on the bottom line, will companies pursue that route? But on the other hand, can they afford not to? Toy company responsibility There is a broad literature on corporate social responsibility that identifies the moral duties of both individuals (managers within organisations) and companies as entities (and the collective responsibilities of managers within it). Individualists such as Valasquez (1982) insist that, as moral agents, ethical decisions lie with human individuals, i.e. an employee assumes some measure of moral responsibility by agreeing to abide by an organisations rules and standard operating procedures (Dibb et al., 1994). Since Friedman’s (1970) provocative argument that the social responsibility of business is to increase profits and that the prime responsibility of managers should be acting in the interests of shareholders, there has been considerable debate about the assignation of moral responsibility to organisations (Moore, 1999). There is general support in the literature for some degree of responsibility although this is not the same as, and probably weaker than, that attached to individuals (Crane and Matten, 2004). Moral responsibility is rooted in a long and diverse philosophical tradition. Frankena (1980) points to two important traits; “rationality” – refraining from impulsiveness, care in mapping out alternatives and consequences, clarity about goals and purposes, attention to details of implementation, and “respect” – having a special awareness of and concern for the effects of one’s decisions and policies on others. This highlights two particular issues of significance to marketers and companies operating within a children’s market. The duty of care (concern for others in their decision making), and the duty of respect (acknowledging the limitations and vulnerability of others, and of not exploiting them). The importance of caring for others has strong moral philosophical underpinning. Ross (1938), cited in Laczniak (1983), contended that we are bound by what he called “‘prima facie duties’”, moral duties or obligations incurred above and beyond the law that should be weighed up and prioritised in any ethical decision. Three of his main categories of duties have some relevance to issues of care within the toy industry. (1) Duties of beneficence. – Resting on the notion that actions taken can improve the intelligence, virtue, or happiness of others. For example, marketing toys that provide enjoyment or challenge for children, or that can develop their physical and mental agility. Care might also involve wider duties to other consumers (such as parents), to those who manufacture the toys, and to the wider community (on issues such as environmentalism). (2) Duties of fidelity. – Including the duty to honour contracts, keep promises, to tell the truth and redress wrongful acts. In a marketing context, this may include for example, commitment to quality and safety standards, maintaining rigorous

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warrantee, servicing and after-sales programmes, and refraining from deceptive or misleading promotional campaigns. (3) Duties of nonmaleficence (noninjury). – A duty not to injure people through, for example, shoddy or unsafe products, or insufficient instructions, information and warnings. This could relate not only to physical harm but also to relational stress within families caused by pester power or peer pressure. A more contemporary focus on benevolence has been developed around the ethic of care that also emphasises the caregiver’s responsibilities to care for others. Leidtka (1996) contends that the ethic of care is clearly consistent with Kant’s (1785) second formulation of the “Categorical Imperative” that calls for treating people as ends, and not merely means. This might suggest that it is unethical to manipulate children or encourage them to pressurize their parents to buy products for them, because they would be treated as merely a means to an end. Leidtka therefore advocates that we view each member of society as worthy of equal respect and consideration, and respond to the unique needs they bring with them. There is general agreement in the ethics literature that young children are a vulnerable community. Brenkert in Hartman (1998, p. 515) defines vulnerability as being “susceptible to some harm or other”. “One can be vulnerable to manmade or natural harms” or to “harms from actions or omissions” (Goodin, 1985). In either case, Brenkert contends that the threatened harm is to one’s “welfare” or “interests”. Paine (1984) argues that a child’s vulnerability stems from immature conceptions of self, time and money, meaning that they lack the capacity for critical reflection, consequently know very little about their own wants and preferences, or about the rational mobilization of their economic resources to satisfy them. Despite worthy attempts to chart how children’s consumer skills and knowledge develop as they mature (Selman, 1980; John, 1999), there are differences of opinion about the age at which such skills develop sufficiently for children to understand marketing purpose, therefore enabling them to make rational decisions about products, value, and promotions. There are common references made to children “getting older, younger”, pointing to their increasing sophistication that some argue it is often underestimated (Furnham, 2000; Goldstein, 1999). Mintel’s (1998) research on marketing to children, however, whilst acknowledging a trend that children are changing, tellingly concluded that: . . .it is clear that beneath all the layers of supposed sophistication, they are not mini-adults, but children, with limited experience of the world.

The vulnerability of children leads to particular moral responsibilities. From an ethical standpoint, Rawls (1971) argued in his “principle of difference” that priority should be given to those disadvantaged in society. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle (384-322 BC) pointed to the limitations of children; “. . .thus children and animals are as capable of voluntary action as adult men; but they do not have the same capacity for deliberate choice”. Other contemporary studies have also highlighted that young children are particularly vulnerable (Mazis et al., 1992; Cohen, 1974), that they need to be treated as a special group in different ways to normal (adult) customers (Brenkert, 1998), and that

marketers do have a special responsibility towards the vulnerable (Andreasen, 1975; Goodin, 1985). Brenkert (1998) contends that marketing to the vulnerable therefore requires marketing campaigns to be carefully designed to ensure that these individuals are not treated unfairly (and thus possibly harmed). Any programmes that violate this, he argues, are both unethical and unscrupulous.

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389 Methodology This paper reports and discusses the qualitative findings from in-depth interviews held between April 2003 and April 2004 with senior managers (Heads of Marketing, Marketing Directors and Managing Directors) in 12 leading UK-based toy companies, and 2 representatives from the industry association (the British Toy and the Hobby Association) and its governing council, to determine how they viewed their moral responsibilities and how these impacted on their marketing decisions and policies. A particular emphasis was placed on how they demonstrated care towards children and others and the ways in which they accounted for their vulnerabilities. Companies were selected from the top 25 companies by market share (NPD data, December, 2002) and included a number of long-established brands, some of the fastest growing companies in the industry and others who are market leaders within their toy sectors. A list of participant companies is given in Table I. A qualitative methodological approach was selected for the research, as the study of any aspect of ethics in business is a sensitive and complex issue. The complexity derives from the unstructured nature of the ethical dilemmas themselves, the multiple roles of the individual in the organizational setting and the differing value systems present at personal, group and institutional level (Liedtka, 1992). Whilst recognising the criticisms of the qualitative approach in terms of issues of reliability, consistency and interpretation of the data, such limitations were outweighed by the benefits of being able to explore and probe the different behaviours and decisions of organisations in an area such as consumer vulnerability that has not been researched extensively and as yet, is inadequately understood (Smith and Cooper-Martin, 1997). The personal interview has long been recognized as one of the primary methods for pursuing research in the social sciences. Liedtka (1992) argues that along with participant observation, it forms the cornerstone of a tradition of qualitative research and that it is particularly appropriate for the kind of exploratory and complicated theory-building research that ethical decision-making, as a topic, represents. A growing number of studies of ethical decision-making in business organizations have therefore used this approach (Bird and Waters, 1987; Jackall, 1988; Liedtka, 1989). Company Mattel Hasbro Vivid imaginations LEGO Tomy Leapfrog

Early learning centre Zapf creations Racing champions Int. Binney & Smith (Crayola) BRIO Flair

Table I. Toy company sample

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Toy story – sea change or Potemkin village? In discussing the findings from the research, the three duties suggested by Ross will be used as a framework for evaluating the toy companies’ comments and actions with regard to caring, and to respecting children’s vulnerability. These will be discussed and considered against other documentary findings.

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Duties of benevolence Many of the toy companies interviewed had written statements of their values and philosophy highlighting a focus on quality and safety, and intention to deliver play value, fun, and learning to children. Some indicate a clear intention of behaving ethically in their activities. For these organisations ethics seems to be both about ethical actions and ethical principles. A selection is given in Table II. All of the companies interviewed talked passionately about their brand offerings and the investments they put into developing them for the benefit of children and their parents. One manager commented: . . .we want people to know that [our] toys. . .are the best toys in the world, they are good value for money from a reputable company, they are well made, well constructed, well The LEGO company (www.lego.com) – philosophy and values

Mattel (www.mattel.com) – code of conduct

Early learning centre (www.elc.co.uk)

Leapfrog toys (UK) ltd (www.leapfrog.com) – our approach

Table II. Extracts from values statements

Though we make toys, we are not just a toy company. Though we make money, we are not driven by profit It is the LEGO philosophy that “good play” enriches the child’s life – and its subsequent adulthood. We believe that play is the essential ingredient in a child’s growth and development. It nurtures the human spirit. It encourages imagination, conceptual thinking and creation. Play is vital in everything we do. As an organization and individually, Mattel employees are responsible for acting with integrity, treating others with dignity and respect, being honest and fair in all transactions and consistently striving to “do the right thing” We develop our toys with care to bring out the very best creativity and inspiration in children. When we design out toys we work closely with experts, child psychologists and children themselves. Together we make sure that all ELC toys are top quality, safe – and above all, lots of fun Create fresh, engaging effective learning experiences that inspire and delight kids over and over again. That is the Leapfrog promise. That is what we do by developing individualized, age-appropriate learning products for use at home or in school, around the world We are here to turn obstacles into opportunities, to turn challenges into triumphs. Leapfrog is passionately devoted to delighting and engaging big and little kids in a meaningful way that will inspire a lifelong love of learning

thought-out, well researched, and that time and effort has gone into putting those toys on the marketplace.

Many participants seemed very conscious of the added social responsibilities of having children as their main consumers and that “you have to do the right thing . . . ”. At the same time, less philanthropically, they were also aware that, “. . .if you do not, you will be found out”, and the possible negative publicity and damage to the brand that this might generate. For some, it was important that their values were widely communicated through advertisements, web sites, brochures, and packaging but others believed that it was better to let the values speak for themselves, through appropriate actions. A number of the managers talked about their social responsibility in encouraging children’s play recognising a trend of children doing less exercise, having fewer hobbies and spending increasing amounts of time in front of TV and computer screens. The companies encouraged play in different ways; through extensive product development and testing in some cases (Mattel’s play laboratory), through on-pack information (Brio), through web sites (for example, Leapfrog’s tips for selecting the right toy and Fisher Price’s play tips), and through hands-on play (Early Learning Centre’s Tuesday play sessions). It was also acknowledged that the industry body, the British Toy and Hobby Association, also played an important role in producing consumer leaflets and working with pre-school associations, disadvantaged children, and other consumer groups. These activities seem to demonstrate that some responsible marketing practice is going on in the industry in facilitating parents’ role in encouraging play and ultimately in enriching children’s early years. For some companies, care for consumers and other stakeholders such as employees has come at a cost. Lego, which one company manager described as “the most ethical of toy companies”, seems to have almost put ethical before economic responsibility. While the family structure of the company has enabled them to take this stance, their investment in toy research, quality, and safety, and maintaining European production when rivals were moving to the Far East, has led them into severe financial difficulties forcing them to downsize their labour force and leading to a non-family member leading the company for only the second time in their 72-year history (Bridge, 2004). Perhaps this case emphasises the importance of getting the right balance between sound ethics and adequate profitability. Not all the participants however believed that Lego’s precarious position was due to their ethical stance, but rather it was a result of their unwise diversity into new product areas, thereby losing their core focus on their building bricks range. A number of the companies had developed schools programmes. Some admitted that their purpose was building brand awareness with children but others viewed them as a form of cause-related marketing that offered the opportunity for added learning to the National Curriculum. It was claimed, for example, that Zapf’s programme was encouraging sharing and giving (through play with dolls), Hasbro’s “Junior Engineer of the Year” competition was generating interest in building and engineering, Leapfrog’s products were helping slower learners to read and comprehend text, whilst a variety of other schools competitions (designing posters, board games and colouring) were encouraging creativity. This form of activity does raise some important issues. Are schools allowing these “commercial” activities because of their worth as learning tools, or because of their impoverished state and the need for additional funding

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and equipment? And if it is the latter, who has the responsibility? The company for making the offer or the school for accepting it? There is probably some share of the responsibility but one manager was keen to pass the blame: Schools benefit in the long run and I think it is up to schools to monitor how much they are prepared to prostitute their kids and [up to] the parents who end up paying for it.

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All the respondents expressed a concern about toys that led to violent or aggressive play in children, perhaps mindful of realties and brutalities of modern day conflicts. Although none of the sample sold imitation guns, company views ranged from those who would not even include a cowboy picture in their colouring books to those that sold licensed products based on film, television programme and book characters that would be likely to lead to mock fighting. These latter products were justified on the basis that these were fictitious characters and that hero role-play and mock fighting, particularly for boys, were natural and even healthy forms of children’s play. How this differs from the “unhealthy” role-playing of soldiers was not clear. For some companies, consumer care was as much about service support as about product. All had consumer helplines that were considered to be an important point of consumer contact for providing advice, repair and spare parts queries, and handling complaints. Several managers talked about the importance of “going the extra mile”, the handling of complaints seriously and personally, and the goodwill generated from this. One company recognising the importance of a doll and its relationship to a child offered a repair facility that they termed the “dolls hospital” and returned the repaired product direct to the child, with a personal message noting how brave the doll had been during its time at the hospital. Other companies demonstrated a broader care to the community through product development with the disabled (Tomy and the National Institute for the Blind), raising money for children’s charities (ELC and the NSPCC), local community activities (Hasbro and local schools), and encouraging academic research into toys (BRIO and LEGO). Not all such activities were publicized because these were not seen as part of their brand marketing. While some of the companies were keen to promote their ethical credentials (Table II), one manager, who had faced a difficult decision in closing a European production plant, pointed to the pressures that being perceived as ethical put on some companies: If you promote the ethical values too far, it is easy to find fault. . .to be shot down. There are very few companies that could be whiter than white in every area.

Duties of fidelity Unsurprisingly, there was a general consensus that nearly all toy companies act responsible, but that the industry was sometimes let down by a few rogue traders, who were often not members of the official trade body. It was felt that the industry often received unfair criticism, particularly in the media, and this was leading to the public’s negative perception of toys and toy companies. They strongly disputed accusations that many toys fail to live up to the brand promises, that toy companies are ripping-off consumers through exorbitant prices, exploiting those who manufacture their toys, or trying to bypass parents by targeting children directly and thereby encouraging pester power.

The respondents claimed that their products always lived up to the brand promises:

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Toys always do what they say on the box. . .One wouldn’t put on the box anything it wouldn’t do. That would be absolutely shooting yourself in the foot!

A number referred to their long history (five of the companies had been producing toys for over 70 years) arguing that they would not have survived that long without their products meeting consumer expectations. On pricing, the average selling price of a toy that has fallen from £11.50 in 1995 to £8.53 in 2002 and the companies generally felt consumers were getting excellent value for money. New technology was having an impact on pricing in the industry and leading to the introduction of some higher priced toys but consumers were still getting “a lot of product for their money”. One company mentioned that it had not had a price increase for seven years. Market competition, the power of large retailers and demands from consumers for value were claimed to be keeping prices (and margins) low but this was not always seen as beneficial for the consumer in the long run, as one director commented: I am not sure I am in favour of this rampant consumerism. It’s all very well saying we are driving down prices and the consumer is benefiting. I am not sure that is a proven case because you are removing the fuel of innovation, “money”, removing a considerable amount of choice and driving lots of small manufacturers and retailers out of business.

Although the companies argued that their prices were fair and that the consumer gets a good deal, this is not necessarily the case. In 2002, the Office of Fair Trading fined one of the leading toy companies (and one of the sample) £15.59 million (reduced to £6.9 million for cooperating with the inquiry) for fixing its prices with both wholesalers and retailers to keep them artificially high (Rankine, 2004). Although the company responded by dismissing the managers concerned, the doubt lingers about the possibility of other such incidents that have not come to light. It also raises an interesting question about individual versus company responsibilities and how far companies need to monitor the day-to-day actions of their managers. With regard to the broader areas of care and social responsibility, nearly all the companies interviewed had moved most of their manufacturing to the Far East, to reduce their cost base. The managers appeared conscious of adverse criticism that any exploitation, in terms of wages, working conditions or the use of child labour, might attract and generally welcomed the introduction of the new International Congress of Toy Industries (ICTI) code by all the major toy industry bodies around the world that requires the regular, independent auditing of all toy factories. By the end of 2004, around 80 per cent of all global toy production should be regulated by the code (British Toy and Hobby Association, 2004). A number of managers believed that ethical manufacture and environmental considerations were more of concern to retailers than to most consumers who they claimed “. . .don’t really care where the toy is made or who makes it”. Whilst many of the larger retailers send their own teams out on regular factory inspection visits, several managers considered that most consumers would assume that the big brands are ethically manufactured and that only a small minority would be concerned about worker exploitation or the materials that toys are made from. There is some evidence that the ICTI code is required. Reports by the American-based National Labor Committee (2002a, b) have highlighted that the industry urgently needs

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such reforms, citing a number of examples of worker exploitation in China by some of the biggest toy manufacturers. There is also a question about the motives for the introduction of the code by the industry. Is it to make the industry one of the best in world for employee welfare as is claimed or is it to reduce the number of overseas audit visits being carried out by the major toy retailers? On environmental issues there is some contention about toy companies’ care for the planet. Toys have generally moved away from traditional materials such as wood to plastics that are now used in around 80 per cent of all toys (Ethical Consumer, 2002). Plastics have not only a higher environmental impact because they use more natural resources, but they are also harder to dispose of. Toys also still tend to use a lot of packaging for display rather than protection purposes, leading to further waste. Another feature of today’s toys is that many incorporate electronics and therefore rely on battery power. Each year 600 million domestic batteries are consumed in the UK contributing up to 40,000 tons of toxic waste to landfill sites (Ethical Consumer, 2002). Whilst the toy industry only accounts for a proportion of this, it does not appear to have heavily encouraged the use of rechargeable units or sought alternative energy power sources. In the promotional area, there has been much criticism about children’s exposure to advertising. A report by Neilson Media (2004) has claimed that a British child might be exposed to as many as 20,000 commercials a year. Television advertising remains an important tool for the larger toy companies, particularly around Christmas, but what they spend on this medium appears to be falling in favour of a more integrated mix that includes children’s magazines, clubs, web site development, schools promotions, PR (competitions) and point of purchase activities. The managers drew attention to the stringent controls governing television advertising and to the few complaints about toy advertising received by the Independent Television Commission (ITC) over the last five years. A number defended their tactic to target children through advertising, pointing to children’s rights to information and to opinions. But, on the subject of the toy pre-Christmas advertising blitz, one manager was honest enough to admit that: . . .I think if I was a parent, I would find it very irritating and they [children] want so much and they don’t realise the value of everything they need.

None of the companies denied the existence or the influence of children’s pester power. Whilst a few were quick to point out parental shortcomings and lifestyle changes, a number argued that the phenomenon was just a normal extension of the negotiating process that regularly goes on between parents and children. Some managers denied that advertising particularly fuelled the pestering: . . .of course there is pester power but if you remove advertising, will pester power disappear? Of course it won’t . . .because we live, children live in a very commercially active world.

So if toy companies are using the pestering power of children to gain sales, is this morally unacceptable? Based on the earlier discussion of the need to treat children as ends, and not merely means to an end, pester power would not be acceptable as a marketing tool. Through encouraging pestering, they may also be putting additional and unfair pressure on family relationships, taking advantage of parental inclinations to want to make their children happy and to help them socialize in their peer group. This could be viewed as taking advantage of parental as well as child vulnerability.

Duties of nonmaleficence The priority of all the leading brands interviewed was to produce toys that were both very safe and of high quality. It was unanimously felt that toy safety legislation in Europe was strict and effective, and was constantly being tightened. Some companies nevertheless argued that their own standards exceeded the legal requirements and believed this to be integral to the trust and loyalty in their brands: We go over and above to make sure that our products are built, manufactured in the right way, because if we do not we lose 40 or 50 years of all the hard work that we have built up in actually establishing our brands, because they are our lifeblood.

The strong safety record of toys was commonly mentioned and when there had been incidents, the industry has been quick to react to withdraw products and to handle recalls swiftly and professionally. Where there had been rare cases of injuries or fatalities, it was claimed that these normally involved serious abuse of the toy, often with parental neglect involved. The toy industry also believes it helped the prevention of harm by offering a good level of information and advice to consumers. One particular example cited concerned the age-appropriateness of toys with all toy packaging clearly indicating the age range suitability of the toy or game. Respondents also pointed to clear warnings about small or detachable parts that a small child might choke on and the restriction of such toys to those under three years of age. The strong emphasis on toy safety is in the companies’ self-interest but is also being driven by forces outside the industry, in particular by pressure groups and politicians. All the toy companies in the sample have had to recall products at some stage indicating that safety and quality control standards can still be improved. Additionally, although reported incidents of injuries appear low, this does not mean that toys are safe. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (ROSPA, 2001) report that toys are involved in over 40,000 accidents in the UK each year. Although many of these accidents involve tripping over toys or babies playing with toys intended for older children, there is no room for complacency and supports the move towards the continual reappraisal of toy safety regulation and on-pack warnings. Vulnerability of children The participants appeared to have a good understanding of what motivates today’s children and the importance they attach to “being seen with the right product” and “being on-trend”. They were also aware of some of the limitations of children in terms of consumer skills and knowledge. Nearly all of the toy companies interviewed either conducted research themselves with parents and children, or subscribed to reports on children from specialist research agencies. Most of the companies did do some direct targeting of children (usually those of school age and over) and did not see this as being irresponsible if their limitations were taken into account in the marketing activities. One manager commented: . . .we take the view that children are people in their own right and okay, they may not be grown up so they are not as informed, not able to see things in their entirety and so you have to take that into account, but at the same time we would say we are helping them to make their choices in life, we are introducing them to different things in life and to growing up.

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Although acknowledging children’s vulnerability, it was not always evident, however, how they took this into account. Whether adhering to the ITC guidelines on television advertising goes far enough to protect children is debateable as is the acceptability of other more subtle marketing techniques such as special web sites for favourite characters and brands, or brand messages being relayed through schools. In the final analysis, it seems to revolve, as Kant might have said, around intention and goodwill. It is important to recognise, as many companies pointed out, that children have consumer rights but these should not be an excuse for exploitation. Perhaps targeting toy messages at only parents and other adults, as in Sweden, would be taking things to extremes as children can be toy purchasers in their own right using their own pocket money and savings. It could be argued that children are a legitimate target for toy companies if fair and appropriate marketing means are used. There is also support in the philosophical literature for companies to make profits for the greater good of society and even Ross argues for another duty of self-improvement. Conclusions The toy industry, as many industries targeting children, is full of ethical dilemmas with no clear answers, often-conflicting instructions and consequently, no easy fit of the pieces of the puzzle. Toy companies have to weigh up their moral duties and responsibilities towards all stakeholders, and that means striking a balance between what is “right and fair and just” and what works and what makes a profit. Two quotes from respondents sum up this quandary: We have to stand up and be counted, be accountable for what we do. . . I would never begin to suggest that we put social awareness before our need to be commercially successful. It’s what we are here for.

On some issues, the right or wrong decisions and actions are clear. Caring for children and respecting children’s vulnerability have a close fit, are bound by moral duties and are therefore integral pieces. Breaching laws for self-gain on the other hand is clearly unacceptable. Most of the toy companies in the sample seem to have struck a balance of responsible commercialism and their representatives were frank about the difficult choices that they have to make. Many seem to have found that there is an overlap on issues such as safety, quality and customer care that both demonstrate moral responsibility and at the same time make good marketing sense. Perhaps this marks something of a sea change. On the other hand, commercial temptations have resulted in breaches of the law, and a continuing bombardment of young children with promotional messages via television and other media might lead to the conclusion that there is still more work to be done on the social responsibility front. More research could usefully be done on exploring the consumer perspectives and particularly those of parents, to evaluate the areas where they perceive toy companies to be morally responsible or irresponsible, and to explore how important they consider the social and moral behaviour of toy companies to be in their choice of brands. If further change is to be made, it is ultimately likely to be driven by the consumer.

