Italian Fair Trade: reaching the same market success as in the UK

Italian organisations confirmed that the growth of Fair Trade in Italy is highly important because increasing its products sales to a certain extent is essential in order to allow the access of new producers to fair market conditions and help them out of poverty (Murray et al., 2003; Taylor, 2005; Moore et al., 2006; Tallontire, 2009; Bezençon, 2011; Doherty et al., 2012). However such growth should always be evaluated in the light of its environmental sustainability (Becchetti and Costantino, 2010). Indeed, not only