References Andreasen, A.R. (1975), The Disadvantaged Customer, Free Press, New York, NY. Baylis, C.A. (1958), Ethics, Henry Holt and Company, New York, NY. Beauchamp, T.L. and Bowie, N.E. (1997), Ethical Theory and Business, 4th ed., Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Bird, F. and Waters, J. (1987), “The nature of managerial moral standards”, Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 6, pp. 1-13. Bourke, V.J. (1951), Ethics, Macmillan, New York, NY. Brenkert, G.G. (1998), “Marketing and the vulnerable”, in Hartman, L.P. (Ed.), Perspectives in Business Ethics, International ed., Irwin McGraw-Hill, London, pp. 515-26. Bridge, S. (2004), “Trouble in Legoland”, Financial Mail, Mail on Sunday, 14 November, p. 8. British Toy and Hobby Association (2004), available at: www.btha.co.uk (accessed 23 May 2004). Cohen, D. (1974), “The concept of unfairness as it relates to advertising legislation”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 38, pp. 8-13. Crane, A. and Matten, D. (2004), Business Ethics, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Dibb, S., Simkin, L., Pride, W. and Ferrell, O.C. (1994), Marketing – Concepts and Strategies, 2nd European ed., Houghton Mifflin, London. Ethical Consumer (2002), “Toying with their lives”, October/November, pp. 10-15. Frankena, W.K. (1980), Thinking about Morality, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI. Friedman, M. (1970), “The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits”, New York Times Magazine, 13 September. Furnham, A. (2000), Children and Advertising, The Social Affairs Unit, London. Goldstein, J. (1999), Children and Advertising: The Research, Advertising and Marketing to Children, Advertising Association, London. Goodin, R.E. (1985), Protecting the Vulnerable, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. Jackall, R. (1988), Moral Mazes, Oxford University Press, New York, NY. John, D.R. (1999), “Consumer socialization: a retrospective look at twenty-five years of research”, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 36 No. 13, pp. 183-234. Kant, I. (1785), Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, reprinted in 1981, Hackett Publishing, Indianapolis, IN. Kline, S. (1993), Out of the Garden – Toys and Children’s Culture in the Age of Television Marketing, Verso, London. Laczniak, G.R. (1983), “Framework for analyzing marketing ethics”, Journal of Macromarketing, Vol. 1983, pp. 7-18. Liedtka, J.M. (1989), “Managerial values and corporate decision-making: an empirical analysis of value congruence in two organizations”, in Post, J. (Ed.), Research in Corporate Social Performance and Policy, JAI Press, Greenwich, CT, pp. 55-92. Liedtka, J.M. (1992), “Exploring ethical issues using personal interviews”, Business Ethics Quarterly, Vol. 2 No. 2, pp. 161-81. Liedtka, J.M. (1996), “Feminist morality and competitive reality: a role for an ethic of care?”, Business Ethics Quarterly, Vol. 6 No. 2, pp. 179-200. Mazis, M.B., Ringold, D.J., Perry, E.S. and Denman, D.W. (1992), “Perceived age and attractiveness of models in cigarette advertisements”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 56, pp. 22-37.

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Mintel (1998), Marketing to Children, March 1998, Mintel, London. Moore, G. (1999), “Corporate moral agency: review and implications”, Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 21, pp. 329-43. Murphy, P.E. and Laczniak, G.R. (1981), “Marketing ethics: a review with implications for marketers, educators and researchers”, Review of Marketing, pp. 251-66. National Labor Committee (2002a), Toys of Misery – A Report on the Toy Industry in China, January 2002. National Labor Committee (2002b), Toys of Misery, “Made in China”, February 2002. NPD Eurotoys (2002), The Official BTHA Handbook, 2004, pp. 211-18. Paine, L.S. (1984), “Children as consumers: the effects of children’s television advertising”, Business and Professional Ethics Journal, Vol. 3 No. 3, pp. 119-45. Rankine, K. (2004), “Two toy retailers lose price fix appeal”, Daily Telegraph, 15 December, p. 30. Rawls, J. (1971), A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Robin, D.P. and Reidenbach, R.E. (1993), “Searching for a place to stand: towards a workable ethical philosophy for marketing”, Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, Vol. 12, pp. 97-105. ROSPA (2001), Toy safety fact sheet: March 2001, available at: www.rospa.com/productsafety/ factsheets/toysafety.htm. (accessed 19 December 2004). Ross, W.D. (1938), The Right and the Good, Clarendon Press, Oxford. Selman, R.L. (1980), The Growth of Interpersonal Understanding, Academic Press, New York, NY. Smith, N.C. (1995), “Marketing strategies for the ethics era”, Sloan Management Review, Vol. 36 No. 4, pp. 85-98. Smith, N.C. and Cooper-Martin, E. (1997), “Ethics and target marketing: the role of product harm and consumer vulnerability”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 61, pp. 1-20. Stark, A. (1993), “What’s the matter with business ethics?”, Harvard Business Review, May/June 1993, pp. 38-48. Sternberg, E. (1994), Just Business – Business Ethics in Action, Warner Books, London. Velasquez, M.G. (1982), Business Ethics, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Further reading Key Note (2002), “Market report”, Toys and Games, London. Kram, K. and Yeager, P. (1989), “Decisions and dilemmas: the ethical dimension in the corporate context”, in Post, J. (Ed.), Research in Corporate Social Performance and Policy, JAI Press, Greenwich, CT, pp. 21-54. (Stephen Hogan is a principal lecturer at Brighton Business School where he teaches marketing, international marketing, and business ethics at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. His research interests lie in the marketing ethics area with a particular focus on children’s markets and marketing to children.)

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Ethical and social responsibility issues in grocery shopping: a preliminary typology Juliet Memery, Phil Megicks and Jasmine Williams

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University of Plymouth Business School, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, Devon, UK Abstract Purpose – Despite growing awareness of ethical and social responsibility (E&SR) issues in academia and industry, investigation of their influence on consumers’ buying decisions has been limited. To help fill this gap, this paper reports the findings of a preliminary investigation to establish the key E&SR factors affecting grocery shopping behaviour. Design/methodology/approach – The study drew upon existing literature in the areas of ethics, social responsibility, shopping and store image to identify the individual elements of E&SR. An exploratory qualitative study of E&SR consumers (E&SRC) was then conducted, using seven focus groups, and a typology of key factors of concern to these consumers was derived from analysis. Findings – The findings identify seven core categories, containing seventy-one sub-categories. These interlink to form three main clusters: food quality and safety, human rights and ethical trading, and environmental (green) issues. Shoppers trade off these E&SR factors against standard retail purchasing factors, in particular convenience, price and merchandise range when deciding which shops to use and what products to buy. Research limitations/implications – The typology derived from this exploratory research may be used alongside conventional store image factors in future research, to help predict those factors that influence purchasing behaviour. Similarly, it may assist brand and retail managers in profiling, and meeting the needs of, E&SRC. Originality/value – The research distinguishes differences in how shopper types vary in their behaviour, and proposes a set of implications for managers of the research and areas for further investigation. Keywords Ethics, Social responsibility, Stores and supermarkets, Shopping, Corporate image Paper type Research paper

Introduction Ethics and social responsibility (E&SR) in relation to grocery shopping is an intriguing, but as yet indistinct concept. Although much work has been carried out into the effects of E&SR on various consumers, or in particular situations, no-one as yet has defined or grouped these factors into a typology for future use. Definitions to date have been linear in structure, and refer to ethics as being concerned with “moral principles” (Crane and Ennew, 1995, p. 185; Liedtka, 1998, p. 255) and the “determination of right and wrong” (Ferrell et al. 1989, p. 56). Similarly, social responsibility is defined as aiming to “protect and improve the social quality of life” (Davis, 1975, p. 24), and “the set of generally accepted relationships, obligations and duties that relate to . . . the welfare of society” (Robin and Reidenbach, 1987, p. 45). While these definitions describe theoretically what the terms mean, it is unclear how they actually translate into practice. This study therefore aims to expand on them by creating a typology of

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the E&SR concerns that interrelate in the minds of consumers when making grocery shopping decisions. Ethical and socially responsible shopping In a period when researchers in the field are re-opening the debate regarding the theory of shopping (Woodruffe-Burton et al., 2002), it is timely to consider the role of consumers’ perceptions of E&SR issues, and the way that they are influenced by the marketing of retailers. E&SR issues appear to straddle all three dimensions of the framework that authors present as a basis for the conceptualisation of shopping in modern society i.e. the shopping environment (place and space), the socio-cultural context of shopping, and the roles, motivations and behaviour of individuals. Indeed, the key principles expounded in the seminal note of Tauber (1972) which broadens the concept of shopping beyond its original functional or “provisioning” purpose (Miller, 1998), suggest that research into E&SR could provide useful insights into personal and social motives of shopping activity. Additionally, exploring the interface between the reasons for shopping, and retailers’ marketing behaviour, in terms of E&SR factors, should provide a stronger platform from which to develop appropriate responses to customers’ concerns. Many of the studies on ethical and socially responsible shopping and consumer behaviour have been undertaken in order to explain awareness of E&SR issues: firstly in relation to demographic and socio-economic measures such as age, gender etc. (Schlegelmilch et al., 1994); and secondly in terms of personality characteristics such as locus of control, alienation, conservatism and dogmatism (Kinnear et al., 1974; Crosby et al., 1981; Balderjahn, 1988). Rather fewer have looked at the factors that affect consumer buying behaviour, with those studies that have, concentrating either on one issue of concern, e.g. recycling (Hopper and Nielson, 1991), container laws (Gill et al., 1986), or else on one product category, e.g. nappies (Follows and Jobber, 2000), cosmetics and toiletries (Prothero and McDonagh, 1992; Prothero, 1996). This approach assumes that consumers only consider one factor at a time, whereas in reality, of course, there may be many influences affecting a variety of product areas. To date, however, there has been no comprehensive investigation of the wide-ranging set of E&SR factors that may influence shopping. The purpose of this research is to start to fill this gap by identifying the E&SR factors that influence the essential household activity of grocery shopping, and building a typology to classify these. Store image factors Martineau (1958, p. 47) initially embarked on conceptualising a store image construct after questioning what drew a shopper to one store rather than another. He identified “. . . a force . . . besides the obvious functional factors of location, price ranges, and merchandise offerings”, and concluded that it was the “personality” of the store which made the difference. Kunkel and Berry (1968) believed that an image is acquired through experience and thus learnt, and found retail store image to be the total conceptualised or expected reinforcement that a person associates with shopping at a particular store. Subsequently Lindquist (1974) examination of prior literature proposed the concept of an all-inclusive but multi-faceted attitude and image attribute. While many different approaches have been used by researchers to measure the construct of store image and establish how it is placed in consumers’ minds

(Dornoff and Tatham, 1972; Lessig, 1972; Schiffman et al., 1977; Doyle and Fenwick, 1974; Stanley and Sewall, 1976; Kunkel and Berry, 1968; Dash et al., 1976a, b; James et al., 1976), most have focused on parts of the image, rather than the whole. Zimmer and Golden (1988), however, took a different approach, focussing on consumers’ unprompted descriptions of image, without directing them towards affective dimensions or specific attributes. Thus these researchers argued that their results captured more deeply consumers’ evoked retail store image. Such retail image factors are intrinsic to store and product choice decisions, and therefore need to be explored in conjunction with E&SR factors. In order to do this, a similar typology of E&SR components needs to be compiled. To determine the domain of our research, the characteristics and behaviours of consumers concerned with E&SR issues were initially identified from previous research. Profile of the ethical and socially responsible consumer A variety of terms have been used to classify consumers into “groups” according to their specific E&SR concerns. Those concerned with the impact of economic activity on the natural environment have been classified as “environmentally conscious, concerned, responsible” (Ellen et al., 1991; Murphy et al., 1978; Van Liere and Dunlap, 1980; Samdahl and Robertson, 1989; Berger and Corbin, 1992); or “green” (Prothero, 1990; Roberts, 1996), and “ecologically concerned” (Kinnear and Taylor, 1973; Balderjahn, 1988; Schwepker and Cornwell, 1991). Consumers concerned not only with the environment, but also with consumerism and community activism, have been similarly categorised, as “socially conscious, concerned, responsible” (Anderson and Cunningham, 1972; Webster, 1975; Murphy et al., 1978; Belch, 1982; Berkowitz and Lutterman, 1968). Finally the term “ethical consumer” (Strong, 1996; Shaw and Clarke, 1999; McEachern and McClean, 2002) reflects concerns with the deep seated problems of the world, e.g. Third World poverty, in addition to general environmental issues. As one of this study’s main aims is to explore and identify all these areas, subjects are grouped together and treated as one, referred to as “ethical and socially responsible consumers”. Early research on the “socially conscious consumer” (Anderson and Cunningham, 1972; Webster, 1975) tried to relate socio-demographics variables such as age, gender etc., to environmental concern, focusing on consumer attitudes and behaviour towards symptoms of environmental decline such as pollution, recycling and waste disposal. Demographic variables differentiated between high and low socially responsible consumers, though socio-psychological variables gave much greater insight. Kinnear et al. (1974) research included measures of actual behaviour, and found, like Anderson and Cunningham (1972) and others (Schwepker and Cornwell, 1991; Minton and Rose, 1997), that personality variables were better predictors of environmental concern than socio-demographics alone. On balance the literature has identified ethical and socially responsible consumers as being younger, well-educated, middle to upper class (Kinnear et al., 1974; Arbutnot, 1977; Van Liere and Dunlap, 1980), and predominantly female (Balderjahn, 1988; Prothero, 1990; Roberts, 1996). In addition, Peattie (1995) found lifestyle to have an influence on environmental concern, for example on families with young children. E&SRC tend to be more involved in community activities (Webster, 1975), and willing to help others even if there is no personal gain (Anderson and Cunningham, 1972).

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Their attitudes express concern for both the environment and society’s well-being (Kinnear et al., 1974), and their behaviour is strongly influenced by the belief that they can combat these problems (Kinnear and Taylor, 1973; Hines et al., 1986/1987; Balderjahn, 1988; Ellen et al., 1991; Berger and Corbin, 1992).

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Methodology The limited research to date indicated the use of focus groups as appropriate for exploratory data collection. This method has been used in previous studies into specific aspects of E&SR, e.g. purchase intentions of ecologically safe products (Amyx et al., 1994); the conceptualisation of marketing ethics (Thompson, 1995); and environmentally responsible purchase behaviour (Follows and Jobber, 2000). Predominant characteristics of the E&SRC identified from the literature were used to define and recruit a purposive quota sample. The recruitment questionnaire contained six filter questions relating to ethical behaviours, adapted from previous studies (Owen and Scherer, 1993; Beer, 1997). We recruited a sample with some knowledge of E&SR concerns to enable the focus groups to advance the specific research aims. Seven focus groups were conducted in market towns and cities in South West England, the demographics of which are displayed in Table I. The groups’ size averaged seven respondents. Several structured questions initiated discussions, following the guidelines of Krueger (1998), to establish respondent shopping behaviours such as frequency, location, etc. After this, discussion became less structured, but was directed towards influences on shopping behaviour in the form of both E&SR factors (derived from the broad literature base) and traditional store image factors (from Zimmer and Golden, 1988 classification). Each session was tape recorded and transcribed; these transcripts were then manually coded. Content analysis was considered appropriate to the nature of the data, and one that Malhotra and Birks (2003, p. 248) identify as “well suited for the observation of communication”. Key findings The qualitative analysis identified seventy-one individual codes, being the smallest units of analysis (Strauss and Corbin, 1998, pp. 104-105). Examination of the relationships between these led to the development of seven over-arching categories

Table I. Profile of focus group respondents

No. Location

ACORN type Gender Age (yrs) Dependent children SE status Tenure

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Students C.8.21 A.1.5. D.10.30 B.5.13 E.11.33 C.6.16

Plymouth (C) Plymouth (C) Chudleigh (MT) St Austell (MT) Westbury (MT) Exeter (C) Bristol (C)

Notes: MT ¼ Market Town, C ¼ City

Mixed Male Female Female Female Female Female

20-24 25-44 35-44 25-34 45-54 35-44 55-64

No No Yes Mixed No Yes No

C2DE AB ABC1 C1C2 ABC1 C2DE ABC1

Rented Owned Owned Owned Owned Rented Owned

relating to E&SR in grocery shopping (ibid, pp. 124-126; Miles and Huberman, 1994, p. 208). Table II identifies the complete list of codes contained in each category, and proposes a preliminary typology of E&SR influences on grocery shopping. Examination of the linkages between these seven categories allowed for further refinement of the data into three broad clusters (Miles and Huberman, 1994, p. 250). The predominant cluster is concerned with food quality, taste and safety, and links four of the E&SR groups depicted in Table II. Animal welfare, honest labelling, and advertising and promotions are all independently connected to the pivotal category of food, drink and product safety. First, in relation to animal welfare, there are both positive and negative links with the quality, taste and safety of the products which are consumed, e.g. free-range eggs, organic products. The positive links are with taste and quality: I get free range eggs. . . from the farm, so I know they’re free range. . . much cheaper and much fresher. . . also the fruit and veg (Group 7).

The most important negative factors, which may lead to product aversion, relate to product safety (such as not buying beef during the BSE crisis): If we extend legislation which covers consumer safety and public protection. . . more fully, then we may have a health warning about meat, and extend it to animal cruelty and so on (Group 2).

In the case of mothers with families, the provenance, safety and healthiness of foodstuffs given to their children were of particular concern. As one young mother put it: It’s my choice what I put into my mouth, but it’s also my choice what I put in my children’s, and it’s probably more important when they are younger to have the best of what they can, really (Group 4).

This concern about knowing the provenance and content of foodstuffs links product safety with honest labelling, for example the perceived illegibility and lack of clarity of labelling: When they were going on about all this GM stuff you couldn’t actually find out from the labels if it had the product or not . . . I like to know what my little girl is eating (Group 5). God knows what they did to it (foodstuff). I mean, how does anyone know what they are buying? (Group 3).

Lack of promotion of organic/“healthy” products (such as fresh fruit and vegetables), as opposed to aggressive promotion of less healthy alternatives (e.g. products with high fat/salt/sugar content), are seen as encouraging consumers to choose less healthy options: How many promotions do you get on the fruit and veg, and all of the good things? (Group 3). They never do (promotions) on the organic veg. if they had “buy” one get one half price maybe more people would try it (Group 4).

Finally, unethical advertising/promotions, such as the targeting of children, are again linked with product safety e.g.:

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Food, drink and product safety

404 Animal welfare

Honest labelling

Advertising and promotions

Ethical trading

Human rights

The environment

Table II. Preliminary typology of E&SR grocery shopping factors

BSE in cattle GM foods Additives, preservatives, artificial colours/flavouring in food Salmonella Pesticides on food Product-associated health concerns Organically reared/free range meat/poultry/eggs Feeding antibiotics/hormones Bi-products fed to animals Live animals/travel to slaughter Animal testing. Dolphin-friendly tuna Nutritional content/values Small-print legibility Unclear ingredients Understandable use of language Allergy warnings Country of origin Unethical targeting of children False representation of products Unequal spend on healthy food adverts Unequal promotions on organic/healthy produce Intrusive advertising Traceability of supply chain Community involvement Supporting the local economy Selling local/British produce Parent friendly layout Consistent lay-out Fair pricing policies across stores Company responsibility Fair pricing of organic/healthy produce Fair profit margins Fair prices for suppliers Ethical practices Trustworthiness Fair trade price/working conditions Equal employment opportunities/pay Power of retailers Ease of access Employee welfare Child labour Sustainable forests Intensive farming Organically produced Over-packaging Distribution – pollution Recycling facilities Recyclable/biodegradable/re-usable products/packaging Greenhouse effect; the ozone layer

The fat content, the way it is laid out on the back of packaging. Supermarkets can be quite misleading, and I think that’s intentional. I think advertising . . . has to be fairly well monitored, how they put the product across. Yes, that Sunny Delight stuff, they throw that at children, don’t they? They may as well have a bag of sugar (Group 6).

Ethical and social responsibility

The second cluster combines the two most closely linked categories: human rights and ethical trading. Indeed, the concept of “fairness” as a tenet of ethical and socially responsible company behaviour i.e. fair trade pricing/profit margins and working conditions for employees, is common to both categories, generating a considerable degree of overlap:

405

Supermarkets actually giving fair prices to the suppliers, rather than squeezing them to make a bigger profit, or to get a bigger market share for themselves and not actually taking responsibility for the price they fix. Being responsible to the community that they offer their goods to. To employ people from, or to give people in that community the opportunity to be employed. Also to make sure they are being paid a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work (Group 2).

Close-to-home concerns were more prevalent than global ethical trading issues, and the theme above was associated with the notion of supporting the local economy and buying local, or at least British, products: I like to see a lot of British products. I will by those in preference wherever possible. (P). . . I like to support local producers. Definitely national, but more local than that where possible (Group 2).

The final “cluster” of E&SR factors consists of the single environmental (green) category, including the sale of biodegradable and recyclable products, and relating in particular to packaging and recycling issues: Why do they have to do three layers of plastic just to wrap something up? Why can’t they make it more simple?. . . I mean we all talk about recycling and in Chudleigh we have quite nice facilities, and it does bring to the forefront what you are going to do with all that packaging (Group 3). How do you get rid of your packaging. . . I mean the polystyrene is very difficult to get rid of (Group 6).

These concerns link back to the ethical trading issues in the second cluster, in that they include several factors relating to the additional pollution created by transporting products over long distances, and therefore support the earlier “buy local” theme: I think if you could buy from England, like I do, there must be less pollution from travelling, rather than having been on an aeroplane or boat, and then driven in from Dover or Plymouth (Group 7).

The main relationships between categories can be conceptualised as in Figure 1. To contextualise these influences on shopping behaviour, however, it must be said that conventional store image criteria still predominate in decision making, even among this population of E&SRC. Content analysis of transcripts illustrated, for example, that 70 per cent of the mentions of reasons for store/product choice represent conventional factors, the most prevalent of which are convenience, price and range.

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Figure 1. Proposed relationships between E&SR categories

Indeed, these three concerns between them constituted 30 per cent of mentions, on a par with all of the ES&R factors put together. A technique used early in the discussions involved respondents generating issues important to them in store and product choice; these were simultaneously noted on a flip-chart by the moderator, and later categorised according to store image or E&SR. One respondent’s reaction to this sums up the predominance of conventional factors: I think that as a group we are not particularly socially responsible in the fact that we have got only nine factors there (E&SR) and nineteen on the other side (store image) (Group 1).

This predominance is due to conventional store image factors being linked to the practicalities of respondents’ everyday lives: I’m too busy. I just want to go in (to the nearest supermarket) and get certain things, and I see what’s nice, and I know certain things in Waitrose I can trust, and I get them (Group 7). It goes back to logistics, doesn’t it? You have to do your shopping wherever the nearest place is (Group 6).

These factors create constraints on consumers’ actual choices, as compared to their ideal, or preferred, choices: We do try to buy organic stuff but it’s more expensive, so you have to sort of compromise on some things, because there’s myself and my husband and my two children, and it’s quite a lot to do it all (Group 4). I think about it, I’ve got to be honest, but my problem is I haven’t got the money so I can only do so much (Group 3)

Hence both store and product choices involve trading off these practical store image attributes, in particular convenience, price and range, against E&SR factors: I think it’s almost all a trade-off, depending, you have your convenience against what sort of foods you can get. Or you could trade off that you want to be a good person and buy organic or non animal-tested, and be prepared to pay over the odds. I think all shopping is done at maybe a subconscious level of what’s best, as you are never going to get everything (Group 2).

Another example illustrates the trade-off between price and food quality in the context of organic foods: There’s a trend towards more organic food from consumers, but I think that won’t become the most important thing because if you have to pay more or go out of your way to get these things. . . it’s got to be just as convenient and similarly priced otherwise it just becomes unattractive (Group 1).

Evidence of the dissonance experienced by E&SR consumers during this trading-off process recurred across the group discussions, and related to both store and product choice: I find that the Co-op’s fair trade thing does influence me. I do try and get in there more and more. And if they do get their bigger store here I am hoping that I can cut Tesco’s more and more out of the loop. And I am looking forward to that (Group 3). You just have to be selfish, and go for the cheapest option whether it’s ethical or not (Group 1). Definitely I try and avoid. . . Nestle´ products. . . but KitKats are so nice (Group 1).

This personal dissonance appears to be experienced alongside a realisation of the practicalities of grocery retailing: They are out to make money, so I guess they go to the cheapest possible supplier, to make the most profit possible, so I guess they are not really bothered about fair trade. . . the highest possible profit margin. I mean that’s what they’re there for (Group 6).

It could therefore be said that those consumers with E&SR awareness make their grocery shopping choices from a position of “enlightened self-interest” (Group 2). When conventional grocery shopping criteria and E&SR factors coincide in producers’ and retailers’ offerings, a degree of satisfaction is clearly evidenced: We should support smaller businesses and businesses that source their stock on a local level, and reduces transportation costs and pollution. That’s why they can afford to sell at a cheaper price and it’s more ethical (Group 2). I buy organic yoghurt. (P) Because it’s nice and creamy. Yeah, it tastes much better. And it’s meant to be much better for you when you’re pregnant. It’s live and that’s meant to be good for you (Group 4).”

Conclusions Our research proposes a typology of seven categories of E&SR factors that influence grocery shopping decisions, refined into three clusters: namely food quality and safety, human rights and ethical trading, and environmental (green) issues. This typology has

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proved to be an highly effective means of specifying and analysing E&SR factors of concern across focus groups comprising differing demographic consumer types, so enabling the possible adaptation of different stores or products to attract similar segments of the E&SRC market. The study also aids understanding of how these factors are interlinked in grocery shoppers’ minds, and how they relate to more conventional store image attributes. In particular, areas of dissonance experienced when trading-off convenience, price and range in particular, against consumers E&SR values, are identified. Further research Our findings suggest that there are likely variations in the degree of influence which may exist in decisions relating to store choice compared with product choice. Further research could explore this, as well as the extent of the personal influence of others. This research forms the initial stage of an extended investigation, and provides the basis for a number of more specific lines of enquiry. For example, the typology of E&SR factors offers a starting point from which a construct for measuring E&SR shopping behaviour can be developed and tested quantitatively. The extent of the influence of E&SR factors on shopping behaviour, compared to other retail image variables, can then be assessed, and the relative importance of each of the separate dimensions of the E&SR construct identified, using multivariate statistical methods. Management implications When considering the managerial implications of these findings it is important to distinguish the influence of E&SR factors on shoppers’ choice of product from those of store. In general it appears that established store image factors, particularly convenience, price and range, remain dominant, even among ethically and socially concerned shoppers, so these still need to be appropriately addressed in the first instance. Growing research interest in ethical and societal issues in marketing, as evidenced, for example, by this journal’s special issue, may well mean that, over time, other E&SR issues of concern are added to those we have identified and classified above. Meanwhile, the emerging differences in sensitivity to particular issues across the breadth of the E&SR consumers identified here should permit segmentation opportunities within the group, allowing communications to be developed for discreet segments, e.g. focussing on the provenance, nutritional benefits and safety of foodstuffs aimed at E&SR shoppers in families with children. In the short term, retailers could emphasise “healthy”, “safe” products (e.g. organic fruit and vegetables) in advertising and promotions, while manufacturers could label contents more clearly. In the longer term, this study provides a basis for developing a more sophisticated model of E&SRC segments, linking these to shopping behaviour patterns using cluster analysis. Thus grocery manufacturers and retailers will be provided with detailed information with which to develop holistic targeting and positioning strategies for each E&SRC type. Meanwhile, retail managers can perhaps be forgiven for not generating a “sea change”, in that the E&SR attitudes and values of their customers are emerging from within the broader framework of more conventional choice factors. Having said that, within the population of consumers we investigated, the “Potemkin Village” may be

seen as being erected, not by those businesses developing E&SR platforms, but by those choosing to ignore their concerns. Clarity of communications and transparent business practices are critical to increasingly discerning and sceptical shoppers. We leave the last words to some of them:

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It’s not the true price is it, when you are buying the cheapest, though? I mean I know some people have to, but it’s not the true price that you are paying. (P) The (cost to the) environment. . . how far it has travelled. . . the pollution this could cause. You don’t always have information about this though, do you? (Group 7).

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I think ethics is broadly underpinned by how you engage in business – so businesses have to make a profit and make a return, but not at the undue expense of internal or external stakeholders. . . employees, customers, the community, and the environment (Group 2).

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Murphy, P.E., Kangun, N. and Locander, W.B. (1978), “Environmentally concerned consumers – racial variations”, Journal of Marketing, pp. 61-6. Owen, C.L. and Scherer, R.F. (1993), “Social responsibility and market share”, Review of Business, Summer/Fall, pp. 11-16. Peattie, K. (1995), Environmental Marketing Management, Pitman, London. Prothero, A. (1990), “Green consumerism and the societal marketing concept: strategies for the 1990s”, Journal of Marketing Management, Vol. 6 No. 2, pp. 87-103. Prothero, A. (1996), “Environmental decision making: research issues in the cosmetics and toiletries industry”, Marketing Intelligence and Planning, Vol. 14 No. 2, pp. 19-26. Prothero, A. and McDonagh, P. (1992), “Producing environmentally acceptable cosmetics? The impact of environmentalism on the United Kingdom cosmetics and toiletries industry”, Journal of Marketing Management, Vol. 8, pp. 147-66. Roberts, J.A. (1996), “Green consumers in the 1990’s: profile and implications for advertising”, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 36, pp. 217-31. Robin, D.P. and Reidenbach, R.E. (1987), “Social responsibility, ethics and marketing strategy: closing the gap between concept and application”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 51, pp. 44-58. Samdahl, D.M. and Robertson, R. (1989), “Social determinants of environmental concern: specification and test of the model”, Environment and Behaviour, Vol. 21 No. 1, pp. 57-81. Schiffman, L.G., Dash, J.F. and Dillon, W.R. (1977), “The contribution of store-image characteristics to store type choice”, Journal of Retailing, Vol. 53 No. 2, pp. 3-14, 46. Schlegelmilch, B.B., Diamantopoulos, A. and Bohlen, G.M. (1994), “The value of socio-demographic characteristics for predicting environmental consciousness”, in Park, C.W. and Smith, D.C. (Eds), Marketing Theory and Applications: The Proceedings of the 1994 American Marketing Association’s Winter Educator’s Conference, Chicago, IL, Vol. 5, pp. 348-9. Schwepker, C.H. Jr and Cornwell, T.B. (1991), “An examination of ecologically concerned consumers and their intention to purchase ecologically packaged products”, Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, Vol. 10 No. 2, pp. 77-101. Shaw, D. and Clarke, I. (1999), “Belief formation in ethical consumer groups: an exploratory study”, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 17 No. 2, pp. 109-19. Stanley, T.J. and Sewall, M.A. (1976), “Image inputs to a probabilistic model: predicting retail potential”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 40, pp. 48-53. Strauss, A. and Corbin, J. (1998), Basics of Qualitative Research, Sage, Newbury Park. Strong, C. (1996), “Features contributing to the growth of ethical consumerism – a preliminary investigation”, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 14 No. 5, pp. 5-13. Tauber, E.M. (1972), “Why do people shop”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 36, pp. 46-9. Thompson, C.J. (1995), “A contextualist proposal for the conceptualisation and study of marketing ethics”, Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, Vol. 14 No. 2, pp. 177-91. Van Liere, K.D. and Dunlap, R.E. (1980), “The social bases of environmental concern: a review of hypotheses, explanations and empirical evidence”, Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 4, pp. 181-97. Webster, F.E. Jr (1975), “Determining the characteristics of the socially conscious consumer”, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 2, pp. 188-96. Woodruffe-Burton, H., Eccles, S. and Elliott, R. (2002), “Towards a theory of shopping: a holistic framework”, Journal of Consumer Behaviour, Vol. 1 No. 3, pp. 256-66.

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Zimmer, M.R. and Golden, L.L. (1988), “Impressions of retail stores: a content analysis of consumer images”, Journal of Retailing, Vol. 64 No. 3, pp. 265-93. (Juliet Memery is a lecturer in marketing at the University of Plymouth, and currently finishing a PhD investigating the role of E&SR issues in food and grocery shopping decisions. Before coming to Plymouth she worked in design for companies based in both Europe and Africa. Her research interests include E&SR, consumer behaviour, and decision-making in relation to consumer choices. Phil Megicks teaches marketing strategy and consumer behaviour at the University of Plymouth and has research interests in small service businesses, including retailers, and consumer behaviour in these contexts. He is particularly interested in using combined qualitative and multivariate methodologies in management research. He has responsibility for graduate studies including the Doctoral Programme in the Faculty of Social Science and Business. Jasmine Williams, before becoming a senior lecturer in marketing at the University of Plymouth, worked in the market research industry for a number of years, both managing research within client companies and as a supply-side consultant. Her research interests are ethical and socially responsible marketing and consumers, market orientation and entrepreneurial orientation in exporting small and medium-sized enterprises, and market information gathering and use in small and medium-sized companies.)

The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/1352-2752.htm

Defying marketing sovereignty: voluntary simplicity at new consumption communities Caroline Bekin, Marylyn Carrigan and Isabelle Szmigin

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The Birmingham Business School, The University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK Abstract Purpose – To broaden the scope of our knowledge of collective voluntarily simplified lifestyles in the UK, by exploring whether voluntary simplifiers achieve their goals by adopting a simpler life. Design/methodology/approach – Radical forms of voluntary simplifier groups were explored through participant-observation research. The methodology can be broadly classified as critical ethnography, and a multi-locale approach has been used in designing the field. Findings – Although for some of these consumers voluntary simplicity seems to have reinstated the enjoyment of life, certain goals remain unfulfilled and other unexpected issues arise, such as the challenges of mobility in the attainment of environmental goals. Research limitations/implications – This is an ongoing research, however many opportunities for further research have arisen from this study. Quantitative research could be undertaken on the values and attitudes buttressing voluntary simplicity specifically in the UK. The extent to which such communities influence mainstream consumers could be studied both quantitatively and qualitatively. Mainstream consumers’ attitudes to the practices of such communities could prove useful for uncovering real consumer needs. Practical implications – Despite these communities position in the extreme end of the voluntary simplicity spectrum, their role in shaping the practices and attitudes of other consumers is clear. Originality/value – This paper provides new consumer insights that can re-shape policy-making and marketing practice aimed at achieving a sustainable future. Keywords Ethics, Marketing, Consumption, United Kingdom, Lifestyles Paper type Research paper

Introduction The current marketplace no longer represents an authentic environment for all consumers. While certain companies have successfully pioneered a more ethical approach to business (e.g. the Co-op Bank, Ecover) in response to the increasingly sophisticated and principled consumer (Titus and Bradford, 1996), others have been slower to respond. Facilitated by the internet, interested consumers and resistance groups now exchange greater levels of information about brands and their producers (Szmigin, 2003; Reed, 1999). This has led to the increased scrutiny of supply chain practices of large supermarket chains (Uhlig, 2003; www.wye.org/business/directory/ wyecyclebetterworld.htm (accessed 15 July 2003)), global outsourcing and production practices (Klein, 2000; http://nologo.org/ (15 July 2004)), accountability issues (Jay, 2003), CEO packages (English, 2003; Rossingh, 2003), as well as issues directly connected to environmental degradation, such as excess consumption in developed countries (www.adbusters.org/metas/eco/bnd/ (accessed 15 July 2004); www.buynothingday.co.uk/ (accessed 15 July 2004)) for which marketing is often

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blamed, and the need for sustainable development (Cahill, 2001; www.foe.org.uk (accessed 15 July 2004); www.greenpeace.org.uk (accessed 15 July 2004)). Now companies that do not genuinely adopt more responsible and ethical marketing strategies are subject to cynicism. For some this cynicism has been galvanised into something more powerful; consumers are gradually challenging the status quo by defying corporations’ power in the marketplace and redefining their commercial relationships under more equitable terms (Szmigin, 2003). Resisting marketing’s hegemony in the marketplace has meant voluntarily simplifying their lifestyles. By withdrawing themselves (in various ways) from the traditional, marketplace-based lifestyle they feel they can achieve a less frantic, more principled (and hence satisfactory) way of life. Although voluntary simplicity has been well documented in the marketing and economics literature, the majority of studies (an exception is Shaw and Newholm (2002)) have been carried out in the US. They have largely examined individual consumer behaviour (i.e. what consumers say they do rather than how they actually behave), with less emphasis on investigating communal solutions to a simpler life. Given the limited research on this topic in Europe, the aim of this paper is to address collective voluntarily simplified lifestyles in the UK by exploring whether voluntary simplifiers achieve their goals by adopting a simpler life. In order to achieve this, radical forms of voluntary simplifier groups, conceptualised by Szmigin and Carrigan (2003) as New Consumption Communities (NCCS), were explored through participant-observation research. New insights from the findings suggest that although this model of voluntary simplicity delivers much, certain goals remain unfulfilled, while other unexpected issues arise. An overview of voluntary simplicity Leonard-Barton and Rogers (1980, p. 28) define voluntary simplicity as “the degree to which an individual consciously chooses a way of life intended to maximize the individual’s control over his own life”, and Leonard-Barton (1981, p. 244) adds “. . .and to minimize his/her consumption and dependency”. Yet, the idea of voluntary simple living is not a new phenomena; it has been advanced and practised by most religious groups, including the Puritans and Quakers (Gregg, 2003; Shi, 2003). Richard Gregg, who coined the term “voluntary simplicity” (Leonard-Barton, 1981; Leonard-Barton and Rogers, 1980; Zavestoski, 2002) argued that it involved inner values of sincerity and honesty with oneself, and avoidance of material possessions thought to distract the individual from the pursuit of his greater purpose in life (Gregg, 2003). The idea of simple living was also a feature of the counter-culture of the 1960s and 1970s. Zavestoski (2002, p. 153) argues that while the current manifestation of voluntary simplicity shares many of the characteristics of the anti-corporate, nature-focused counter-culture, it has “more to do with existential crisis than with economic crisis”. Etzioni sees voluntary simplicity as an attenuated form of the values of the counterculture, defining it as “the choice out of free will (. . .) to limit expenditures on consumer goods and services, and to cultivate non-materialistic sources of satisfaction and meaning” (Etzioni, 1998, p. 620). Although the contemporary version of voluntary simplicity may have slightly different manifestations than that of the 1960s and 1970s, its aspirations are still much the same. The 1960s was also about a fuller, more meaningful life, and rebellion against being told to consume, what to

consume, and how to consume. Since then the concept has gained varied definitions, particularly integrating voluntary simplicity into a secular world (Zavestoski, 2002). In their response to the macro goal of simplifying their lives, individual consumers have been shown to exhibit a range of micro-strategies. Shaw and Newholm’s (2002) UK study, and Dobscha’s (1998) US research present common patterns of simplifier behaviour. A simplified diet or vegetarianism are typical responses, as is increased consumption of organic produce, and avoidance of processed or genetically modified foodstuffs. Communal living presents potentially greater possibilities of ethically producing and processing one’s own food. Both studies identified transport as one of the most contentious items on the voluntary simplicity agenda; some choose public transport, cycling or walking over cars, while others would moderate their car usage or “car-share”. Yet both highlighted the difficulty of totally avoiding car usage, and the challenges this created in their search for environmentally friendly lifestyles. Again, the ability to find communal solutions to transport issues may have greater possibilities (i.e. “car-share”). Other simplifier strategies include buying second-hand products, or recycling existing products to extend the lifecycle and/or to reduce/modify/avoid consumption. How prevalent are these behaviours among community residents; are there inconsistencies in their approaches as identified by past studies? For example, in Shaw and Newholm (2002) one respondent declared that the morally right behaviour was to cycle, while spending enormous amounts of money on the best quality off-road cycle and specialist equipment. While not entirely removing themselves from the marketplace, individuals in past studies have reported avoiding marketplace interactions wherever possible, either by not using certain products, cutting usage levels, or finding alternative solutions. Again, is this behaviour reflected in community approaches to simplified living? As well as what people do, it is important to understand why they opt for this “alternative” lifestyle. .

Motivations behind voluntary simplicity Cases of downshifting and voluntary simplicity have been widely publicised in the US and to lesser extent in the UK. Numerous examples exist of people who have resigned from well paid jobs to either run less lucrative businesses from home, undertake part time work, or retrain for more “fulfilling” employment (Budden, 2000; Birchfield, 2000; Schachter, 1997; Caudron, 1996). Often these life changes are motivated by a desire to achieve a better “work-life balance”, to spend more time with children, or to reconnect with nature. These can mean enormous personal and financial adjustments, and motivations for voluntary simplicity are inextricably diverse. Indeed, individuals may adhere to its principles due to concerns as varied as the environment (Craig-Lees and Hill, 2002; Ottman, 1995), health or religion (Craig-Lees and Hill, 2002), and ethical implications of personal consumption choices (Strong, 1997; Shaw and Newholm, 2002). Elgin and Mitchell (1977) identified five underlying values as the core of the voluntarily simplified lifestyle, comprising material simplicity, a desire for human-scale structures and institutions, a desire to gain more control over own life, awareness of the interconnectedness between humans and the natural environment, and a desire to develop inward, personal growth (Leonard-Barton, 1981). Shaw and Newholm (2002) additionally highlight the important link between ethical consumption behaviour and voluntary simplicity, whereby the social and environmental impacts of

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consumption have led many ethically concerned consumers to reconsider their marketplace choices. For Zavestoski (2002) people are starting to realise that material assets cannot compensate a life of stress, unhappiness and lack of meaning, and that higher needs and a satisfying sense of self cannot be met via consumption. In fact, stress and hectic lifestyles account for much of the publicised cases on voluntary simplicity. Southerton et al. (2001) refer to the “harried and hurried” existence of many consumers who consider themselves to have insufficient time, to be always busy and unable to accomplish what is important to them. Schor (1992) argues that the proliferation of consumer goods, coupled with the importance of conspicuous consumption in defining consumer status underlies this drive to “work more to consume more”. This sense of needing new solutions to the meaningless life problem and stressed and hectic lifestyles leads us to a discussion of some of the structural drivers of voluntary simplicity. Structural drivers of voluntary simplicity Leonard-Barton and Rogers (1980) and Leonard-Barton’s(1981) definitions imply an inherent limitation on individuals’ freedom posed by the structural idiosyncrasies and powers of the market – the powerlessness over one’s own work, the product of work (production) and consumption as the only domain in which control by the individual is possible. Indeed, this is consistent with Marx’s notion of alienation; as we are what and how we produce, when we are separated from our products we are alienated from our sense of self (Zavestoski, 2002; Szmigin and Carrigan, 2003). So this loss of control over what we produce, this alienation and loss of connection with the means of production has meant that we have become, as put by Fine (1984) after Marx, wage slaves. Consumption becomes part of the alienation, as it is detached and removed from the process of production (Bocock, 1993). It is important to consider the manners in which such alienation and unbalance in the production-consumption dynamics may change due to consumers’ responses to such condition. Voluntary simplicity seems to present an alternative to the paradoxical work-to-consume ethic and the complete lack of control over production. It means regaining control or even an interest in the production side of market relationships. It means “work less, spend less, and doing things differently in a leisurely manner” (Juniu, 2000, p. 71). Despite the real or perceived fears of failure, loss of status (Hill, 2004), or decision-making power that voluntary simplicity brings (Joyner, 2001), many are willing to take the risks associated with such lifestyle changes. Voluntary simplicity: a matter of degree The extent to which individuals embrace voluntary simplicity is varied. People may retain high-profile jobs but go part-time; start their own business to achieve more rewarding employment; seek lower paid, more fulfilling or creative jobs, early retirement or volunteering. People may simply choose to reduce consumption to the “necessary”, or purchase more ethically. The forms of simplification may well derive from the varied nature of the motives behind simplification. Etzioni (1998, 2003) suggests that the intensity of voluntary simplicity ranges from moderate to extreme levels, and proposes a typology comprising three different kinds of voluntary simplicity. He defines Downshifters as the most moderate simplifiers; economically

well off who choose to give up some luxuries but not the luxurious lifestyle. It is a rather inconsistent approach as people in this group may not adhere to most of the principles of voluntary simplicity, which probably generates much scepticism. For instance, Brooks (2003) points to the rise of the American “Liberal Gentry”, for which conspicuous simplicity involves the (expensive) replacement of their old possessions for items that will symbolically represent their new simplified lifestyle. Strong simplifiers encompasses people who give up high-paying, high-stress jobs to live on much reduced incomes, early-retirement packages, or new careers in exchange for either more time or occupations that are personally more meaningful. The Simple living movement comprises the most dedicated voluntary simplifiers, those who change their lifestyles completely in order to adhere to the principles of voluntary simplicity. They often move to the countryside and are guided by an anti-consumerist philosophy. Shaw and Newholm (2002) point to the confusions in terminologies, arguing for a distinction between Voluntary simplicity (a generic term for all who voluntarily reduce income and consequently consumption for altruistic or selfish reasons), Downshifting (a version of voluntary simplicity that is self-centred and focused on resolving the unsatisfactory “hurried and harried” condition of current life), and ethical simplicity (a version of voluntary simplicity that is motivated by ethical concerns). Despite the literature to date on simplifiers, most is concerned with its American manifestation, the measurement of attitudes and values, and focused on individual consumer behaviour. In order to broaden the scope of our knowledge in this area, the present study aims to explore the behaviours of voluntary simplifiers in the UK who have intentionally chosen to live in communities that strive to achieve a better balance between the production and consumption process, i.e. the NCCs conceptualised by Szmigin and Carrigan (2003). The next section outlines the research undertaken to better explore the realities of present day voluntary simplifiers. Methodology NCCs can be viewed as a break from mainstream consumer culture, thus an appropriate method to explore them is ethnographic research (Pen˜aloza, 1994). It comprises the contextualised observation of what participants do rather than what they say they do (Robson, 1993), and considers their ability “to report fully and accurately on their behaviour” (Elliott and Jankel-Elliott, 2003, p. 215). However, as argued by Sears (1992) after Apple (1983), ethnography alone does not concede serious importance to the struggles and resistances against current ideologies which are present in the everyday lives of some groups. However, critical ethnography does (Pen˜aloza, 1994; Dey, 2002; Thomas, 1993). As with conventional ethnography, critical ethnography requires a participant-observer researcher, and is concerned with researcher subjectivity, how informants are treated and represented, and situating the study in a wider context (Pen˜aloza, 1994). Choosing the communities Three communities’ directories acted as sampling frames. Communities that presented religion as a primary focus were ruled out. Another filter was that potential research subjects be based in England for geographical proximity. Thirty-four communities were then identified as having an environmental focus, which has been deemed as an important motivation for ethical simplicity.

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Data collection and analysis Ten communities were randomly selected and contacted via e-mail, which requested the volunteering visit for research purposes. Five agreed to be researched; the other five were either not willing or did not reply. The visits began in February 2004, and ranged from three days to one week. Some communities were visited several times over an extended period, while others were visited only once. The variation, timing and duration of the visits were a result of acknowledging the sensitivities of the different communities, and their willingness to provide access. Acting as a full-time volunteer in these communities meant experiencing their life and performing a range of activities including vegetable gardening, composting and cooking. It also meant listening to conversations about positive and negative personal views of community life, and socialising at natural settings. A number of informal, short interviews were carried out. Newsletters, flyers, business brochures were collected, and the communities’ web sites were continuously analysed and checked for updates. As has been documented (Punch, 1986; Mitchell, 1993; Arnould, 1998; Jackson, 1983; Bulmer, 1982) participant-observation is not a straightforward research method, and requires a high level of ethical sensitivity about the relationships being built, and the information being communicated. Hence, the real names of the researched communities and their informants have been replaced by pseudonyms to guarantee their anonymity and preserve the rapport built to date with community members. The research findings below are taken from an ongoing study, and thus only the four most complete community studies to date are presented and contrasted in this paper. Voluntary simplicity at new consumption communities (NCCs) (Appendix) Gaining more control over their own lives Stone Hall Community presents a strong sense of self-sufficiency, which is consistent with Leonard-Barton and Rogers (1980) and Leonard-Barton’s (1981) definitions of voluntary simplicity. They have their own water spring and sewage system, composting, and wood burner heating system, reducing dependency on the local Council’s services. All members work full-time for the community running three community businesses: the holistic education centre (meditation, yoga, permaculture, healing, crafts and cooking courses, taught either by members or outside teachers), the crafts shop (selling stained glass works produced by community members, second-hand clothes, eco-friendly shampoos), and the kindergarten (for local children, run by an outside person with assistance from one community member). These community businesses, alongside their substantial production of vegetables and their participation in local bartering and exchange trading systems, allow Stone Hall to be nearly self-sufficient while still connected to wider society. Fallowfields Community is largely dependant on educational weekend workshops and their camping site rental as sources of communal income, but lately has been struggling to survive. An example is their recent need to take party-catering jobs in exchange for extra money. Sunny Valley and Woodland communities are less self-sufficient but very committed to the principles of voluntary simplicity. Sunny Valley hires their facilities out as a course venue, which brings in some (limited) income. The surrounding small cottages are sold to outsiders by the community trust, and the organisation of the local community’s composting scheme brings in some extra annual cash. They have a strong commitment to food production and making

communal income, but there is the awareness that they are still part of the wider society: Once my father turned to me and said “you know, Nicky, out there in the real world . . . ” and I said, “dad, we are also part of society”! I told him about all the book-keeping and accounting we have to do, and that once we join the co-op we all become directors. Then he started to understand that we do our own things but we are also part of the wider society (Nicky, Sunny Valley).

At Woodland the story is quite similar; there is a strong commitment to food production and environmentally sound living, but there is no sense of community business or communal sources of income. Diverse degrees of participation in the marketplace In all communities foods and other necessities that cannot be produced on site are bulk-bought. However, Woodland members do not work full-time for their community so most members hold part-time jobs. Yet unlike any other community, they will not accept outside help (i.e. current government grants for instalment of solar panels and wind turbines), even if it means being less environmentally sound: We prefer to do things ourselves, without being tied to outsiders or institutions (Rose, Woodland).

At Fallowfields members may choose to work full or part-time for the community. Such flexibility becomes a challenge for individuals’ commitments to engage in community work. This results in little food production and makes Fallowfields highly dependent on the marketplace for foodstuffs. The NCCs present different operating structures, as well as different levels of self-sufficiency and hence degrees of marketplace participation. Still harried and hurried? It would be misleading to present life at NCCs as less hectic than that of people engaged in full-time employment outside the communities, something that members become aware of even before they decide to join. It is unlikely that anyone primarily looking for more free time would want to join. At Woodland each member is expected to contribute at least 15 community-work hours a week. The researcher’s room was located in a busy hallway and it was usual to hear people discussing the tasks that still needed doing, no matter how late it was. The same is true of other communities; members may only work part-time in the marketplace but there is always a lot of work to be done and few people to do it: In the future I would like to see more people working full-time in the garden. . . But for that we need to find more members for the community (Alice, Stone Hall).

The difference from the outside world seems to lie in flexibility: people are able to work while talking to and caring for their children, and while contributing to a cause of their choice. Work as play Work is neither rushed nor efficient in these communities. There are many tea breaks and chatting while work gets done, which makes it fun and humane although

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time-consuming. At Stone Hall one experiences time differently to the outside; it is as if there is no rush in the world, and most activities can be undertaken as a playful challenge. Of course tasks have deadlines, but there is a re-organisation of time and collective distribution of tasks which makes it possible to enjoy work. It is more about restoring the enjoyment of life at work than reducing working hours. While this was not the same in all researched communities, especially Fallowfields, this light-hearted, leisurely approach to work could be due to the productive structures of these communities being legally organised as trusts, which compulsorily makes them non-profit but people- and community-oriented. Personal motivations as multidimensional constructs NCCs’ goals are diverse encompassing environmentally sound holistic education for sustainable lifestyles, peaceful living, and inner development. Nonetheless, these communities show that individuals’ personal motivations for joining vary across and within communities. Often each individual adheres to a lifestyle change due to several motives, consistent with the literature on the motivations and values underpinning voluntary simplicity. Woodland’s Louise decided to move to the community seeking a better quality of life for her child and because of her own environmental concerns. Although she misses some of her old luxuries she prefers this way of life. Daniel, also a Woodland member, is an architect. He became interested in sustainability and sustainable design at university, later he began to visit communities, coming across Woodland through his daughter’s friend. For Cynthia, a young Londoner who was visiting Sunny Valley Community, it was about reconnecting to nature and re-engaging in the production of what she consumes. At Stone Hall Community Alice praised communal living as a great environment to raise a child: To me, at the moment, the best thing about living here is that this is a great place to raise a child. There is always a lot of support and many people to help. . . I can work with Thomas around and that’s not a problem (Alice, Stone Hall).

Paula chose Fallowfields for its location, close to where her grandchildren live; Andrew is interested in integrated systems’ theories (the buttress of permaculture and sustainability), and two other temporary members are interested in organic gardening. While overall ethical concerns can be identified as personal motivators for simplified lifestyles, there are other, more self-centred drivers for the adoption of communal life, making personal motivations multidimensional constructs. Motivations impact intra-group interactions The diversity of personal motives and priorities may be an impediment to the overall purposes of the communities. As the fieldwork days passed at Fallowfields Community subgroup conflicts became more evident. In particular, temporary members believed that permanent members expected them to do most of the work: Some people have to work really hard here and get treated like garbage, while others are living a comfortable life (Philip, Fallowfields).

What really bothered Philip, a temporary member, was his perception that Fallowfields Community espoused an interest in rebuilding the community, yet were not tolerant of diversity of thoughts. He argued that temporary members felt coerced into taking part in “group therapy” activities prescribed and designed by the ruling group. Such

conflicts created a disconcerting environment. Hindering intra-group communications, they were emotionally demanding, requiring members to take sides in the conflict. The multidimensional nature of personal motivations clearly have a deep impact on community goals, practices and intra-group relationships. Ethically-simplified, production-engaged consumption strategies Numerous practices reflect simple living, concerns with the consequences of consumption behaviour, and indeed their inextricable trade-offs. Vegetarianism or reduced meat consumption are common practices. At Stone Hall meals are completely meat-free and organic, but this does not limit members’ creativity and experimentation. When purchased externally, they try to buy food which is local and organic. The major issue is fruit purchase: Two days ago I complained about the Venezuelan fruits they bought. I don’t want to eat Venezuelan fruits. I want the Venezuelans to eat Venezuelan fruits. We should be buying whatever there is here (Alice, Stone Hall).

Nevertheless, not all communities are vegetarian; wherever meat is consumed provenance is important. At Fallowfields they keep sheep for milk, but will also eat the meat: . . .I used to be a vegetarian because of the way animals are treated but now I eat the lamb that is slaughtered here. . . What is better, to eat our lamb or imported GM soy from Brazil? (Stuart, Fallowfields)

Sunny Valley and Woodland are quite similar in that respect. Most members are vegetarians but not all, so keeping animals for self-consumption is a practice, and every time meat is prepared a vegetarian option must be served. At Stone Hall, Woodland and Sunny Valley reusing and reducing are important. Buying second-hand clothing is common practice; Stone Hall’s Silvia enjoyed exhibiting her “new” tops and trousers acquired from the local charity shop. For Fernando from Woodland, buying second-hand furniture at the local Saturday morning fair meant getting good quality goods for reasonable prices, coupled with an excellent opportunity for socialisation. In fact, at Woodland consumption practices seem fairly modest and reduced. The kitchen’s appliances are old with items only replaced if they cannot be repaired. Composting organic waste and recycling are commonly practiced. Hanna mentioned that when at someone else’s house for dinner she helps out in the kitchen but feels uncomfortable: . . .You see them using all these jars and pre-prepared things, throwing away all that glass and not doing any composting. . . They just think it is too much trouble. It’s terrible. . . (Hanna, Sunny Valley).

NCCs’ consumption practices reflect their commitment toward simplicity, while entailing a major reconnection to the production sphere of the production-consumption process. Reconnecting to production One remarkable aspect of the visit to Sunny Valley was the “questions and answers” meeting the visitors and community members had, where the emphasis on achieving a

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better production-consumption balance became clear. Members were asked how it feels to grow their own food: It feels like you are in touch with nature, with the earth. . . (Barbara, Sunny Valley).

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. . .And it hasn’t travelled miles to be at our table! You can just go and pick your fresh veggies and herbs from the garden as you cook. And this is all a big part of and a big reason for living here (Hanna, Sunny Valley).

Nicky was more concerned about the supermarkets, with vegetables coated in wax and unnecessary wrapping. She disapproved of imported fruits and vegetables, citing the case of mange tout from Africa. Susan pointed to the social and empowering aspects of food production. She explained their pride in the food they grow and their desire to interest others; they often take part in local food competitions, and win farmers’ markets prizes at the local village. Finally, Linda claimed that the lack of dependency on supermarkets was very empowering. Such involvement with production varies across communities. Fallowfields do not fully utilise their garden’s productive potential and depend on the marketplace for basic goods. Nonetheless all communities present a high level of production-consumption balance. Mobility as a challenge to NCCs’ environmental goals Communities tend to be based at fairly rural locations, often without appropriate public transport links. Despite their efforts to be sustainable and environmentally sound, community members do acquire second-hand cars, which add to the living costs and dependence on the outside world. One might think that car-sharing would be common practice among these people but while common, it is not the rule: We come to these communities having these ideas, but then things get complicated and it is better to get along than to share a car (Fernando, Woodland).

At Sunny Valley only two members car-share, and there is a sense of freedom associated with car ownership: If we want to get away from the community every now and again we need a car. I need to go to work and I still like to go to the pictures, you know? (Susan, Sunny Valley).

Fallowfields has a community car, but because not everyone works outside the community, car usage is fairly low. Similarly, at Stone Hall most members own cars, but because everyone works full-time for the community cars are shared and are rarely used. At Woodland, however, all members have cars and car-sharing is not common. That is not to say that people are not constantly trying to do so; only recently members were attempting to re-arrange a car-sharing scheme aimed at reducing car ownership and emissions. There were also many caravans on site. Louise owned three, and the most environmentally conscious Woodland members were pressuring her to get rid of at least two but she retaliated: Woodland doesn’t like the dirt and the sight of so many vehicles, so from now on if you have more than one car and only one in use, there will be a parking fee charged per day, and if the vehicles remain on site they must be kept clean. . . But look at that, do you see it? That’s Jonathan’s old boat, and it has been there [at a parking lot corner] for nearly 20 years and he never does anything with it! (Louise, Woodland).

For Louise caravans provided a nice and cheap alternative for holidays. Rather than flying she drives, which according to her represents less CO2 emissions. She had no explanation for needing three but had an emotional attachment to all caravans and the good times she had experienced with them. Clearly, despite all their efforts to consume responsibly and reconnect to production, mobility represents a major challenge in the achievement of communities’ environmental goals. Discussion The NCCs presented in this study are, to varying degrees, responding to the alienation and unbalance in the production-consumption dynamics of the market (Szmigin, 2003). While community members continuously aim to resist marketing sovereignty, the day-to-day realities of simplified living, even within a community, remain challenging. Through their different operating structures, levels of self-sufficiency and degree of dependence on the market, they are redefining their position in the marketplace and regaining control over their lives. They recognise their dependence on the wider social structure but try to provide an alternative to what they perceive as the shortcomings of a consumer society. Members still consume, but go about it in alternative, liberating and, perhaps more satisfying ways. Strong values pervade their consumption decisions – bulk buying, eco-friendly products, organic food production – and introduce additional attributes to be considered in their complex consumption choices. They strive to absent themselves from the dominance of traditional marketing channels. Yet, while community living can increase the possibilities of the simpler, more ethical lives, community members have to accept that exiting the marketplace entirely is (as yet) unrealisable. Fallowfields in particular face the dilemma of balancing self-sufficiency with eco-principles, and at Woodland rejecting government aid means compromising environmental ideals. Some have managed to reinstate the enjoyment of life through the adoption of simplified lifestyles and a sense of play at work although many remain in external workplaces. Stone Hall demonstrates the ability of the communities to develop their own solutions outside mainstream markets; childcare, adult education, food production and sales. They do not always succeed; Fallowfields and to some extent Woodland appear as a microcosm of the power structures, struggles and stresses of society at large, possibly due to the multi-faceted nature of individuals’ motivations for joining these communities. But what does emerge is that while work can be physically demanding, they have stepped out of the “work to consume” vicious circle, and entered a more virtuous cycle. Although busy, members genuinely enjoy more satisfaction, freedom and control of their lives by reconnecting production and consumption. Their acceptance of lower levels of materialism realises Zavestoski’s (2002) argument that material things do not compensate for a life of stress and happiness, and challenges marketing’s traditional mantra of evermore choice and consumption (Szmigin and Carrigan, 2004). “Less is more” prevails in the communities, for example, less choice in food, but greater taste and quality. While a high degree of commitment to the ethical concerns highlighted in the literature is found in the communities’ consumption and production practices, some of the communities seem to be more about individual aspirations and responses to particular issues than actual collective, communal lifestyles guided by common

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principles. Nonetheless, by being together they have achieved richer forms of connection to production and the production-consumption balance. They have reconnected to and regained control over the process and product of their work and profit is not their primary aim, evident in their participation in local bartering schemes and their legal registration as trusts. But they have not completely exited the market or even aim to do so. They acknowledge they are part of the wider society as Schor (1998) suggests, and although anti-corporate or anti-brand political stances can be found, they are very much individually rather than communally supported. That they have restructured their production systems to depend less on the market and gain more control, knowledge and satisfaction over the provenance and processes involved in what they consume can be viewed as a consumer resistance. Individuals recognise conflicts and challenges in their community lives. For example, despite having gone to great lengths to consume responsibly and reconnect to production, mobility at NCCs still represents the same challenge identified by Shaw and Newholm (2002). Individuals are nostalgic about some of the more hedonistic experiences of traditional market consumption, but these are compensated for by the balance communal living has brought to their lives. Limitations and future directions This is an exploratory study; the authors recognise the benefit of additional empirical work with a longitudinal approach to capture even richer data on the experiences of individuals in the NCCs. Examining other UK communities would extend our knowledge further, as would the exploration of European communities presenting further cultural and experiential diversity, enabling richer comparisons. Further studies on the values and attitudes buttressing voluntary simplicity are needed before further generalisations and comparisons with the US are made. Mainstream consumers’ attitudes to the practices of such communities is another important area for research, and may help us to understand where there could be connections and intersections in identity, production and consumption between mainstream and alternative consumption. The extent to which such communities influence mainstream consumers also merits future research, as a potential bridge between the two. The study of ex and current NCCs’ volunteers, contributors, supporters and local communities would also provide a richer, more extended view of individuals’ experiences. Conclusion This paper has presented the findings of an on-going, exploratory research on UK voluntary simplifiers at NCCs. The findings suggest that for some the choice to simplify and join communities seems to have reinstated the enjoyment of life. This, however, has not come without trade-offs, with mobility remaining one of the biggest challenges to the attainment of environmental goals. The experience of individuals from these communities has resonance for more than just voluntary simplifiers. Flexible or part-time work may be a route to more helpful life arrangements. With more time (or the perception of more time) people could re-engage in activities that are meaningful to them. NCCs’ sustainable living practices, recycling initiatives, food production systems all have potential to be adapted and adopted on a wider scale. Given the growing interest in the wider marketplace there is

potential for transfer and re-education. Local councils could assist and encourage the development of community food production through allotments, particularly in areas of economic deprivation, poor nutrition and food deserts. Car-sharing schemes can be difficult to arrange in large urban areas but car rental companies, boroughs and new transport companies could provide reliable and safe car-sharing systems by checking records of registered people and a careful matching process. This is, to some extent, provided online (i.e. www.shareacar.com/ (accessed 27 July 2004)). Overly packaged goods could come with instructions on packaging reuse; alternatively responsible manufacturing companies, even large retailers could set up their own recycling schemes. Despite NCCs’ position at the extreme end of the voluntary simplicity spectrum, their role in shaping the practices and attitudes of other consumers cannot be denied, especially with their high educational engagement with local communities and volunteers. The implications for marketing practitioners and policy makers engaged in the pursuit of sustainable development are many. If marketing is to connect in a truly two-way relationship with consumers and assist sustainable development it must consider such NCCs lifestyles and view them as true opportunities and places from which to learn rather than a threat, or merely the behaviour of a few deviant consumers. References Apple, M. (1983), Ideology and Practice in Schooling, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, PA. Arnould, E.J. (1998), “Ethical concerns in participant observation/ethnography”, Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 25 No. 1, pp. 72-4. Birchfield, D. (2000), “Downshifting by design”, NZ Business, Vol. 14 No. 4, pp. 40-2. Bocock, R. (1993), Consumption, Routledge, London. Brooks, D. (2003), “Conspicuous ‘simplicity’”, in Doherty, D. and Etzioni, A. (Eds), Voluntary Simplicity: Responding to Consumer Culture, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc., Lanham, pp. 175-82. Budden, R. (2000), “Take charge of your own destiny: downshifting. Robert Budden reports on the growing number of workers who are choosing to put themselves first”, Financial Times, 12 January, p. 17. Bulmer, M. (1982), “When is disguise justified? Alternatives to convert participant observation”, Qualitative Sociology, Vol. 5 No. 4, pp. 251-64. Cahill, M. (2001), “The implications of consumerism for the transition to a sustainable society”, Social Policy & Administration, Vol. 35 No. 5, pp. 627-39. Caudron, S. (1996), “Downshifting yourself”, Industry Week, Vol. 245 No. 10, pp. 126-30. Craig-Lees, M. and Hill, C. (2002), “Understanding voluntary simplifiers”, Psychology & Marketing, Vol. 19 No. 2, pp. 187-210. Dey, C. (2002), “Methodological issues: the use of critical ethnography as an active research methodology”, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 15 No. 1, p. 106. Dobscha, S. (1998), “The lived experience of consumer rebellion against marketing”, Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 25, pp. 91-7. Elgin, D. and Mitchell, A. (1977), “Voluntary Simplicity”, The Co-Evolution Quarterly, Summer, pp. 5-18. Elliott, R. and Jankel-Elliott, N. (2003), “Using ethnography in strategic consumer research”, Qualitative Market Research, Vol. 6 No. 4, pp. 215-23.

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English, S. (2003), “Grasso quits as chairman of NYSE”, The Daily Telegraph, Business, 18 September, p. 31. Etzioni, A. (1998), “Voluntary simplicity: characterization, select psychological implications, and societal consequences”, Journal of Economic Psychology, Vol. 19 No. 5, pp. 619-43. Etzioni, A. (2003), “Introduction: voluntary simplicity – psychological implications, societal consequences”, in Doherty, D. and Etzioni, A. (Eds), Voluntary Simplicity: Responding to Consumer Culture, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc., Lanham, MD, pp. 1-25. Fine, B. (1984), Marx’s Capital, 2nd ed., Macmillan, London. Gregg, R.B. (2003), “The value of voluntary simplicity”, in Doherty, D. and Etzioni, A. (Eds), Voluntary Simplicity: Responding to Consumer Culture, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc., Lanham, pp. 131-44. Hill, A. (2004), “Idle’ Part-timers face hostility in the workplace”, The Observer, Guardian Unlimited, Sunday 7 March, available at: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/ 0,1163838,00.html (accessed 6 July 2004). Jackson, P. (1983), “Principles and problems of participant observation”, Geografiska Annaler, Vol. 65, B, pp. 39-46. Jay, A. (2003), “Corporate services pair found guilty of fraud”, The Daily Telegraph, Business, 18 September, p. 31. Joyner, F. (2001), “Reflections of a downshifter”, The Journal for Quality and Participation, Vol. 24 No. 1, pp. 50-1. Juniu, S. (2000), “Downshifting: regaining the essence of leisure”, Journal of Leisure Research, Vol. 32 No. 1, pp. 69-73. Klein, N. (2000), No Logo, Flamingo, London. Leonard-Barton, D. (1981), “Voluntary simplicity lifestyles and energy conservation”, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 8 No. 3, pp. 243-52. Leonard-Barton, D. and Rogers, E.M. (1980), “Voluntary simplicity”, Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 7 No. 1, pp. 28-34. Mitchell, R.G. (1993), Secrecy and Fieldwork, Sage, Newbury Park, CA. Ottman, J. (1995), “Today’s consumers turning lean and green”, Marketing News, Vol. 29 No. 23, pp. 12-14. ˜ Penaloza, L. (1994), “Atravesando fronteras/border crossings: a critical ethnographic exploration of the consumer acculturation of Mexican Immigrants”, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 21 No. 1, pp. 32-54. Punch, M. (1986), The Politics and Ethics of Fieldwork, Sage, Newbury Park, CA. Reed, M. (1999), “Wide open to the web warriors”, Marketing, pp. 18-19. Robson, C. (1993), Real World Research: A Resource for Social Scientists and Practitioner-Researchers, Blackwell, Oxford. Rossingh, D. (2003), “Ahold chairman quits as shoppers boycott supermarkets in pay row”, The Daily Telegraph, Business, 18 September, p. 31. Schachter, H. (1997), “Forget the suit, get me an anvil: a growing number of executive renegades are finding satisfaction, and profits, in unconventional careers”, Canadian Business, Vol. 70 No. 4, p. 68. Schor, J.B. (1998), The Overspent American: Upscaling, Downshifting, and the New Consumer, 1st ed., Basic Books, New York, NY.

Schor, J.B. (1992), The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, Basic Books, New York, NY. Sears, J.T. (1992), “Researching the other/searching for self: qualitative research on [homo]sexuality in education”, Theory Into Practice, Vol. 31 No. 2, p. 147. Shaw, D. and Newholm, T. (2002), “Voluntary simplicity and the ethics of consumption”, Psychology & Marketing, Vol. 19 No. 2, pp. 167-85. Shi, D. (2003), “Early American simplicity: the Quaker ethic”, in Doherty, D. and Etzioni, A. (Eds), Voluntary Simplicity: Responding to Consumer Culture, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc., Lanham, MD, pp. 101-24. Southerton, D., Shove, E. and Warde, A. (2001), Harried and Hurried: Time Shortage and Co-ordination of Everyday Life, CRIC Discussion Paper No. 47, The University of Manchester and UMIST, Manchester. Strong, C. (1997), “The problems of translating fair trade principles into consumer purchase behaviour”, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 15 No. 1, pp. 32-7. Szmigin, I.T.D. (2003), Understanding the Consumer, Sage, London. Szmigin, I. and Carrigan, M. (2004), “The ethics of choice in a choice society”, paper presented at the Interdisciplinary CSR Research Conference, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, 22-23 October. Szmigin, I. and Carrigan, M. (2003), “New consumption communities: resisting the hegemony of the marketing process”, paper presented at 3rd International Critical Management Studies Conference, Lancaster University, Lancaster, 7-9 July. Thomas, J. (1993), Doing Critical Ethnography, Sage, London. Titus, P.A. and Bradford, J.L. (1996), “Reflections on consumer sophistication and its impact on ethical business practice”, Journal of Consumer Affairs, Vol. 30 No. 1, pp. 170-94. Uhlig, R. (2003), “Supermarkets ‘bullying farmers to break the law’”, The Daily Telegraph, 18 September, p. 10. Zavestoski, S. (2002), “The social-psychological bases of anticonsumption attitudes”, Psychology & Marketing, Vol. 19 No. 2, pp. 149-65. Further reading Manzini, E. (2001), “Ideas of wellbeing: beyond the rebound effect”, paper presented at the Conference on Sustainable Services and Systems: Transition towards Sustainability, Amsterdam, October. Appendix. Communities’ profiles Woodland community Situated on 70 acres of green land, Woodland Community is a co-housing initiative formed 30-years ago by families and individuals who spontaneously chose to live together in a large old building. There are 58 members, including 13 children who attend the local school. This is supplemented by large numbers of volunteers during the summer, who are also the conduit to disseminating their communal lifestyle. The building is split into living units with bedrooms and small living rooms; some are equipped with bathrooms. These units are privately owned spaces for which initial capital is required. New members are required to buy stock-loans according to the value (size) of the unit in which they are interested. However, most spaces are communal and include a large, main kitchen with dining room, a small kitchen, a library, social rooms, laundry room, community office, and bathrooms. Nominal utility bills are paid, and according to one temporary member (Christian) it is possible to live for less than £200 per month (including food)

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at the community, considerably less than it would cost elsewhere. Consequently, this negates the need for full-time employment. The community remains true to its founding members’ fundamental values of self-sufficiency, co-operative living and low environmental impact. While located near a village, the nearest train station is a considerable walking distance away. There is a large amount of car ownership here but with members car-sharing whenever possible.

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Fallowfields community Fallowfields Community was founded in 1950 as an educational trust, and today the community has 18 members (of which nine are temporary). It has a flexible approach to housing; some members live in the main building while others stay in adjacent buildings, cottages and bungalows. They have a trust that owns the buildings and sublets them to members. Rent can be paid in various forms, including a combination of money and community work hours. The original aim of Fallowfields Community was to investigate how people could achieve a more peaceful way of life. One member (Paula) said it is hard to know which came first, the adult college or the community. At the time of its formation (according to their literature) the college aimed to provide further adult education to enable people to get more involved with issues that affected their lives. Today the community appears to be undergoing a period of change or “ethos-searching”, with environmental causes having gained importance in the community. Fallowfields also sees itself as a social experiment; they are interested in social change, the challenges of communal living, and group intra-relationships. Sunny valley community Sunny Valley Community is a co-housing co-operative based on seven acres of rural land. The main building is simply decorated and equipped, and is inhabited by its 11 highly educated members – three of which are now teenagers – who are celebrating the community’s 10th anniversary in 2004; this is viewed as a landmark, given the financial difficulties they experienced in Sunny Valley’s early days. Adjacent to the main building are small cottages, which are mortgaged or sold to outsiders by the community trust. Buyers do not necessarily become co-op members, although they must be “approved” by those living at the main building. Members share the community’s maintenance responsibilities at all levels, and together hire the facilities out as a course venue, which brings in some (limited) income. Because of the high affinity between community members and cottages’ owners there is an eco-village feeling to Sunny Valley. Their ethos comprises a strong ecological focus and respect for diversity. The community also has good links with the local village and organises their local composting scheme. Stone hall community Stone Hall Community is, as self-determined, a holistic education centre set on 11 acres of land, run by a resident co-operative group and administered by a trust. The main building contains guest rooms, the main dining room, a piano room and the healing room, and is surrounded by adjacent buildings which together form a square stone rectory. In those buildings are the kitchen (fully vegetarian) and the washing-up rooms, the laundry room, a “first aid” room with communal laundry supplies, a toilet, the community kitchen and dinning-room, and the kindergarten. Surrounding the main buildings are fields containing livestock, gardens, a green house and a poly-tunnel, as well as a recycling shed. There is a detached housing block for members and a caravan for visitors and volunteers. In the new library building accommodation for members is also provided. All 14 members, except the children, work full-time for the community, each with their designated roles. All members have specific skills which they put to use in the community, and most members are either well-educated or manually skilled. Sustainability is a key driver for this community, more than any other visited. This manifests itself in their own water spring, reed-bed sewage system, composting, wood burners, and recycling efforts. Materials are simple, functional, and demonstrate a strong sense of craft-based aesthetics.

(Caroline Bekin is a PhD candidate at the Birmingham Business School, from where she obtained her MSc (Marketing). She has worked in consumer research and advertising. Her research interests include ethical consumption, consumer resistance and marketing ethics. Marylyn Carrigan is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham, from where she gained her PhD (Commerce). She previously held the post of Coats Viyella Research Assistant at the Strathclyde International Business Unit, University of Strathclyde. She has worked in banking, export marketing and consultancy. Areas of research include ethical consumption, the older consumer, and marketing ethics. Isabelle Szmigin is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham, from where she gained her PhD (Commerce). She previously held a similar post at the City University Business School in London. She has worked in advertising and marketing in the communications, chemical and financial services industries. Her research interests include the over-fifties, consumer behaviour, consumer innovativeness, services management and relationship marketing.)

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Ethical perspectives on the erotic in retailing Tony Kent

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The Marketing School, London College of Communication, The London Institute, London, UK Abstract Purpose – To define erotic retailing in the context of shops selling sexually arousing products to women, and the ethical implications of High Street “porno-chic”. Its purpose is to assess the moral implications of access to sexual imagery and products in the High Street and examines the boundaries of its acceptability in society. Design/methodology/approach – The approach is inter-disciplinary, with two objectives; firstly to demonstrate the value of archived source materials to explore and structure the research problem in depth and secondly to turn directly to a primary philosophical source, to provide a new ethical approach to the research problem. Findings – The findings demonstrate a typology of erotic retailing, the interrelatedness of the commercial opportunity with social and cultural developments in the late twentieth century and propose a philosophical answer to the ethics of erotic retailing. Research limitations/implications – It is concerned with the development of new theoretical frameworks through the use of complementary research methods. Practical implications – Its practical implications concern the future opportunities for a rapidly expanding field of commercial activity and a solution to the ethical problem of “selling sex”. Originality/value – It engages with an emerging area of retailing, exploring and defining an emerging problem concerning the marketing and selling of erotic products and the ethical evaluation of the problem using a philosophical analysis. Keywords Ethics, Retailing, Sexuality, Sociology, Philosophy Paper type Conceptual paper

Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal Vol. 8 No. 4, 2005 pp. 430-439 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 1352-2752 DOI 10.1108/13522750510619788

Introduction Erotic retailing is concerned with products and images that are sexually arousing, but not pornographic where the intention is to provide “explicit content with no purpose other than to induce sexual arousal”, nor obscene, the object of moral outrage (McNair, 2002a). The distinctions are finely drawn, as are the boundaries of what is permissible and unacceptable, and find a focus in the development of shops specifically selling sexually arousing products to women, a unique development of the late twentieth century. In this context, the research into eroticism and its social and commercial acceptance draws from a number of theoretical perspectives, uses an inter-disciplinary research methodology, and methods based on archival materials, observation and interview. This approach aims to support de Ruyte and Scholl’s (1998) assertion that qualitative research should create insights and explore the study of phenomena about which little is known. It emphasizes the qualitative researcher’s role in gaining a holistic overview of the subject, defined by Miles and Huberman (1994) as “its logic, arrangements, and its explicit and implicit rules”. In the fields of ethics and marketing, it has been recognised that ethics are bound up with general societal development (Jirasek, 2003)

where ethical behaviour has no finite boundaries. Consequently researchers need to “unravel the complex and often competing discourses” that frame the moral dimension of marketing and consumption (Crane and Desmond, 2002). From an ethical perspective the project moves beyond descriptive ethics, to engage directly with a philosophical discussion of sexuality and its acceptance, and to demonstrate how subjectivity forms the basis for defining boundaries of behaviour (Dannaher et al., 2000). In this respect Foucault’s arguments are valuable: that the ethics of sex and sexuality are determined by social contexts, knowledge and relations of power (Dannaher et al., 2000; Foucault, 1998b), an approach that opens up opportunities to study the commercialisation of sex, which follow neither the dialectic of Marxism nor psychoanalysis (Bristow, 1997). Furthermore he provides an explanation of the boundaries of sexual looking and experience, the limits to what society will accept, by specifically examining the concept of “boundary” as “a source of paradox and contradiction”, and the “image of an ongoing play” (Weiskopf, 2002). In a broader context, Foucault (1998a) develops an important and relevant thesis that western societies have created a “scientia sexualis”, an analysis of pleasures. Sex has been forced to lead a discursive existence through the multiplicity of discourses that define and regulate it since the seventeenth century. For Foucault the alternative procedure to produce truth about sex has been “ars erotica”, the experience of pleasures that deflects knowledge of such pleasures back into sexual practice (Foucault, 1998a, b). The study of erotic retailing provides a measure of the extent to which the late twentieth century has begun to alter this analytical approach by providing more sensory experience of sexual pleasures. The use of power recurs as an erotic design theme in cultural studies. The commercial opportunities for erotic retailing arise in part from the influence of earlier fashion trends arising from a revised feminist appraisal of sexuality and sports styles in the 1980s and, especially from the 1970s, punk (Ehrenreich et al., 1987; Evans and Thornton, 1989). Punk can be seen as fashion as control of self-presentation, an exercise of power at a level of representation through ironic parodying of sex kitten, vamp and dominatrix. For Hebdige (1979) punk’s nihilism and blankness were a signification, in which men and women shared anti-sexuality, and outrageous “sexy” clothes were worn as a battledress. Polhemus (1996) argues that punk fashion tacks history together with style juxtapositions, where spectacle and simulation is everything. Therefore it contributes to a post-modern world where “everything may be transmuted into everything and nothing is what it appears”, thus the expansion of erotic retailing can be understood from both philosophical and cultural post-modern perspectives, as an aspect of greater individualism, of identity or many identities, of representation over reality. McNair (1996, 2002a, 2002b) from a broader sociological standpoint demonstrates the media forms of sexual revelation and exhibitionism of the late twentieth century that make up a culture in which public nakedness, voyeurism and sexualised looking are permitted. This creates a culture of emotional and physical striptease and the democratisation of desire, which accompanies its proliferation. It is also commercial; sex sells and entrepreneurship has led to the transformation of desire, the promise of sexual pleasure into various types of commodity including sex aids, fashion and appearance enhancers, pornographic books and films and of products of art

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and popular culture. The proliferation of porno-chic has led to the “pornographication of the mainstream” McNair, 2002a). Ethics, design and cultural studies, sociology as well as management studies provide different academic “filters”, through which to explore the subject, and to provide a richer understanding of the subject by departing from disciplinary boundaries. This is distinct from the research method, which used an extensive search of newspaper and magazine media archives undertaken for the period 1970-2003, from both online and hard copy sources. The aim of this element of the research was to explain the development of shops selling erotic clothing for women and define different types of store and the erotic experience they create. Qualitative research tends to overlook the value of archival material partly because it does not fulfill positivistic and phenomenological methodological requirements. The scientific tradition of positivism of ascertaining facts and framing generalisable laws and the phenomenological position of direct “experiential contact with phenomena” both argue direct contact with contemporary subjects rather than historical ones (Stiles, 2003). Nevertheless, as Collingwood (1946) argues, historical material provides access to self-knowledge and the consequent understanding of human capability assists definition of the research subject and fuller exploration of this research problem. Field observation and photographic records of seven retail companies’ exteriors and interiors supported archival research. The sensory nature of the research subject and its visual impact, were understood to be significant in the context of Foucault’s understanding of sexuality. One interview was conducted with a retailer to provide greater insight into its trading activities, where this needed to be understood in more depth. The evolving boundaries of erotic retailing The distribution and acceptance of erotic products and images in stores evolves from the 1960s. However the boundaries of what was and was not acceptable in windows, visual merchandising and product selection during this period was not a consistent, or continuous process, and the limits of acceptability were driven by a number of factors. For men “specialist” bookshops provided the earliest opportunities to sell sexually explicit materials. Malina and Schmidt (1997) suggest that “sex shops appear to have been built on the former pornography trade based initially in the Strand in the 19th century, and relocated to the Soho area by the 1930s”. Such retail outlets offering “under the counter” trade were thinly disguised, set between strip clubs and brothels they were unlikely to attract customers other than those seeking pornographic material. Only five such shops were known to the police in 1955, stocking mostly upmarket and expensive imports of books and poor quality film. Growth in the 1960s occurred through increasing affluence, social changes and more liberal attitudes towards private morality starting in 1959 with the Obscene Publications Act. During the decade Denmark abolished prohibition on pornography followed by Sweden in the 1970s, which led to more detailed and explicit printed materials and films for purchase but also to be viewed in store. By the 1970s the economic and cultural climate was such that the Gold Group of companies were able to develop the Ann Summers chain of sex shops. The first Ann Summers had opened in Marylebone in 1970 under different management, selling

exotic lingerie; contraceptives and what were described as “sex aids”. The early shops were described as a “slightly seedy chain that originally touted a faintly illicit collection of marital aids from behind shuttered windows” (Adaley, 2003). The commercial opportunity was established, and similar formats followed. David Sullivan aimed to establish a “Private” store, targeting male consumers, in every town with a population of more than 100,000 (Manchester, 1986), and succeeded in opening 120 by 1982. Locations were indiscriminate: next to a registry office in Blackpool, sometimes adjacent to churches, in residential areas; not surprisingly the company often went to some trouble to disguise their purpose. The image of the unattractive, unwholesome sex shop changed drastically over the next ten years. Jacqueline Gold, realising the business potential of erotic retailing set up a chain of female contacts to sell Ann Summers products in private parties in their homes. Women who would not buy the products from a shop were happy to spend their money in the company of friends. Gold commented that “. . .my friends were all saying we want to be able to buy sexy underwear, but we don’t want to go into a sex shop”(Gold, 1995). The new shops and parties were aimed specifically at women. By 2003 they were said to make up 70 per cent of the company’s customers, compared to 10 per cent when Gold took over (Adaley, 2003). The front of the store displayed underwear and suggestive accessories, while the more explicit material, including books and videos were in a restricted area to the rear of the shop. The window displays were attractive and the design of the stores bright and clean, the antithesis of the sleazy “book shops” of the 1960s and the early sex shops of the 1970s. This is not to say that Ann Summers was the only retailer selling overtly erotic products to women, but that until the 1990s the others tended to be stand-alone designer stores. Vivienne Westwood’s punk store in Kings Road, which went under many names, but most famously in 1974, “Sex”, was highly influential. It reproduced the secrecy of the “sex” shop, its window blanked out, but with a little hole to peep in at porn T-shirts, and rubber wear under an ironic sex fascia. Erotic lingerie could be bought from Janet Reger’s workshop in Paddington and shop in Beauchamp Place in London during the 1970s (Reger and Flack, 1991). Dance and exercisewear could be more widely acquired with Pineapple pre-eminent in 1980s fashion (Moore, 1989). However the opportunity for women to look at more explicit clothing, sex aids and sexy novelties was extremely limited. New erotic stores Until the 1990s Ann Summers shops and parties dominated the retailing of erotic merchandise for women, and by 2004 the stores had achieved High Street respectability. The most recent store design for Ann Summers features a much more open, light look with clear signposting to different departments. This clarity is shared by a recent arrival to the UK, Beata Uhse. Although the German stores have an explicit design and pornographic merchandise content, their first store in suburban Sutton re-creates the style of a Knickerbox style specialist underwear shop. Windows feature a limited range of contemporary, erotic underwear and large, suggestive posters (of fruit) with few references to sex products. Inside the clothing is displayed off standardised units, which become more specialised until false fur and leather finally give way to sex toys, which are discretely displayed, in a rear alcove.

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An altogether different type of erotic retailer that appeared in the 1990s. In 1992 Katherine Hoyle and Sophie Walters set up Sh! Malina and Schmidt (1997) observed that “women are supposed to inspire lust rather than experience it. . . Therefore the emergence of concept shops such as US based Good Vibrations and its UK counterpart Sh! are challenges to the traditional notion of sex shops as male domains. Sex shops targeted exclusively at women can be seen as a new and ground breaking phenomenon.” The new female focus on sex shops has altered both the design of shops and the products they sell. The store describes itself as a women’s erotic emporium, offering toys and accessories in a relaxed and unpretentious environment (Hoyle, 2002). The emphasis is on fun and enjoyment of safe sex, and the products on sale reflect this attitude. Vibrators are largely phallic but are brightly coloured and decorated with beads or resemble lipsticks or stylised animals. A third type of erotic retailer appeared at this time. Specialist underwear stores appeared and flourished in unfashionable areas of London, led by Agent Provocateur, which opened in 1994 in Soho, aiming to create high quality lingerie with “creative flair to stimulate, enchant and arouse both wearers and their partners” (Agent Provocateur, 2003). The company projected an image of aggressive, self-confident women unafraid of their sexuality. Since the turn of the century the porno-chic, design-led retailer appealing to an affluent customer extended its erotic remit. Coco de Mer in London’s Covent Garden, initially appears to be a lingerie shop. Dark red walls and nineteenth century props suggest fun and period naughtiness reminiscent of the fictional exploits of Tom Jones or Fanny Hill. The centre of the store displays some sex toys and erotic jewellery in a glass case that functions as a counter and cash point; the more explicit products are sold towards the rear of the shop. In contrast, Myla is housed in a modern minimalist store. In keeping with Coco de Mer, prices for its lingerie range from £149 to £2500. Cost does not appear to be important to Myla customers “In fact the more expensive the better, since this is what defines and elevates it, what wipes away the sleaze” (Moore, 2003). The products have found more mainstream outlets too. Myla gained a concession in Selfridges within weeks of opening in West London and the “bone” vibrator featured in both Selfridges’s and Liberty’s Christmas window displays 2002. Mirroring the success of the cosmopolitan erotic retailers, outlets have opened outside London. “Tickled” established in Brighton in 2002 in a former beauty salon was opened following a successful web site enterprise. Its eponymous owner, in a contemporary cool style, and featuring more access priced products, established the Gash store in Sheffield (Moore, 2003). Internet websites offer erotic lingerie and sex toys to a still wider consumer market. Exploring the boundaries By 2004, the activities of stores, entrepreneurs and personalities, and the production of products and images, provided a considerable discourse about erotic retailing, expressed in terms of either approbation or approval. In particular the return to talking about sex among young adults after the AIDS scare of the 1980s contributed to a greater acceptance of sexual exploration (Singer, 1993). However other, powerful forces expanded the boundaries of acceptability. The preceding historical analysis demonstrates the extent to which commercial, legal and social interests changed during the period, the more so in 1990s. Consumer capitalism

is closely implicated with culture and acceptance of erotic products and images. The Erotic Review Magazine identified a “growing market for erotica aimed specifically at young women”. During the 1970s and 1980s pornographic conventions crossed over to women magazines with “beauty porn” and “beauty sado-masochism”. A market driven approach to sexual content, reflecting the aims and values of producers and desires of its consumers, continued into the late 1990s and increasingly catered for many niche markets and new groups. Moreover barriers to this “pornosphere”, McNair’s (2002a) term, were lowered through technology. The commodification of sexual culture began in the nineteenth century, with photography, and proliferated with colour magazines during the 1960s. Each development in technology, video, DVD and internet, has in turn become a less expensive barrier to creation and transmission of material. The very concept of “porno-chic” was introduced by the film “Deep Throat”. By the 1990s porn-chic extended to mainstream culture, with the New York Times commenting in 1999 on the “more explicit sexuality in advertisements, movies and on network TV and appropriation of conventions of pornography by mainstream entertainment, fashion and fine art”(Hamilton, 1999). In advertising through the late 1980s and early 1990s, women were portrayed as assertive even aggressive sexual animals, in active and dominant roles. Sexualised looking was now permitted, as women were no longer victims of the male gaze. Advertisements came to be aimed at ironic and media literate audience, for example, Sophie Dahl in the Opium advertising poster of 2000. Television expanded the range of images of women to a mass audience through programmes including sex in the city, prime suspect, and bad girls (McNair, 2002a). Post-modern culture arguably has enabled taboos to be transgressed through pleasing erotic imagery packaged as fashion not pornography. Transgression of taboos became chic. By the 1990s, fetishism, which itself has a long history (Kunzle, 1982) became a significant part of clubland, for example the “rubber nipple club”, as the “weird and wonderful” (and recycable) in Western culture was appropriated. PVC and leather merchandise increased as sado-masochistic behaviour (now sanitized for a wider audience to S þ M) could now be proudly flaunted. Fetishism was said to have been “even institutionalised” representing estrangement or liberation from the “real world” (Polhemus, 1996). Even Baby Spice claimed to like PVC knickers (Clarke, 1997). Other taboos have been assaulted. The sex shop taboo, with its implications of naughtiness, obscenity and rudeness is in the process of breaking down, and with it, rules of behaviour and cultural bounds have been challenged. For lingerie retailers, role playing or tarty dressing up challenges the taboo of easy sex and uncontrolled desire, a sense of not-grown up, being rebellious. A sex toys taboo is overcome through visualising or making real the private or hidden pleasures of sex, or experimental sex, which are beyond “normal” experiential boundaries. Faced with these profound changes in culture, the engagement of commercial interests and their influence on consumers it is difficult for managers to draw their own line on social acceptability. The question is whether there can be any boundaries to what can be displayed and sold, as well as who might impose them. Foucault provides a relevant theoretical basis to develop this theme because he defines ethics as the relationship one ought to have with oneself and with others (Kates, 1998). This is developed in his essays on transgression, and especially “A Preface to Transgression”

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(Foucault, 1998b). Faubion in his introduction to the English edition of Aesthetics, reviews Foucault’s approach, and Blanchot’s influence on his thinking through the idea of the arena, a space in which there is no end, and no subjects. Such a space is the ontological outside that permits only one direction, a further out. It is the single place that allows the expression of all the experiences coming from or moving toward dissolution. Blanchot’s space of “attraction” – not attracting anything – but to be attracted is to suffer alone the presence of the outside, to make it evident but unattainable, that is you are locked in, a state of fixation, or obsession and so the self cannot bother with its own boundaries (because it is internalised) so it always exceeds the boundaries of the ordinary world. From Bataille, Foucault develops this theme in the exploration of transgression and sexuality, of the boundaries of such internalised space, of the self in erotic transport (Foucault, 1998b). It is evident too that Foucault derives limitlessness from Nietzsche’s death of God (Magee, 1987; Fraser, 2002). Experience is limitless, now that God is dead there is an ontological void. Experience, being, is interior and sovereign. Sexuality is liberated in the sense of being taken to the limits of its consciousness, and as fissure, it marks the limit within us. Sexuality permits an empty, inward profanity. At the root of sexuality, and the death of God, is a “singular experience”, transgression. Language at present cannot explain transgression, Foucault’s second theme, but he suggests that the “interrogation of the limit replaces the search for totality”. Furthermore transgression, of limits or boundaries can be separated from ethics altogether. Transgression should be thought of as a spiral rather than dialectic or contradiction, devoid of value or intent of its own: it is something that just crosses a limit in a flash. Such an act of transgression replaces “the movement of contradictions” that has prevailed in Western philosophy. The absence of God, limits and transgression are also accompanied by death. In this context, the death of God allows us an explosion of unlimited experiences. If this is the case, experiences of eroticism, and explorations of sexuality are bounded only in our own minds and ultimately by death itself. Therefore death could be the only, ultimate boundary to society’s and individual’s acceptance of the erotic. For Foucault language has created this problem. Although sexuality can be talked about, and explained through language, Christianity actually provided a more essential (or simply better) sexuality, through rapture, mysticism, and its spirituality, at capturing the experience of love. From Sade to Freud, language has limited sexuality, has denatured it, and Foucault thinks that a more profound language, as yet unknown is needed to explain it. Language has placed sexuality in a void where it “incessantly sets up as the Law the limits it transgresses”. The density of language now provides the experience of finitude and being. Clearly this is a narrow focus but one which highlights the idea of boundaries, in the context of sexuality and eroticism, and the idea of transgression, the crossing of such limits. It does not explicitly state a solution to how we should consider the limits of commercial activity but explains how we think and act in a limitless world. This argument is some way from conventional marketing literature’s recognition of moral philosophies, primarily deontological and teleological, that influences both ethical judgments and intentions of individuals (Vitell et al., 2001). It is still further away from the descriptive, and pragmatic ethical approaches to ethical problems typified by many

general texts (Schlegelmilch, 1998). However it does provide an alternative approach to marketing ethics that addresses issues of individualism, hedonism and experience. Conclusion The proliferation of erotic retailing supports Foucault’s assertions concerning the concealment by discourses and analysis, and the ultimately the evasion of the truth, of sexuality. The retailing of erotic products and images forms part of McNair’s democratisation of desire, but where McNair is concerned with the media pornosphere, of which erotic retailing forms a small part, we can argue that the role of shops and shopping is much more significant in the development of openness of sex and desire. It is now possible not only to look at erotic underwear through other media, but to evade control and the gaze of powerful others, by directly looking, touching and wearing many designs and colours. It is an example of Foucault’s assessment of power relations and one of the multiple forms of resistance, (Bristow, 1997). Increasingly sex toys provide this experiential role. Design has played an essential part of this process; new forms and re-assessment of the function of toys has changed attitudes to sexual pleasures and the nature of erotic retailing. For women the application of new design concepts has turned an area previously perceived as sleazy into one that is both acceptable and desirable. The ease of women looking at women, not dressing up for their man or any man, for all women to feel sexy, is the achievement of not only underwear shops but also women’s sex shops. Attractive shop windows and the displays of merchandise can be used ironically or not, laughed at publicly and taken seriously in private. The media have relentlessly excited interest in erotic retailing whilst simultaneously repressing it. This draws them into the network of analytical discourse, and gives the institutional gaze another formal line of vision. But women’s erotic retailing appears to be growing rapidly enough to suggest that intimate enjoyment and sexual pleasure can be increasingly experienced by many if not all, as the art of sexuality asserts itself over scientia sexualis. The boundaries of such experience of sexuality and desire, and experimentation with new forms of sexual pleasure, in Foucault’s philosophical context may be limited only by our individual experience. Following this line to its conclusion, society’s acceptance of the erotic may only be limited by products and communications that result in death; all other limits, of taste, decency and behaviour and so on, are transgressable. Therefore social constraints are not a suitable guide to the acceptability of sexual practices. In practical terms managerial and consumer decisions about these questions do not necessarily need to be guided by a principles or consequences ethical framework, but can be understood in a context of individualism and the permission of limitless, transgression of boundaries. In other words individuals are going to seek out new experiences, to experiment and break taboos. The implications for retailers and marketers are similar to those in the media (Graham, 1998). Marketing creativity in its engagement with eroticism, should be directed by contexts or themes that are more interesting, entertaining or arresting than fleetingly attractive sexual encounters. References Adaley, E. (2003), “Toys are with us”, The Guardian, 16 January, pp. 2-3. Agent Provocateur (2003), Company Report.

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Bristow, J. (1997), Sexuality, Routledge, London. Clarke, J. (1997), “I brought my man here to buy a love potion: and I have not seen him since”, Daily Record, 23 September, p. 20. Collingwood, R.G. (1946), The Idea of History, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Crane, A. and Desmond, J. (2002), “Societal marketing and morality”, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 36 Nos 5/6, pp. 548-69. Dannaher, G., Schirato, T. and Webb, J. (2000), Understanding Foucault, Sage, London. De Ruyte, K. and Scholl, N. (1998), “Positioning qualitative market research: reflections from theory and practice”, Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 7-14. Ehrenreich, B., Hess, E. and Jacobs, G. (1987), Re-making Love, The Feminization of Sex, Fontana, London. Evans, T. and Thornton, M. (1989), Women and Fashion – A New Look, Quartet Books, London. Foucault, M. (1998a), The Will to Knowledge the History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, Penguin, London. Foucault, M. (1998b), Aesthetics, The Essential Works, Vol. 2, Penguin, London. Fraser, G. (2002), Redeeming Nietzsche, On the Piety of Unbelief, Routledge, London. Gold, J. (1995), Good Vibrations, Pavilion Books, London. Graham, G. (1998), “Sex and violence in fact and fiction”, in Kieran, M. (Ed.), Media Ethics, Routledge, London. Hamilton, W. (1999), “The mainstream flirts with pornography chic”, New York Times, 21 March, Section 9, p. 1. Hebdige, D. (1979), Subculture, the Meaning of Style, Methuen, London. Hoyle, K. (2002), Interview, 3 November. Jirasek, J.A. (2003), “Two approaches to business ethics”, Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 47, pp. 343-7. Kates, S. (1998), “Qualitative exploration into voters’ ethical perceptions of political advertising: discourse, disinformation, and moral boundaries”, Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 17, pp. 1871-85. Kunzle, D. (1982), Fashion and Fetishism, Rowan and Littlefield, Totowa, NJ. McNair, B. (1996), Mediated Sex: Pornography and Postmodern Culture, Arnold, London. McNair, B. (2002a), Striptease Culture: Sex, Media and the Democratisation of Desire, Routledge, London. McNair, B. (2002b), “Turned on to porn; more sex please, we’re British”, Sunday Herald, 24 February, p. 2. Magee, B. (1987), The Great Philosophers, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Malina, S. and Schmidt, R. (1997), “It’s business doing pleasure with you: sh! a women’s sex shop case”, Marketing and Intelligent Planning, Vol. 15 No. 7, pp. 352-60. Manchester, C. (1986), Sex Shops and the Law, Gower, Aldershot. Miles, M.B. and Huberman, A.M. (1994), Qualitative Data Analysis, an Expanded Sourcebook, Sage, London. Moore, D. (1989), When a Woman Means Business, Pavilion Books, London. Moore, A. (2003), “A woman’s touch”, The Observer, 20 July, p. 22. Polhemus, T. (1996), Style Surfing What to Wear in the Third Millennium, Thames and Hudson, London.

Reger, J. and Flack, S. (1991), Janet Reger: Her Story, Chapman, London. Schlegelmilch, B. (1998), Marketing Ethics – An International Perspective, International Thomson Business Press, London. Singer, L. (1993), Erotic Welfare: Sexual Theory and Politics in the Age of the Epidemic, Routledge, London. Stiles, J. (2003), “A realist approach to strategic alliance research”, Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Vol. 6 No. 4, pp. 263-71. Vitell, S.J., Singhapakdi, A. and Thomas, J. (2001), “Consumer ethics: an application and empirical testing of the Hunt-Vitell theory of ethics”, Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 18 No. 2, pp. 153-78. Weiskopf, R. (2000), “Deconstructing the iron cage – towards an aesthetic of folding”, Consumption, Markets and Culture, Vol. 5 No. 1, pp. 79-98. Further reading Merrett, J. (2002), “Sex please, we’re British; Why stores are getting raunchy”, Daily Mirror, 21 November. Rumbelow, H. (2002), “Is this what every woman wants”, The Times, 23 November. Smith, G. (1991), “Try, try and try again”, The Independent, 4 November. Wavell, S. (1993), “Golden touch”, The Sunday Times, 13 June. (Tony Kent graduated in modern history from the University of Oxford and held management positions in the footwear and retail industries. He has been programme director for retail studies at University of the Arts London and has worked with a wide range of projects for the retail industry, particularly with SME retailers. His research has increasingly focused on the marketing environment, and in particular, the visual design elements and the influence on the boundaries of retail marketing experiences. He wrote “Retailing” (with Dr O.E. Omar), in 2003. He is currently reader in marketing at University of the Arts London where he is leading a research cluster in visual marketing.)

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Oliver Richardson Brunel Business School, Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middlesex, UK Abstract Purpose – To propose a model for ethical behaviour based on product, production and marketing methods, and to make use of qualitative data relating to a specific product in order to test its validity. This model is termed the Ethical Cube. Design/methodology/approach – The model was developed as a result of early examination of ethical practices. It was then tested using publicly available examples of marketing, production and product information concerning the wine industry. Findings – The model was found to be effective, if basic. Proposals for improvements and extensions are put forward. Research limitations/implications – The examples used are largely those that are in the public domain. Facets of a product are classed as ethical or unethical according to the number of reported examples in each area of study – with a special emphasis on production and marketing. Practical implications – This can provide a standard framework for assessing the ethicality of any product. Originality/value – This paper is of value to researchers and marketing practitioners seeking to evaluate the public impressions of a specific product. Keywords Ethics, Marketing, Alcoholic drinks, Marketing management, Consumer behaviour Paper type Research paper

Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal Vol. 8 No. 4, 2005 pp. 440-453 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 1352-2752 DOI 10.1108/13522750510619797

1. Introduction – views on ethical marketing behaviour 1.1 Business ethics “Ethics is a branch of philosophy that, at its core, seeks to understand and to determine how human actions can be judged right or wrong” (EICS, 2004). There are several theories related to how ethical decisions are reached. Consequentialism for example, suggests that any action must be viewed in terms of the results of the action. In business for instance, we may judge on the basis of how the environment or employees are treated. We may also look at how people may benefit or suffer – either financially or in health, as a result of using a particular product. Virtue ethics assumes that there are certain character traits that can be deemed virtuous, and, in a specific role, make an organisation or person praiseworthy or otherwise. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Stanford, 2003) notes that such virtues should be automatic, not just carried out because they are seen to be of temporary advantage. Thus a business would appear to need to have an inherent morality in all its actions – product, production and customer relations – in order to be seen as ethical. Such ethical requirements need to be visible to potential clients, both in actions and in written codes of practice. Many organisations have developed such Codes of Practice in order to ensure that their members behave in an “ethical manner”. The American Marketing Association (AMA, 2004) for example, has a code that stresses the need for mutual trust, honesty,

and disclosure of product risk. In wine production, New Zealand and South Africa have developed bodies that regulate production methods (WOSA, 2002; SWNZ, n.d.). At an individual company level, Anita Roddick (Jones, 1998) has developed a code of ethical practice relating to products that will be sold. Such ethical codes do not always conform to the theory of Virtue Ethics, in that they are enforced- not “from the heart”. Indeed, Wiebe (2000) believes that where regulation is enforced, organisations will seek ways of circumventing it. Laczniak and Murphy (1992) appear to disagree, commenting that “when punishments are enacted for violation of professional codes of conduct, unethical behaviour is less likely to occur”. In many, but not all cases, ethics would appear to be enforced by the fear of consequence, rather than by belief in virtue. What are these ethical principles, and how can they be measured? Laczniak and Murphy (1992) believe that they include product safety, environmental friendliness, disposability and clarity of use when putting forward a product for sale. They cite the example of Nestle selling baby-milk products in India without usage instructions that are understood by potential users. The product itself is acceptable, as may the methods of production, but the method of marketing is not. In this paper, we will examine how these factors may be viewed by potential consumers when they come to evaluate whether they can bring themselves to purchase it. Such factors are of major importance. Thornhill (2000) notes that every consumer is different, every viewpoint has to be respected and that if a company fails to do so, they may go out of business. 2. Research methods Usually your research design will be such that you will not have to collect your own data but can test your hypotheses using data that already exist among the wealth of data available in the public realm (Haley, 2004)

QRCA (2004) lists among the purposes of qualitative research as: . developing hypotheses; . understanding the feelings, values and perceptions that underlie behaviour; and . understanding how people perceive a marketing message or concept. Hoepfl (1997) comments that “qualitative methods are appropriate in situations where one needs to first identify the variables that might later be tested quantitavely”. This is an initial paper aimed at producing a model, so the author will be gathering data from papers and reports in order to discover the reasons why people regard products as “ethical” or “unethical” and plotting examples of such behaviour on the model. The sources have been examined to ascertain the main ethical point that they are making, and whether they show the product as being desirable or undesirable. Such categorization is recommended as an analysis method by Taylor-Powell (2003). This data was primarily collected for other purposes (e.g. newspaper and web-based reports) and could be classified under the definition of Heaton (2004) as “involving the use of existing data, collected for the purposes of a prior study, in order to pursue a research interest which is distinct from that of the original work”. MDRC (2004) describes such document analysis as a non-intrusive form of research and cites its value as a source of themes. It is regarded as a valid method by Haley (2004), though

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Wolff (2004) cautions against undue reliance on documents since the context and bias of the writer are unknown, and written words can have a variety of meanings. Wolff also notes that “in principle, an infinite number of formally correct versions of fact are conceivable”. This is because a report may represent only the writer’s viewpoint at the time that it was written. Needle (2001) in a book review on Mormon history, commented that “It has been said that the victors get to write the story, leaving open the real probability that the story will be skewed in favour of those who won.” The examples observed have been divided into categories and have been modeled in three dimensions as outlined in the next section. 3. Modelling ethical viewpoints Researchers have developed a number of models for modelling aspects of ethics. Eisner (1991) refers to methods of representing knowledge involving “a kind of continuum that moves from the fictional that is ‘true’ (e.g. a novel) to the highly controlled and quantitatively described scientific experiment”. Ginns (2002) proposes a scale of behaviour ranging from Caveat Emptor to Caveat Venditor. On such a scale, it is assumed that on the majority of products would avoid either of the extremes. However, ethics is not a simple topic, where a product is ethical for one simple reason alone. In order to illustrate ethical problems, a three-dimensional model to be known as an “ethical cube” was used (Figure 1). This will display ethical facets involving the product, its production and the marketing methods. Once such a model has been developed, then it can be tested with qualitative examples from newspapers, reports, articles and books in order to discover the extent of such opinions and the relative sizes of the various sectors of the cube. The relative numbers of examples that can be plotted in the different parts of the cube give an indication of the ethical nature of the product. For example, if the main grouping of reports on a product is around A in Figure 1, then the product could be classified as an “average” product, neither very ethical nor very unethical according to product, production and marketing standards. 3.1 Faces of the ethical cube 3.1.1 Viewing the ethical nature of the product itself. If a product is to be considered ethical, then it is likely that the majority of examples discovered could be plotted at the ethical end of each scale. A very simple (though quantitative) test is to put two search

Figure 1. The ethical cube — A is an “average product”

questions into a web search engine and then to examine examples of the papers and articles discovered under each section. In this case, the questions posed were: (1) Wine is an ethical product: 117,000 papers; and (2) Wine is an unethical product: 11,700 papers. Such a test is not definitive, since different sections of society tend to have differing ethical views. As a result, the reasons for a product being considered unethical may differ from one section of society to another, and indeed may change in time. Oldenquist (1965) comments that “right is whatever a majority of persons in one’s society thinks is right”. In the case of alcohol in Britain, it is not necessary that everyone accepts that it is ethical – merely that it is held to be ethically acceptable by the majority at the present time. Zieminski (2004) notes that people change their ethical codes as a result of new information, rejecting previously held beliefs and so, in their own opinion, making an ethical advancement. It is possible that in 20 years time, alcohol could become unethical in Britain as it was for a brief period in the United States. There, “National prohibition of alcohol (1920-33) – the ‘noble experiment’ – was undertaken to reduce crime and corruption, solve social problems, reduce the tax burden created by prisons and poorhouses, and improve health and hygiene in America. (Thornton, 1991)”. Alcohol varies in position according to the views in different sectors. Some (Organic Wine Company, 2002; Waterhouse, 1995) regard it as beneficial in small quantities. Others regard it as a poison and a corrupting influence. According to Narconan (2003), alcohol abuse costs the USA between $40m and $60m annually in lost production, health care, accidents, crime and related social programs. The Temperance movement, started by Joseph Livesey in 1832, condemns it (Cruikshank, 2002). Islam does not permit it. “Since alcohol is injurious to reason and diminishes a man’s intelligence, moral sense, logical powers and spiritual sensitiveness, any drop of it is strictly forbidden to any Muslim” (Lari, 2003). Several other products may be deemed unethical and organisations may refuse to deal with them or invest in their makers. The Co-operative Bank (2003) for example, will not deal in shares of arms and cigarette manufacture. Longstaff (1994) notes that the Friends Provident Stewardship fund turned in higher returns between 1993 and 1994 than any other as a result of being able to appreciate such an opinion of the society in which it operates. Thus any ethical measurement of the product itself may need to be society based. For the purposes of this examination, we will assume that the product is neither particularly ethical nor unethical. This will allow close examination of the other two aspects of study, production and marketing. 3.1.2 The production – why do producers need to be ethical?. There is much data available that suggests that consumers pay attention to production methods as well as to the morality of the product itself. Copeland (2002) cites the indignation that followed Ford’s refusal in 1978 to recall and modify the Ford Pinto following the fates of three young women who died when the petrol tank exploded. “In 1980 a (criminal) jury returned a not-guilty verdict. Ford prevailed only because it had not deviated from the prevailing legal standards at the time the Pinto was produced. Ford’s conduct was unethical, but it was not illegal”. This success in the criminal courts did not save Ford from being successfully prosecuted in the civil courts and suffering loss of sales. The wine industry has also seen the effects of maintaining ethical values. In many

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parts of the world, the apartheid regime of South Africa was regarded as totally unacceptable and its products were shunned. Once universal suffrage was established, South Africa’s products, including wine, started to appear on our supermarket shelves. Webb (2001) noted that “When apartheid was finally dead and buried and the world markets opened up for us”. In the area of oil production, Wood (2004) noted that “Fear of embarrassment at the hands of non-governmental organisations and the media have given business ethics an even bigger push. One victim was Shell, which in 1995, suffered two blows to its reputation: one from its attempted disposal of the Brent Spar oil rig in the North Sea, and the other over the company’s failure to oppose the Nigerian government’s execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, a human-rights activist in a part of Nigeria where Shell had extensive operations.” As a result, Shell has rewritten its business principles and has made efforts to implement them, and to consult with non-government organisations. Examples from literature thus suggest that many consumers look closely at reports related to production and are capable of punishing those who appear to offend their ethical standpoints. 3.1.3 The marketing. The literature also suggests that the ethicality of the organisation-customer relationship is of importance when weighing up the product prior to purchase. The International Labour Organisation industry recognizes three types of code of conduct related to this area. They are the following (ILO, n.d.) (1) Compliance codes. Directive statements giving guidance and prohibiting certain kinds of conduct. (2) Corporate credos. Broad general statements of corporate commitments to constituencies, values and objectives. (3) Management philosophy statements. Formal enunciations of the company or CEO’s way of doing business. ILO consider that many of these codes arose as a result of scandals in the US defence industry in the 1980s. One example already noted is that of the AMA (2004) whose code of practice covers the activities of its members. In the European Union, there is no such widely accepted code, though individual groups within member states do subscribe to principles relevant to their own areas. These include the British Code of Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing. Warner (n.d.) comments that in any sales or marketing activity, individuals should show responsibility to the various sectors of the community with whom they interact. All sales-personnel have an obligation not to cheat the customers by describing the product in incorrect terms and to maintain the reputation of their company and finally to have a clear conscience as a result of their activities. Warner summed up these activities as the five “Cs” – consumers, conscience, custom, community and company. Under this code, for example, the marketing of wine or tobacco to children would be banned. Since 1988 the United Kingdom’s Control of Misleading Advertisements Regulations has enforced stricter control over the banning of advertisements that produce complaints (Brassington and Pettitt, 2000). Such codes and laws provide protection, and reassurance for consumers in many areas but may not always be easy to enforce. Consumers misleading the marketers as to their age, etc. cause one problem. In law it is up to the marketers to challenge if they

believe that the potential consumer is behaving unethically (e.g. by declaring an incorrect age). Under US law, “Sales (of alcohol) may only be made only to persons over the age of 21” (Direct Shipment, 2004). In the UK it is 18. Caveat Venditor! 3.2 Is wine being marketed ethically? Examination of the themes found in advertisements, papers and sites on the world wide web produces many examples of the use of the word “ethical” when associated with wine. For example, E&J Gallo’s Web site (2003) outlines their commitment to ethical stewardship of the land. It could be argued that this ethical production stance is a form of marketing of the product. Companies such as Fairtrade have always emphasised the ethical nature of their buying policy and the society benefits that have accrued to third world producers. Raisin Social (n.d.) comments that “in recent years there has been growing concern among consumers that the goods they buy should be produced in conditions that are safe and decent.” By stressing that these concerns have been met, the producers of various countries are in effect, using the ethics of production as a marketing tool. In the following section the reports of wine production and wine marketing will be examined to see what ethical problems can be highlighted. It would appear reasonable to assume that if there are few recorded examples of unethical behaviour on either the production or the marketing scale, and the majority of examples fit into area A (Figure 2) then there are no serious concerns with this product. If many examples are found in area B, then it seems reasonable to assume that there are serious ethical doubts about either production methods or marketing of the product. Where all aspects are considered extremely highly ethical, they will appear in area C. 3.2.1 Mainstream producers – neither high nor low ethics. Examples of such production would be plotted in area A of Figure 2. If the marketing and production of a product is to considered ethical, then the majority of examples found should be placed in the area. This would appear to be the case. In 2000, the world production of wine was 275,892 hectolitres, a figure that has varied only marginally over the last 30 years (Wine Institute, 2003). Of the top ten producers, four (The USA, Germany, Australia and South Africa) do not figure in the top ten per capita consumers (Winebiz, 2005). These are countries, which produce a large surplus for export, or have the potential for expansion of the internal market. Jaeger (2000) estimates the internal market of the USA at only 11 per cent of the

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Figure 2. How the ethical cube is to be used

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population. Expanding this market, both internally and externally is the domain of the marketers. They are restricted by a number of factors, which include the following. . Preference for other drinks, which they can try to influence. . The ethics of the land. Ethical considerations should rule out trying to influence those below the legal drinking age and also those whose consumption approaches or exceeds recommended alcohol guidelines. Advertising controls in the UK also require companies not to make “people look more attractive when drinking alcohol” (Meikle, 2001). . Trade restrictions – for example, the laws of the USA forbid trading of alcohol across State boundaries except via legal state wholesalers. (Wine Institute, 1997). Within such restrictions, wine producers can advertise to enhance their product. For example, E&J Gallo, the Californian wine maker has spent over $500m since 1977 (WIPO, 2000). According to Jaeger (2000) a large amount of this advertising is aimed at the trade and a small core of consumers – including people who read the two main UK wine magazines – Wine and Decanter. Much of the latter’s advertisements tend to accompany regional articles – in effect sponsoring them. For example, Wine (January 2004) featured a tasting of Burgundy wines – accompanied by 1.5 pages of advertisements for the Burgundy region or for individual producers. As Jaeger (2000) commented, this is preaching to the converted. One area where new drinkers may be influenced is via the wine columns of the newspapers, which are usually accompanied by advertisements for regions, countries, or even very large producers. Such wine-related activity can be considered as largely ethical, providing it comes within national production and advertising guidelines. Certain producers may drop out of this classification because they are perceived by other countries to have lowered their standards- Austrian wine was, in the 1980s, largely shunned in export markets because of unacceptable additives, but is now recovering (Mansson, 2000). Other producers, such as Spain or South Africa, which were once seen as being politically unacceptable, have become ethical as a result of reforms. This category appears to cover the largest proportion of world production. 3.2.2 High ethical production, high ethical marketing. Referring to internet marketing, Gauzante and Ranchod (2001) conclude that “Firms that follow ethical marketing stances are likely to be more competitively advantaged in the future”. Ethical Consumer (1997) doubted that this was all Virtue Ethics, but welcomed signs of an improvement in ethical standards, noting that “Some institutions displaying this behaviour, like retailers, are often simply responding to pressure from their own ethical customers and passing this pressure down their supply chains. Others are seriously trying to address social or environmental policy goals through purchasing.” Whatever the motives, recent cases that can be plotted in this section of the model, would appear to be evidence that producers are viewing ethical behaviour as a significant marketing factor. One group that is classified as “ethical” is organic viticulturalists who have emphasised environmental issues. This is a small but influential proportion of the world wine industry that uses its ethical production methods as a strong marketing tool. In many cases, it is the only marketing tool used. Fitzpatrick (2003) stress both their lack of chemical pesticides and their use of recycled glass and untreated corks. The Viticulturalist Davenport Vineyards (2003) devotes a page of his web site to his

use of healthy fertilisers (e.g. Chicken manure), to environmentally friendly pest control, and their efforts to build soil fertility naturally. In this, his marketing pitch concerns the natural, healthy nature of the production. In addition to individual producers, a number of countries, including New Zealand and South Africa are beginning to realise that an ethical stance in production will improve the image of their industry and will lead to improved sales. Several articles refer to the ethical stance of the South African wine industry (De Koch, 2002), especially with reference to improving the standards for workers in the vineyards. In November 2002, the “Wine Industry Association for Ethical Trade” was launched (WOSA, 2002), with the support of several UK supermarket groups. This is a response to the poor image of South African vineyards in the area of employment (De Koch, 2002). New Zealand too has instituted a programme called “Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand” (SWNZ, n.d.) under which growers agree to provide: . a best practice model of environmental management; . a guarantee of quality from the vineyard to the bottle; and . a system of addressing customer concerns regarding environmental and grape production. No one is claiming that the vineyards are not using any chemicals (even the organics use copper sulphate), or producing as many grapes as they can – merely that they are behaving ethically and are following a rigid code of practice. They are also marketing aggressively, but, to a large extent, are using their ethical virtues in their advertisements. They have realised that their customers wish to be reassured that they are dealing with a responsible company. 3.2.3 Unethical production – unethical marketing. In Sections 3.2.3 and 3.2.4, examples that are perceived as illustrating poor ethical behaviour are discussed. There are fewer of these than in the previous two sections, but they are still enough to show that certain aspects of the product, its marketing and production still give rise to concerns. Examples have been discovered over a long period. Chaucer’s Pardoner in the Canterbury Tales, quoted by Phillips (2000) warned: Keep clear of wine, I tell you white or red, Especially Spanish wines which they provide And have on sale in Fish Street and Cheapside. That wine mysteriously finds its way To mix itself with others – shall we say Spontaneously? – that grow in neighbouring regions.

Modern examples can be found. Gerlich (2003) noted that “the vintners are making cheap wine for a select market segment; the poor homeless, skid-row individual”. These include “Cisco” and “Wild Irish Rose”, both 18 per cent and bottled by Canadaigua Wine in New York State. The former is described as “liquid crack for its reputation for wreaking more mental havoc than the cheapest tequila” (Bum Wine, 2003). These wines are priced at under $3.00 a bottle and are attractive to the sections of society that already have problems of alcoholism.

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Unethical production also includes the addition of illegal substances, for example, in the Austrian wine scandal of the 1980s, anti-freeze was added to the wine to sweeten it. Such action almost ruined that country’s industry (Austrian Wines, 2003). Currently, there are suspicions that some South African producers have been adding flavourings to Sauvignon Blanc (Gismondi, 2003; Eikestradnuus, 2003). Burgundy has long been suspected of adulteration of its wines with inferior wine from other countries (Atkin, 2001). Both Britain and Canada suffer from the presence on supermarket shelves of wine made from imported grapes, marketed as “British wine” or “Product of Canada”, neither of which contain any local ingredient except water. While most purchasers are probably aware of its origin, and appreciate its cheapness, the makers “take advantage of promotions paid for by honest VQA (Vintners Quality Alliance) producers” (Ejbich, 2000). The extent of this unethical behaviour cannot be ascertained by qualitative analysis, but the examples found are not large in number. However, since one report can seriously damage an area’s wine industry, they have significance. 3.2.4 Unethical marketing, ethical production. There is also evidence available that a small proportion of organisations are behaving unethically by selling perfectly respectable products in markets that are regarded as unsuitable. In the alcohol sector there are also many examples. In Asia for example, there is heavy alcohol advertising. Assunta (2003) comments that “Transnational alcohol companies use unethical advertising and marketing tactics to get customers particularly among the lower sectors of society” and make “blatantly misleading claims about health such as DOM Benedictine, which is promoted as a health restorative providing resistance to colds and indigestion for mothers who have just given birth”. In Europe, the problem of alcopops has emerged in recent years. The Alcohol Concern Fact sheet estimated in 2001 that 10 per cent of young people – between 13 and 16, drink them regularly. This is despite the regulations that ban both the purchase of alcohol by, and market targeting of such teenagers. The marketers argue that their advertisements are aimed at people in the age group 18-25, despite the fact that most of this group has moved on to other, more overtly alcoholic drinks. Courts in the USA were hearing a similar case in 2004 (Wine, 2004). A multi-billion dollar lawsuit was brought against drinks companies for allegedly targeting under-age drinkers by using a “young-looking female” on the advertisements. The only defence produced by the companies was that the model in question was actually over 30. 3.2.5 Ethical marketing – unethical production. Examples in this sector involve the possibility of the producers misleading a “middleman” as to the nature of their product, and so getting them to sell it to the eventual consumers. The true extent of this is largely unknown, or may not be admitted. Some marketing companies may even believe that they are behaving ethically and that they are working at the moral level of the customer or that the maxim caveat emptor (buyer beware) covers their actions and makes them ethical. They may also believe that they are ethical because, in making the sale “no one was hurt” or “everyone does it” or “the buyer could never have been taken in by anything so cheap”. Admittedly, sometimes it is hard to protect the consumer, as when a buyer believes they are getting a genuine Rolex watch on a market stall for a fairly small sum or inexpensive (and fake) Canadian Ice-wine in Taipei (Taipei News, 2003).

In a Suckling (1998) article on fake wines, the writer Serena Sutcliffe comments that “There are loads of ‘47’s being drunk that are fake. We are talking about millions of dollars over the last few years”. The high prices appear to have encouraged fakes, which are often being sold in good faith by wine merchants. Even experts can be fooled. BBC (1999) and Harper’s (2000) both cite examples of experts being fooled by unscrupulous producers anxious to benefit from the high price of the “real product”.

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449 4. Conclusions 4.1 Are these data sources adequate for this task? From examples found, it would appear that the majority of wine producers are neither particularly ethical nor particularly unethical in any of the three areas examined. However, there is evidence of some unethical behaviour in one or more of these areas, as shown in Figure 3. How accurate such data is itself subject to debate. To quote Rhetorica (n.d.). “No matter how much we may try to ignore it, human communication always takes place in a context, through a medium, and among individuals and groups who are situated historically, politically, economically, and socially. This state of affairs is neither bad nor good. It simply is. Bias is a small word that identifies the collective influences of the entire context of a message”. The analysis of documents concerning a problem of ethics can give only an indication of whether or not there is a problem, not the total extent of it. Very few of the papers actually quantify such a problem, i.e. to say that a specific problem represents 4 per cent of the world total of the product. To the best of the author’s knowledge, there are no such figures as, has been seen in several of the examples, few of the participants, either buyer or seller, are likely to admit in interview that they are involved in unethical practice. The problem could be focussed more by, observation or by access to reports of trials, if such trials have taken place. However, as with any such study it unlikely that more than a small proportion of cases would emerge. However, if a particular type of problem appears in many papers and articles, then it seems valid to assume that it has some significance.

Figure 3. A summary of the main findings

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4.2 Is the model adequate? The model itself is still in the preliminary stage of design. It would appear that the three faces could themselves be sub-divided. For example, production could be broken down into such areas as quality, politics, environmental matters and human aspects. Marketing could be broken down into sub-divisions such as text, transmission medium and target. Such analysis could for the basis of further papers. Simple analysis of papers and articles can provide rich examples that highlight the main ethical problems related to a product, its marketing and its production. However, it cannot provide details on the numerical extent of the problem or the significance of the examples found. However, if the method were applied to a number of different products, then it is likely that their relative positions on these “Good-Bad” ethical scales could be viewed, and thus it could provide a basis for a wider, more detailed study using other qualitative and quantitative methods. References American Marketing Association (AMA) (2004), Code of Ethics, available at: www.tri-media. com/ama.html (accessed 9 February 2004). Assunta, M. (2003), “Impact of alcohol consumption on Asia”, The Globe-newletters of the Global Alcohol Policy Alliance, available at: www.ias.org.uk/publications/theglobe/01issue3,4/ globe0103_04.html (accessed 12 December 2003). Atkin, T. (2001), Storm in a Wine Glass, available at: http//observer.guardian.co.uk/life/story/ 0,6903,421957,0.html (accessed 12 December 2003). Austrian Wines (2003), available at: www.tmwwines.com/history.htm (accessed 15 December 2003). BBC (1999), P&O Caught Out by Wine Fraud, BBC News, available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ uk/438132.stm Brassington, F. and Pettitt, S. (2000), Principles of Marketing, Prentice-Hall, Harlow, p. 77. Bum Wines (2003), “Newsletter”, available at: www.tcsn.net/rags/bum/ (accessed 12 December 2003). Co-operative Bank (2003), Our ethical policy, available at: www.co-operativebank.co.uk/ethics/ partnership2002/pr/ethical_policy.html (accessed 29 December 2003). Copeland, J.D. (2002), Business Ethics: Three Critical Truths, available at: www.soderquist.org/ calendar/newsinfo.asp (accessed 27 November 2003). Cruikshank, G. (2002), History of Temperance Movement, available at: www.spartacus.schoolnet. co.uk/REtemperance.htm (accessed 15 December 2003). Davenport Vineyards (2003), Organic Grape Growing, available at: www.davenportvineyards.co. uk/organics.html (accessed 22 November 2003). De Koch (2002), Widespread Support for SA Wine industry Ethical Trade Association, available at: www.news.wine.co.za/News/Article.asp?NID ¼ 3203 (accessed 23 November 2003). Direct Shipment (2004), Direct Shipment Laws by State for Wineries, available at: www. wineinstitute.org/shipwine/analysis/intro_analysis.htm (accessed 10 January 2004). EICS (2004), Ethical Issues in Clinical Supervision, available at: http://soeweb.syr.edu/chs/ OnlineField/Ethics/Home.htm (accessed 29 October 2004). Eikestradnuus (2003), Flavouring Wines is Illegal in SA, available at: www.news24.com/Regional _papers/components/Category. . ./0,38/ _1448904 , E00.htm (accessed 12 December 2003).

Eisner, E.W. (1991), The Enlightened Eye: Qualitative Inquiry and The Enhancement of Educational Practive, Macmillan, New York, NY.

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Ejbich, K. (2000), Wine Fraud Persists at LCBO, available at: www.eye.net/issue/issue_05.11.00/ foodanddrink/drinks.html (accessed 12 December 2003). Ethical Consumer (1997), The Rise and Rise of Ethical Consumerism, available at: www. ethicalconsumer.org/philosophy/riserise.htm (accessed 1 December 2004). E&J Gallo web site (2003), available at: http://jobs.gallo.com/WorldClass/Stewardship.asp (accessed 10 June 2004). Fitzpatrick (2003), Earth Friendly Wines, available at: www.fitzpatrick.com/earthfriendly.html (accessed 25 November 2003). Gauzante, C. and Ranchod, A. (2001), Ethical Marketing for Competitive Advantage on the Internet, available at: www.vancouver.wsu.edu/amsrev/forum/gauzente10-01.html (accessed 1 December 2004). Gerlich, R.N. (2003), Marketing Ethics: Part 1, available at: http://www.drgerlich.com/ mkt5540lect07a.html (accessed 19 December 2003). Ginns, S. (2002), “Legal developments in marketing channels”, available at: www.aspects.net/ , stephenginns/education/dm5.ppt (accessed 10 June 2004). Gismondi (2003), South African Sauvignon Blanc has a New Flavour, November, available at: www.gismondi.com/article.php?itm ¼ 377 (accessed 11 December 2003). Haley, G. (2004), An Introduction to Using Data at DPLS, available at: http://dpls.dacc.wisc.edu/ types/secondary.htm (accessed 9 June 2004). Harpers (n.d.), Wines and Misdemeanours, available at: www.harpers-wine.com/featuresitem. cfm?featuresID ¼ 40 (accessed 12 December 2003). Heaton, J. (2004), Secondary Analysis of Qualitative Data, available at: www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/sru/ SRU22.html (accessed July 2004). Hoepfl, M.C. (1997), “Choosing qualitative research: a primer for technology education researchers”, Journal of Technology Education, Vol. 9 No. 1, available at: http://scholar.lib. vt.edu/ejournals/JTE/v9n1/hoepfl.html (accessed 22 November 2004). Jaeger, G. (2000), The Customer is Always Right. . . Right?, available at: www.winebusiness.com/ html/MonthlyPrinterFriendly.cfm?issueID ¼ 25891&aid ¼ 25231 (accessed 27 November 2003). Jones, M. (1998), “A new way of doing business Interview with Anita Roddick”, Share Inernational, available at: www.shareintl.org/archives/social-justice/sj_mjnew.htm Laczniak, G.G. and Murphy, P.E. (1992a), Ethical Marketing Decisions: The Higher Road, Pearson Education, p. 47. Lari, S.M.M. (2003), “Islam and alcoholic drinks”, available at: http://home.swipnet.se/islam/ articles/alcohol.htm (accessed 12 December 2003). Longstaff, S. (1994), “Is ethics good business?”, available at: www.ethics.org.au/things_to_read/ articles_to_read/business/article_0130.shtm (accessed 9 December 2003). Mansson, P. (2000), A Tale of Two Countries, available at: http://winespectator.com/Wine/Main/ Feature_basic-Template_print/0,2462.871,00.html (accessed 27 November 2003). MDRC (2004), Using Qualitative Research Methods, Management Decision and Research center, available at: www.mdrc.research.med.va.gov/mgmt_research_in_va/methodology/ qualitative_research.cfm (accessed 20 July 2004).

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Meikle, P. (2001), NHS Must Give Alcohol Abuse Equal Priority to Drug Misuse say Doctors, available at: http://society.guardian.co.uk/drugsandalcoholstory/0,8130.432488,00.htm (accessed 27 December 2003). Narconan (2003), “Alcoholism Statistics”, available at: www.alcoholaddiction.info/statistics.htm (accessed 23 December 2003). Needle (2001), “Book Review of ‘Mormon History’”, available at: www.aml-online.org/reviews/b/ B200166.html (accessed 11 June 2004). Oldenquist, A. (Ed.) (1965), “Ethical absolutism and ethical relativism”, Readings in Moral Philosophy, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA, p. 22, available at: www.fda.gov/ohrms/ dockets/ac/01/slides/3744s2_05_Stiefel.ppt Organic Wine Company (2002), A Votre Sante, available at: www.theorganicwinecompany.com/ health.html (accessed 10 December 2003). Phillips, R. (2000), Wine and Adulteration, available at: www.worldsofwine.com/ Wine_and%20Adulteration.htm (accessed 12 December 2003). QRCA (2004), What is Qualitative Research, Qualitative Research Consultants Association, available at: www.qrca.org/whentouse_QR.asp (accessed 10 June 2004). Rhetorica (n.d.), Media/Political Bias, available at: http://rhetorica.net/bias.htm (accessed 7 July 2004). Stanford (2003), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – Virtue Ethics, available at: http:// plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/ (accessed 29 October 2003). Suckling, J. (n.d)., available at: http://66.102.9.104/search?q ¼ cache:nMP8S_zOviAJ:www. winespectator.com/Wine/Archives/Show_Article/0,1275,1722,00.html þ There þ are þ loads þ of þ %E2%80%9847s þ being þ drunk þ that þ are þ fake&hl ¼ en (accessed August 2005). SWNZ (n.d.), The Future of Sustainable Winegrowing in New Zealand, available at: www.nzwine. com/swnz/articles.html (accessed 11 December 2003). Taipei News (2003), “Wine enthusiasts are warned of fake icewines”, available at: www. etaiwannews.com/business/2003/11/28/1069986734.htm (accessed 11 December 2003). Taylor-Powell, E. (2003), Analysing Qualitative Data, available at: http://cecommerce.uwex.edu/ pdfs/G3658_12.PDF (accessed 3 December 2004). Thornhill, J. (2000), “The new consumer is always right”, Financial Times, 21 August. Thornton, M. (1991), Alcohol Prohibition was a Failure, available at: www.cato.org/pubs/pas/ pa-157.html (accessed 26 June 2004). Warner, C. (n.d.), Sales Ethics: It’s not an Oxymoron, available at: www.charleswarner.us/ salesethics.html (accessed 12 December 2003). Waterhouse, A.L. (1995), Wine and Heart Disease, available at: http://wineserver.ucdavis.edu/ cuttingedge/research/winehealth.htm (accessed 10 December 2003). Webb, G. (2001), “New Breed” of South African Winemakers, available at: www.findarticles.com/ p/articles/mi_m3488/is_11_82/ai_80234972 (accessed 4 November 2004). Wiebe, R.J. (2000), “The new business ethics”, available at: www.cda-adc.ca/jcda/vol-66/issue-5/ 248.html (accessed 30 June 2004). Wine (2004), “News in brief”, Wine International, p. 11. Wine Institute (1997), “Anti-direct shipment laws”, available at: www.wineinstitute.org/ shipwine/backgrounder/backgrounder.htm (accessed 27 December 2003). Wine Institute (2003), “Key facts”, available at: www.wineinstitute.org/communications/ statistics/keyfacts_worldwineproduction99.htm (accessed 27 December 2003).

Winebiz, News and Information for the Australian Wine Business, Winebiz, available at: http:// www.winebiz.com.au/statistics/world.asp (accessed August 2005). WIPO, WIPO Arbitration & Mediation centre – E. & J. GalloWinery v. Oak Investment Group (online), available at: http://arbiter.wipo.int/domains/decisions/html/2000/d2000-1213.html (accessed 12 December 2000). Wolff, S. (2004), “Analysis of documents and records”, in Flick, U. et al. (Eds), A Companion to Qualitative Research, Sage, London. Wood, L. (2004), “Beyond the oxymoron, can business ethics pay?”, available at: www. galtglobalreview.com/business/business_ethics.html (accessed 16 September 2004). WOSA (2002), Code of Practice for Members of the Ethical Trade Association for the Western Cape Wine Industry, available at: www.wosa.co.za/documents/COGP.doc (accessed 11 December 2003). Zieminski, C. (2004), The Ethical Continuum, available at: http://people.smu.edu/cziemins/essays/ relativism.htm (accessed 22 June 2004). Further reading ILO (n.d.), Corporate Codes of Conduct, available at: www.itcilo.it/actrav/actrav-english/telearn/ global/ilo/code/main.htm (accessed 20 July 2004). New Zealand Trade & Enterprise (n.d.), available at: www.nzte.govt.nz/article/0,1973,Section ID%253D11897%2526ContentID%253D5824,00.html (accessed 12 December 2003). Raisin Social (n.d.), Ethical Trading Initiative, available at: http://raisin-social.com/ ethical_trading_initiative/ (accessed 25 November 2003). Singh, S. (2003), Baby Food Manufacturer Accused of Violating W.H.O. Code, available at: www. twnside.org/title/baby.htm (accessed 11 December 2003). World Wine Exports (n.d.), available at: www.fas.usda.gov/htp/horticulture/wine/winex.pdf (accessed 27 December 2003). (Oliver Richardson lectures in Business Computing in the School of Business at Brunel University. His research interests lie in the effectiveness and commercial uses of the world wide web. For several years he maintained a web site on the vineyard industry of the United Kingdom, and this case study has been used to illustrate papers on topics as diverse as marketing, tourism, ethics and web usage.)

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Angela Ayios and Lisa Harris Brunel Business School, Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middlesex,UK Abstract Purpose – The aim of this paper is to investigate whether technological developments can be used in call centre environments to build trust and hence lasting customer relationships beyond the usual focus on efficiency gains through automation. Design/methodology/approach – Draws upon depth interviews with management and staff in three very different types of call centre to critically examine the ways in which caring attitudes and competent behaviour of call centre staff can contribute to building durable bases for customer trust. Findings – While one of the case studies exemplifies a purely economic rationale for call centre operations, the other two demonstrate that a truly optimal application of technology creates a shared system of which customers and employees form an integrated part. Employees’ knowledge of the system and the product it underpins are applied in a positive way to create relationships and trust with the customers with whom they transact. Practical implications – Argues that competitive advantage can be gained if the customer perception is of an organisation that is concerned with building relationships based on competence or empathy to meet individual needs – features which stand out clearly in an industry sector often associated with standardised services, “sweatshop” working conditions and control-based management practices focused on a purely economic rationale. Originality/value – Demonstrates that multi-channel environments for customer interaction offer potential for competitive advantage beyond short-term efficiency gains when the convenience of channel choice is creatively combined with competent and empathetic customer service. Keywords Trust, Relationship marketing, Call centres, Change management, Electronic commerce Paper type Research paper

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Introduction Our research suggests that the application of technology by call centres in pursuit of economic efficiency is merely a veneer or perhaps a Potemkin Village after the title of this volume. If applied only in this narrow sense, technology offers advantages in terms of measurement, predictability and control, but is unlikely to result in customer satisfaction and retention into the long term. Despite the rhetoric of technological innovation, everyday business reality appears closer to the nineteenth century than the twenty-first century, with customers remaining very much strangers. In this Potemkin Village, technology promotes distance and mistrust between individuals rather than unity and sharing of common interests. The true village is a community of customers and competent staff integrated through technology, here technology represents a kind The Veneerings, in Dicken’s Our Mutual Friend, are a shallow, hollow family whose lives revolve around flaunting their wealth in the community in order to display a veneer of respectability which covers their own shortcomings.

of background enabler or platform for action rather than a glitzy veneer which promises more than it delivers. In this paper we go beyond the “traditional” call centre business model that relies upon control-based management practices in pursuit of economic efficiency. We have devised a framework of trust relationships within which to examine how modern businesses are drawing upon both recent technological developments and new styles of management to develop more innovative sources of competitive advantage with regard to their call centre operations. Specifically, we begin by defining the various forms of trust along a continuum from “low trust” to “high trust”. We then discuss how emerging e-business technologies and new applications for call centres provide opportunities for building a high degree of trust expressed in more emotional terms. We draw upon primary research in a wide range of call centre environments to examine the ways in which the caring attitudes and behaviours identified as so essential to building durable bases for customer trust can be achieved in practice. While one of our case studies exemplifies a purely economic rationale for call centre operations, the other two demonstrate that a truly optimal application of technology creates a shared system of which customers and employees form an integrated part; employees’ knowledge of the system and the product it underpins are applied in a positive way to create relationships and trust with the customers with whom they transact. We argue that competitive advantage can be gained if the customer perception is of an organisation that is concerned with building relationships based on competence or empathy to meet individual needs – features which stand out clearly in an industry sector often associated with standardised services, “sweatshop” working conditions and control-based management practices focused on a purely economic rationale. Forms of trust During the 1990s, Koehn commented that trust was very likely to become that decade’s “buzzword”. Her prediction seems to have been timely. From the government, to hospitals, through the media, the exam system, and ultimately to business, trust and trustworthiness have become that elusive quality that every institution and business seems to be chasing. As the analysis that follows will show, where trust is high customers are more likely to stay loyal to the company, overlook the odd mistake here and there, report positively to friends and relatives about their service, and become quite the advocate for the company. Who would not want this as a source of competitive advantage? But is this a realistic proposition? People may be bothered by trusting strangers because it feels unnatural (Kipnis, 1996), and they will be highly calculative in their approach to such strangers when embarking on any kind of new business relationship with them. However, there is evidence to suggest that when entering into transactions with business, customers are likely to seek out a company with whom they can develop a relationship of trust into the long term: “Most of today’s online customers exhibit a clear proclivity toward loyalty, and web technologies, used correctly, reinforce that inherent loyalty. . . [which] is still about earning the trust of the right kinds of customers” (Reichheld and Schefter, 2000, p. 106). What is the “correct use of technology” to bring about this higher form of loyalty and trust? And how can e-businesses develop such trust relations for competitive advantage?

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The trust continuum Conceptually, trust is a complex subject area, characterised by: “a confusing potpourri of definitions applied to a host of units and levels of analysis” (Shapiro (1987, p. 624), cited in Hosmer (1995, p. 380)). The definition of trust to be employed here will be Boon and Holmes (1991, p. 194) definition of trust as “a state involving confident positive expectations about another’s motives with respect to oneself in situations entailing risk” (Lewicki and Bunker, 1996, p. 117). This recognises, in its mention of “risk”, the bothersome nature of trusting strangers, and also the importance of long-term relationships in the marketing context, and the crucial role of positive future expectations in developing them. Lewis and Weigert (1985, p. 972) model of trust in social systems divides trust into emotional trust, where trusting behaviour results from “strong positive affect for the object of trust”, and cognitive trust, in which there are “good rational reasons” for vesting trust in another. Usually trust results from a combination of both of these elements. This paper draws on this distinction between types of trust, and combines it with Lewicki and Bunker (1996, p. 119) temporal model of trust development. In their model, parties to a transaction may move from calculative (i.e. basic, cognitive) trust, through knowledge-based trust, centred on the predictability of a partner’s behaviour gained through a history of interaction, and finally to identification-based trust, which assumes each party appreciates the others’ desires, and can be relied upon to act in their best interests. They suggest that “the three types of trust are linked in a sequential iteration in which the achievement of trust at one level enables the development of trust at the next level”. Drawing on these conceptualisations, this paper posits that trust exists on a continuum ranging from weaker, fragile trust, which is commonly based on, for example, rules, contracts, institutions and rational, objective thought (cognitive trust), through to more durable, emotionally-based trust, traditionally aligned with social and cultural groupings and norms, kinship and family, and/or high positive evaluations of good character and goodwill (affect-based trust). In between these two poles is a centre point of trusting expectations and behaviours, which revolve around knowledge gathered through repeated interactions over time. Such a knowledge base arises out of cognitive, rational expectations of trustworthy behaviour being confirmed, giving rise to more positive future calculations and expectations of competent performance of duties. This is illustrated in the trust continuum set out in Figure 1. In practice, these types of trust operate in business life in various ways. In external relationships between a business’s employees and its customers, then the business relationship at the outset is typically characterised by low-trust, contractual and formal devices. If the business’s representatives and staff show expected or higher than expected levels of competence, and if the service agreement or product offering turns out to be reliable over time, then interactions between representatives of the company and its customers have the potential to become characterised by more positive expectations, and into the long term offering the possibility of generating more emotional and well-intentioned ties, which engender stronger customer trust and loyalty. We will suggest later in the paper that e-business developments provide opportunities for modern call centres to develop trust in this way.

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Figure 1.

Weak (calculative) trust Trust at its most basic relies on contracts and the courts, documents and procedures, and high levels of monitoring and control. In fact, some would question whether this represents trust at all (Husted, 1998). Such trust revolves around the question of whether the other parties to the relationship will carry out their contractual agreement (Sako, 1998), and is grounded in measures that prevent undesired action, for example, through contracts and the courts, to assure consistency of behaviour (Lewicki and Bunker, 1996). An example of this in practice would be customer concern regarding fulfilment of contractual obligations, security of payment systems and the privacy of personal data, which is of particular importance to online trading. The Guardian Online (5 September 2003) reported on Forrester research which found that consumers’ confidence in the integrity of e-business had actually fallen since 2001. It concluded that companies needed to work much harder to re-establish trust. Without trust being achieved at this most basic and calculative of levels, it has no opportunity to develop at a deeper level. Intermediate (knowledge-based) trust Trust at the intermediate range of the continuum assumes that trust at its most basic and formal level has been achieved, and parties to a relationship wish to continue interacting, with the “trustor” having built a degree of confidence and positive expectations regarding the “trustee’s” ability to deliver what has been formally promised. If contracts and expectations are not compromised, a belief develops that there are “good rational reasons” for vesting trust in another (Lewis and Weigert, 1985) and the trustor is prepared to invest more trust. What will be of particular interest to

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the trustee is the trustor’s competence – is the other party capable of doing what it says it will do (Sako, 1988), will they do it, and in whose interests? The importance of this accumulation of a positive experience of process and performance, carried out in the customer’s best interests, is readily visible in the e-business context. For example, the customer reviews and recommendations provided by Amazon, and more recently the published buyer feedback and rating of a seller’s performance, together with water-tight payment systems, has encouraged even “net-novices” to try out e-Bay’s online auction service. Strong (affect-based) trust The trustor, having observed that the trustee has fulfilled all of the relevant contractual and procedural requirements of their partnership, and having had time to accumulate knowledge of the trustee’s consistent and reliable performance of their duties, may be prepared to extend a deepened form of trust to the trustee if they consider it desirable or appropriate. Trusting behaviour at this end of the trust spectrum comprises a more emotional basis of interaction between trustee and trustor. At its most durable, this type of trust is linked closely with the person: ethnicity, family background or religious grouping are often significant factors (Zucker, 1986). On a daily basis, this trust will be characterised by, for example, efforts to demonstrate interpersonal care and concern (McAllister, 1995). How does such trust operate in the business environment? Sako (1998, p. 89) foresees this as a context in which parties to the relationship “make an open-ended commitment to take initiatives for mutual benefit while refraining from unfair advantage taking”. As a result, such trust occupies the opposite end of the spectrum to the more rational, calculative bases for trust. For example, call centre staff working for telecoms giant Orange actually welcome the monitoring of their work because it provides concrete evidence of the high quality service that they know is provided – in other words, it is an opportunity to showcase their skills by winning industry awards! Online communities provide further evidence of affective trust, for example, actively participating Cisco customers actually use the facility to resolve queries posed by other customers. Case study discussion: trust in call centres – is it possible to manage hearts as well as minds? Call centres have often received a bad press and been dubbed “the new sweat shops” or “electronic panopticons” (Bain and Taylor, 2000). Services fall into two main categories – outbound (cold-calling to potential customers) and inbound (taking calls from customers with queries and problems). According to Guardian Online (17 August 2003), the call centre industry continues to grow by 22 per cent a year on average, making it one of the fastest growing sectors in the UK. Call centres currently employ half a million people in the UK, or three per cent of the workforce in North England and Scotland. Seventy per cent of these workers are under 35 and women, salaries range from £7,800 to £21,000 (the average is £13,000-14,000), and 30 per cent are part-timers. Our primary research is presented in Table I. The research consisted of semi-structured, in-depth interviews with call centre managers and staff at three organisations; one management interview was conducted on site and included a visit to the call centre, while the others were conducted off-site. The advantages of this type of

Company

Summary of call centre role

A – travel company focusing on global destinations for young people

Centralised resource which takes holiday enquiries and bookings directly from customers and complements the successful retail outlets providing a face-to-face service. Supporting web site is information based rather than transaction based Customer support centre which includes specialised technical services to provide remote assistance with complex equipment and a coordination team which organises engineer availability for customer site visits The business itself is a call centre which provides overflow support to a range of financial institutions when their own call centres are busy. For example, if a bank has a special credit card promotion its own call centre will be swamped and the excess calls will be routed automatically to Company C for basic processing or referral back of more complex enquiries

B – manufactures and maintains large scale medical equipment such as CT scanners and X-ray machines C – provides specialised call centre support on demand for a range of banks and insurance companies on a out-sourced basis

qualitative interview were confirmed, in terms of allowing our data to talk so that “what is relevant to that area is allowed to emerge” (Corbin and Strauss, 1990, p. 23). While our literature review had suggested a dominant economic model of running call centres to be the case, our research has so far found only one case study which fully conformed to the traditional “economic efficiency” rationale for call centres as described below. Interestingly, the other two cases that will be discussed in this section additionally exhibited quite different characteristics. We have summarised these features as “make love not war” and “what computers can do for you”. The “economic efficiency” model The reason behind organisations pushing call centre operations has been one of cost. Substantial service level improvements, customer empowerment initiatives and efficiency gains are enabled through well-implemented technological systems. As a result, call centres offer the potential for high economic returns, and will often be the most profitable or highly profitable areas of the business. In the words of one of our interviewees: “the aim of any call centre is make more money than last year” [Company A]. At the broad business level, the economic success of the call centre is readily measurable, for example, by comparing advertising costs to volume of business generated. Similarly, at the basic level, the technology permits everyday business operations – whether human or mechanical – to be readily predicted, measured and controlled. Online channels are even cheaper. Customer relationship management company Talisma estimates that interaction with a customer face-to-face costs $300 a time, a phone conversation costs $53, an internet chat $30, text chat $10, e-mail $3, and self help on the internet 10 cents. On this basis, in the early days of e-commerce, the long-term future of the telephone call centre was questioned. However, online banking for example, is still principally used for simple transactions, and when it comes to

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pensions or life insurance, customers prefer to talk to someone or meet face-to-face. For example, both Lloyds TSB and Barclays suffered from significant customer dissatisfaction and adverse publicity when branches were replaced by ATM machines in rural areas. In addition, after UK building society Nationwide upgraded its web site to provide more detailed information to customers, its call centre was flooded with enquiries from people who wanted further information based on the new data that had been made available. Staff became discouraged as both the quantity and level of difficulty of their work rapidly increased. At Company C, our “traditional” call centre which handles “overflow” call demand for a range of clients, the telephone operator knows from the computer screen which company the customer believes he or she is calling, and hence can follow company-specific scripts and conventions. Staff who are familiar with the routines for several companies are much in demand because they can easily switch between calls as demand dictates, and they therefore, have more opportunities to earn sales-related bonuses. Other staff might be more limited in their knowledge and hence only able to take calls on behalf of one or two client companies. From the end customer perspective, it appears as if they are actually talking to the company that they called rather than a specialised centre. Working hours are flexible and suit people with childcare responsibilities, as well as students from the local university. Rotas are planned a week in advance and extra staff will be brought in if a special offer is imminent that will generate additional calls, if it is quiet then some people will be sent home. This case study exemplifies our “economic efficiency” model and conforms exactly to the understanding we held of “typical” call centre business before undertaking this research project. There are, however, a number of problems with this model on both a human and a technical level. In these service-intensive organisations the power is in the hands of front-line employees with low status, but upon whose effective handling of service encounters the achievement of organisational objectives is dependent. As Piercy (2002) notes: “Too many employees who deal directly with customers are damaging the product, service or corporate brand every time they open their mouths”. Poorly implemented technological systems can be counter-productive for staff morale and the customer’s service experience. Overzealous controls, for example, linking rates of pay to the number of calls to be answered per day, or penalising staff who do not attempt to sell additional services to the customer, may result in sabotage. Company C staff admitted that basing pay upon volume of calls encourages people to answer the phone and then cut the customer off, or at best to offer the most basic level of service in order to close the call as soon as possible. Such controls promote, rather than discourage, self-interested behaviour. Customer expectations are rising; many now expect an immediate response to queries at any time of the day or night, and are unimpressed, for example, if a company’s web site does not display the most up-to-date product information and availability, or if they are held in a long queue and forced to listen to dreadful music (or worse still, subjected to company advertising). This puts pressure on firms to ensure customer service call centres are adequately and efficiently staffed and also that their web sites are easy to navigate and contain the information that the customer seeks. At Company C, many targets are team-based and staff morale suffers if individuals within the team do not pull their weight as this puts additional pressure on

the remainder. As with most call centres, staff turnover is high due to the dull and repetitive nature of the work and lack of career progression, so the most able people are unlikely to stay in post for very long. As noted above, in Company C the script reigns supreme. This offers the advantage of consistency of service, but at a low, inauthentic or even “phoney” level. If the query is routine then it can be processed immediately, but credit decisions for example, have to be passed on to the client company so that the calling customer will have to wait for a later decision. This can give the impression of slow or inefficient service, but the operators are not allowed to admit that they work for a third party and have to refer many customer requests to their client. The opportunity to provide authentic, individualised responses to customer demands is likely to generate competitive advantage and more interesting roles for the staff, but is not considered practical in this type of business where the telephone operators are not employees of the client company. In summary, this call centre model prioritises predictability, measurement and control to leverage technology, with measurement of calls answered and business transacted considered to be the key variables. It tends to emphasise short-term thinking and policies at the expense of the long term, for example, with regard to staff motivation and retention. As staff have few expectations of a long-term career, “smiling down the phone” and provision of high customer service standards are unlikely outcomes. Only “bums on seats” are required, “hearts and minds” are not necessary. Taken to its extreme, such call centres not only fail to capture the hearts and minds of staff, but of customers too. While economic efficiency still formed the core business rationale in our other call centre case studies, Companies A and B also both exhibited significant characteristics of relationship building (our “make love not war” model) and Company B additionally made innovative use of new technology (our “what computers can do for you” model). These features will now be examined in turn. The “make love not war” model This call centre model emphasises shared norms, attitudes and values. It is person-centred, focusing on the character and experiential aspects of the individual employee in relation to customers, moving beyond competence in the technical aspects of the job. We will demonstrate here that knowledge, passion, competence to apply the knowledge and personality to translate this to client service allow a relationship to be developed which forms the basis of a sales transaction. Company A is a travel company focusing on global destinations for young people. The call centre is a centralised resource which takes holiday enquiries and bookings directly from customers and complements the successful retail outlets which provide a face-to-face service. Owing to the individual nature and complexity of many of the holiday packages that are constructed, the supporting web site is information based rather than transaction based. The call centre staff have personal experience and knowledge of the product that the customers seek, and are there to turn this enthusiasm into sales. Customers have a strong emotional as well as financial investment in the product, as psychologically it represents the epitome of youth and freedom, and is therefore, part of an individual’s identity. Staff who can empathise with and support this identity amongst customers are therefore key. Consequently minimal formal training and qualifications in call centre work are required – what is on the inside counts as much (if not more) than what is on the outside in the formal call centre

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skills sense. This results in congruence between customers and staff of values, attitudes, beliefs, norms and behaviours. According to one interviewee: “The best salesperson has deep knowledge and builds relationships that way – first and foremost is his passion for travel”. It would be inappropriate for Company A to adopt a purely economic “answer the phone in three rings” approach, as these are complex transactions, requiring time and care over their development: “If a person talking is a long time on the phone, but actually selling to that person, then it is a management issue about the calls stacked up” – meaning you then bring in more staff, not compromise the service levels by making it the customer’s problem. This model shows, though, how economic efficiency is still a key underlying aspect. Targets were tightened up when management felt that financial performance was suffering because staff were getting too chummy with customers, and 40 per cent of the workforce left the company as a result. So there is quite a degree of market and rational discipline underpinning the apparently “touchy-feely” model. The issue of staff retention – little more than 18 months tenure on average – remains a significant difficulty for the business in economic terms. As most staff are graduates who have travelled extensively themselves, they tend to get “itchy feet” quickly in this type of work despite the good working conditions. The relationship building strategies employed by Company A differ from what is normally understood by this expression, namely the development of long-term relationships with customers that become profitable over time through repeat business. Here, the focus is upon building a rapport and empathy with the customer in order to close just the one significant sale, as such trips may literally be “once in a lifetime” events. There is, however, an element of free marketing involved if satisfied customers are so impressed that they pass on a recommendation to their friends. In addition, the relationship is largely inter-personal and the role of technology is minimal. Owing to the transient nature of the customer group and the fact that regular repeat business is unlikely, there is little point in building up a detailed database of customer preferences or targeting them with direct mail. In contrast, technology plays a central role at Company B which manufactures and maintains large scale medical equipment such as CT scanners and X-ray machines. The Customer Support Centre includes a highly specialised technical services team to provide remote assistance with complex equipment by telephone, and a coordination team which administers customer service contracts and organises engineer availability for customer site visits as required. Engineers are monitored in order to check where they are in the country so that the most appropriate one in terms of skills and geography can be sent to the client. The Customer Support Centre is definitely not script based and is staffed by highly skilled “knowledge workers”, some with PhDs in a scientific discipline, others highly experienced engineers brought in from “the field”. The kind of staff profile required here could be described as empathetic, competent and empowered. In the words of one interviewee: “There is no script, it is more the individual assessment of the situation”. The aim of the call centre is to maximise remote diagnostics – ideally a telephone fix which can be facilitated by the exchange of images or equipment fault reports over the internet between client and call centre. If remote diagnosis is not possible, sufficient quality of information can usually be obtained by asking the right questions on the phone, that the right engineer is sent out to the customer and consequently he does the

job more quickly. Newer equipment is more likely to allow remote access and problem diagnosis. This system has already significantly reduced costs (here again we see the pervasive economic efficiency model) and increased customer satisfaction, and the extent of remote connectivity will increase over time as older equipment is replaced. The traditional trust relationship between engineer/customer therefore is evolving towards customer/call centre/machine. Some systems auto-respond if they are about to fail – the company can then call the customer and arrange to send out an engineer before the problem becomes critical. Given the nature of the equipment which is often being used by hospitals in life-threatening situations, a service which proactively minimises downtime offers huge reassurance and fosters high-intensity relationships. To summarise the relationship building skills required in Company B, it is clear that competence emerges as a key skill set. The call centre operative needs to be highly technically literate in the customer’s product and both customer and staff must share a common “expert” language. It is the operative’s job to move from the customer’s interpretation of the situation to its resolution, ideally by fixing the problem remotely which is the most cost-effective solution. Our “make love not war” model shows that, while both Company A and Company B focus on building relationships with their clients, the nature of these relationships is very different in terms of the skills required from the call centre staff and the role played by technology in facilitating a solution. In Company A, shared common identities and aspirations between customers and staff form a powerful bedrock of values-based relationship building. Company B makes an interesting contrast in its method of achieving the same end-result; here the shared values and norms are those of competence and knowledge, enabling customers and staff to speak a common language towards reaching a mutually recognised final goal. The “what computers can do for you” model This model emphasises the specific role of technology in call centre operations to fully leverage the potential of the “economic efficiency” rationale that was described earlier. Surprisingly, despite the rhetoric of far-reaching technological possibilities so commonly espoused by e-commerce commentators, this aspect was only found to be central to one of our three case studies, and even then it manifested in a very different way to what we had expected beforehand (Company B). Part of the rhetoric surrounding the e-economy suggests that rapid technological developments provide call centres with the potential to grow into “Customer Contact Centres”. According to Simon Rancoroni, an industry consultant, “We’re going to need to interact across a number of different media. The call centre agent will start to co-browse; to send e-mail and text messages. . . Up until now a call centre operator didn’t need to spell”. In September 2000, Halifax spent £90 million launching Intelligent Finance (www.if.co.uk) which was the first organisation in Europe to offer five integrated customer communication channels; telephone agents, interactive voice response, internet, mobile phones and e-mail. At Capital One, a US financial services company which handles more than one million calls per week, callers are automatically routed to specialist agent teams depending on the predicted nature of their call based upon past experience. “Virtual Reps” or animated computer-based agents are also becoming popular in the US and have been trialled (and subsequently dropped!) by leading UK banks such as First Direct in 2003.

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According to a Datamonitor study, 40 per cent of all the 75,000 call centres in the UK were due to be “web-enabled” by the end of 2004 (www.datamonitor.co.uk) in order to provide “multi-media customer access points”. In theory, this means that a customer should be able to choose whether to “click to talk” (speak to an employee by telephone) “click to e-mail” (send a query and receive a response by e-mail) or “click to chat” (interact with an employee by instant messaging). In terms of perceived service quality and the building of trust, the critical issue is for these channels to be seamless, so that a customer can switch from one to another without repeating the story. It is important for a log to be kept of earlier conversations so that an agent is always aware of the history of the query and what stage has been reached in resolving it. It is also possible for specific customers to be flagged according to their perceived value, so that differing service levels can be applied accordingly. However, such integrated service offerings are currently at an early stage of development and still remain elusive in the mainstream of business life. Our case study Company B relies increasingly upon company-specific technological developments in order to allow its staff remote access to the customer’s complex systems and deal with problems, but the primary communication channel between operative and client remains the traditional telephone. In fact, the “old” and “new” technologies interact in the service provision because remote monitoring and diagnostic systems can warn the call centre of potential problems and the customer can be alerted by a simple telephone call or engineer visit before a system breakdown occurs. Given the critical role played by the equipment in patient care, the value of this feature to the customer cannot be overstated, and will become “the cornerstone of service delivery” as old systems are replaced over time. In turn, the very nature of the service provided by Company B is evolving from reactive crisis management towards a more proactive, consultative approach based upon staff competence in understanding hugely complex systems that enables the client hospital to get maximum value from the equipment. The Company B case shows how well-implemented technology can allow problems to be resolved remotely in many cases, or at least permit the right engineer to be sent to the right place, with the part ready to be installed, having had the problem pre-diagnosed at the centre. Service delivery is dependent on the competence of the staff with deep knowledge of the customers and their systems that is technology-led and applied in different ways. However, there are also difficulties emerging with this seemingly-ideal business model. Technologically-driven increases in business efficiency and service standards that are empowering for some groups of employees and customers, can cause isolation, automisation, loss of human contact, and loss of identity and lifestyle for others – in this case the engineers on whom the company used to depend heavily for their knowledge and expertise, but who are now reduced from office-based experts to home-based part-fitters. Furthermore, the move towards remote diagnosis represents a leap of faith for customers, as “it is still the engineer who is most trusted”, and generally customers have preferred “to talk to local office, where they know people’s names”. Medical staff may well not understand the technology and prefer the established security of an engineer visit every time something goes wrong. In the words of one interviewee; “our engineers walk on water as far as the customers are concerned”. The locus of trust therefore needs to shift from customer/engineer to customer/operative/system, and this is likely to be a lengthy and difficult process.

In summary, we have tried to demonstrate in this section that while the predominant model of call centre operation is based upon simple economics and standardisation of service, this strategy in itself is very limited in terms of winning customer “hearts and minds”. In practice there are some interesting (and unexpected) variants of the basic model developing which centre upon relationship building (exhibited in very different ways by Companies A and B). Our future research will seek out a call centre that has embraced the multi-channel customer “touch point” route, although such firms have so far proved elusive despite the rhetoric of twenty-first century technological capability. From our work so far, only Company B relies heavily on technology for effective service delivery, albeit in a very specialised and innovative way. Matching trust theory to the case studies – as easy as A, B, C? At the outset of this paper, we presented a continuum of trust relationships. It was suggested that if a company builds on these trust bases in an optimal way it encounters between customers and staff, then long-term success looks more assured. To investigate the potential operation of this trust continuum in a real-life context, we presented three possible models for establishing and managing a call centre, based on our analysis of data gathered through interviews conducted at three case study companies. Company A exemplified our “make love not war” model. Recruitment was based on the whole person, and the attitudes and experiences they could bring to the very particular product offering and customer base of this young person’s travel company. With a complex product, so closely tied to customer’s self-identity and personal values, it is imperative that the norms, experience and attitudes of the staff are a continuation of those of the customer. This clearly equates with the high-trust end of the continuum, which stresses emotional bases for trust development. This has the potential to offer any company a strong competitive advantage into the long term, particularly those that effectively leverage technology. Given the transient nature of Company A’s target market, and the one-off, high-cost nature of its product, this potential outcome of such strong bases does not apply to existing customers, beyond making the sale in the first place. However, for long-term advantage, the result would hopefully be that of positive recommendations amongst the extended community of potential customers for the future. On the matter of shared values and attitudes, Company B provided a good point of both contrast and similarity. With Company B’s call centre staff, and the operatives out in the field being depended on for life-critical machinery, competence that results in “reduced downtime” emerges as the key skill set, demanding staff who can resolve any operating problem as quickly as possible. Further, the technology underpinning the service offering must be achieving its full potential – indeed, Company B not only reacts to and resolves customer problems, but also pre-empts them in a proactive way through technology; hence our naming of this model “what technology can do for you”. Competence, in this environment, becomes the shared value between customers and staff of the organisation. This shows how a high competence component in a service offering or product can translate from a cognitive into an affective basis for the relationship provided that staff match customer needs and expectations in this regard. However, the almost exclusive reliance on technology must be embraced across all

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delivery functions – as Company B customers found to their cost, it is no good a state-of-the-art diagnostic system working out in record time how to fix a problem with the machine if the parts delivery system cannot organise timely arrival of the correct component from its warehouse in another country! Company C is in some ways the economic efficiency model taken to the extreme – the company representatives on whom customer service encounters and experiences critically depend, do not even work for the company in whose name they are answering the telephone. The company who has contracted out service to Company C may be able to measure how many calls were answered and how much business was transacted, and staff have the advantage of flexible working relationships that suit them. However, other key issues considered crucial to success by companies A and B in this paper, such as whether the customer felt satisfied that their contact with the company had been competently dealt with or how the representatives of the company built relationships on its behalf, must surely be poorly addressed. This is an environment where controls and targets are set in such a way that empowerment is highly limited and staff morale is low, resulting in employees offering only the most basic product or actually cutting off customers. This offers competitive advantage for no business, no matter how much the numbers seem to add up. It is in the matter of the numbers adding up that the problem lies. The aim of any call centre may well be to make more money than last year, yet is it really possible to translate this simplistic logic into a practical, measurable reality as exemplified in the economic efficiency model? This is a model which depends on the modern-day reliance, through technology, on strangers to control outcomes in matters of value to us; this is a reliance we all find unnatural and bothersome (Kipnis, 1996). Yet, the economic efficiency model, applied in its purest form, heightens our anxiety and reduces our propensity to trust these very strangers. Cases A and B as put forward here, along with their matching models, present us with some possible antidotes. For one thing, these two companies show how important it is not to make customers feel like strangers right from the outset. Through stressing the development of relationships on a variety of bases, and empowering staff to get on with the job in a proactive way, these models emphasise how a shared norms and values approach can work in practice. Further, these companies underline the significance of knowledge and competence for creating dense relationships – in this technological age, staff at a minimum need to match the customer’s product knowledge, which may already be high in advance of making the phone call, or preferably exceed it, both in terms of product knowledge and competence in the systems on which product delivery depend. What our two case studies A and B have drawn out very explicitly is the way in which trust development in the marketing context may vary from the development of trust in social systems. The trust models on which our trust continuum is based emphasise the importance of emotional bases for trust in the form of shared values and norms, cultural and kinship ties, etc. This is, from a social/psycho-sociological perspective, the optimum form of trust. To an extent, Company B challenges this through the crucial role played by technology in trust development. The shared value is that of technology, and making it work. How emotional a form of trust this is may be up for debate. This possible point of debate is already apparent in the marketing literature, particularly in relation to CRM and loyalty. Reichheld and Schefter (2000, p. 112) found, in their study of repurchasing patterns at leading web sites “that the five

primary determinants of loyalty don’t consist of technological bells and whistles, but rather old-fashioned customer-service basics: quality customer support, on-time delivery, compelling product presentations, convenient and reasonably priced shipping and handling, and clear and trustworthy privacy policies”. They further cite evidence from Dell, who found the three drivers of loyalty to be order fulfilment, product performance, and post-sale service and support (ibid ). These determinants of loyalty, while containing words such as “service” and “support”, appear to be outnumbered by the technology – and reliability-based elements to underpin a trustworthy, long-term customer experience, and fall at the mid-range of our current trust continuum. Compare this, then, with the findings of Callaghan and Shaw (2001) who have investigated the components of a relationship orientation. They identified ethics, trust, empathy, reciprocity and bonding as the key dimensions, and in their discussion of these terms highlight qualities such as friendship and comradeship, the two parties seeing the situation from the other’s perspective, and providing favours or making allowances for the other in return for similar favours or allowances at a later date. These are trust elements that fall firmly at the far end of our trust continuum, centred on more emotional, and less rational bases for trust development. A further important point to make is that despite these recommendations based on real-life cases, we would not wish to idealise trust development as a panacea. The darker side of trust becomes apparent in the background to the Company B’s centralising of their knowledge-intensive service function. The customers’ trust in the company’s competence traditionally resided in the relationship between engineers in the field and their local clients, which also had a strong interpersonal element. Although the trust model put forward here presents such dense relationships as positive for both company and client, there were fears that not only did this situation lead to a business risk of too much knowledge residing in the heads of 1,500 engineers, but of “cliquey” relationships impacting on consistent service delivery: “Local offices were run in places like a fiefdom, leading to inconsistency in service” (call centre manager, Company B). Company A was also not immune from such anxieties. Its customer service representatives felt free to develop relationships and demonstrate care and concern for their customers during service encounters – highly positive traits from a trust-building point of view – but concern mounted that this was being taken too far, and so new sales targets were brought in to curb tendencies towards “too much chat” during the working day. This is a common theme in the trust literature (Koehn, 1996; Gambetta, 1988), warning us that “too much trust in the familiar can lead to pretty unproductive views of the world” (Kern, 1998, p. 204). Conclusion Clearly there were cross-overs between the three models we presented out of the data analysis: for example, the economic rationale for setting up a call centre so clearly exemplified in case study C underpinned all three of the case studies; further, our “make love not war” model joined aspects of case studies A and B in its values-derived bases and outcomes. Each model, then, is not mutually exclusive, and, as the above discussion has shown, there may be some diversion away from the assumptions of the traditional psycho-sociological trust models when they are applied to the marketing context – a difficulty already evidenced in the CRM and loyalty literature. This shows

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the continuous nature of the trust continuum, particularly around the blurry dividing line between apparently discrete sections. There is no veneer, or suggestion of a Potemkin Village, about the finding that technical competence provides a shared norm base out of which long-term trusting relationships are built between “mutual friends”. This is significant, as it pre-empts the final conclusion that just as each call centre model is not mutually exclusive, neither is each element of our trust continuum – particularly in relation to cases A and B, where it is shown how there are important shared elements between them which the trust model may potentially suggest are discrete. Company B’s excellent example from practice indicates clearly that competence, alongside its technological enabler, creates far more than cognitive states of positive expectations regarding something of value to the customer – it also engenders an emotional response that can bind company and customer together. References Bain, B. and Taylor, P. (2000), “Entrapped by the ‘electronic panopticon’? Worker resistance in the call centre”, New Technology, Work and Employment, Vol. 17 No. 3, pp. 170-85. Boon, S.D. and Holmes, J.G. (1991), “The dynamics of interpersonal trust: resolving uncertainty in the face of risk”, in Hinde, R.A. and Groebel, J. (Eds), Cooperation and Prosocial Behavior, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 190-211. Callaghan, M.B. and Shaw, R.N. (2001), “Relationship orientation: towards an antecedent model of trust in marketing relationships”, refereed proceedings of ANZMAC 2001, Massey University, Auckland, NZ. Corbin, J. and Strauss, A. (1990), Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA. Gambetta, D. (1988), Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations, Basil Blackwell, Oxford. Hosmer, L.T. (1995), “Trust: the connecting link between organizational theory and philosophical ethics”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 20 No. 2, pp. 379-403. Husted, B.W. (1998), “The ethical limits of trust in business relations”, Business Ethics Quarterly, Vol. 8 No. 2, pp. 233-48. Kern, H. (1998), “Lack of trust, surfeit of trust: some causes of the innovation crisis in German industry”, in Lane, C. and Bachmann, R. (Eds), Trust Within and Between Organizations: Conceptual Issues and Empirical Applications, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 203-13. Kipnis, D. (1996), “Trust in technology”, in Kramer, R. and Tyler, T. (Eds), Trust in Organizations: Frontiers of Theory and Research, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 39-51. Koehn, D. (1996), “Should we trust in trust”, American Business Law Journal, Vol. 34 No. 2, pp. 184-203. Lewicki, R.J. and Bunker, B.B. (1996), “Developing and maintaining trust in work relationships”, in Kramer, R.M. and Tyler, T.R. (Eds), Trust in Organizations: Frontiers of Theory and Research, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 114-39. Lewis, D. and Weigert, A. (1985), “Trust as a social reality”, Social Forces, Vol. 63 No. 4, pp. 967-85. McAllister, D.J. (1995), “Affect- and cognition-based trust as foundations for interpersonal cooperation in organizations”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 38, pp. 24-59. Piercy, N. (2002), “Market-led strategic change”, 2nd ed., Butterworth Heinemann, London.

Reichheld, F.F. and Schefter, P. (2000), “E-loyalty: your secret weapon on the web”, Harvard Business Review, July-August. Sako, M. (1998), “Does trust improve business performance?”, in Lane, C. and Bachmann, R. (Eds), Trust Within and Between Organizations: Conceptual Issues and Empirical Applications, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 88-117. Shapiro, S. (1987), “The social control of impersonal trust”, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 98, pp. 623-58. Zucker, L.G. (1986), “Production of trust: institutional sources of economic structure, 1840 to 1920”, Research in Organizational Behavior, Vol. 8, pp. 53-111. Further reading Ayios, A. (2003), “Competence and trust guardians as key elements of building trust in east-west joint ventures in Russia”, Business Ethics: A European Review, Vol. 12 No. 2, pp. 190-203. Granovetter, M. (1985), “Economic action and social structure: a theory of embeddedness”, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 91, pp. 481-510. Mishra, A.K. (1996), “Organizational responses to crisis: the centrality of trust”, in Kramer, R.M. and Tyler, T.R. (Eds), Trust in Organizations: Frontiers of Theory and Research, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 261-87. (Angela Ayios lectures in business ethics at the School of Business and Management, Brunel University. She conducted doctoral research into the development of interpersonal trust between the Western and the Russian business people in the developing Russian market economy of the mid-1990s. Current research interests include professional ethics, trust and e-commerce, and social capital amongst parents of special needs children. Lisa Harris worked in retail banking for ten years and her PhD research examined the management of change in the banking industry in the early days of the internet. She currently lectures at Brunel University and is running a research project reviewing emerging trends in multi-channel marketing. Lisa is a trustee of the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s International Board and she also teaches marketing courses for the Student Support Group and Oxford College of Marketing.)

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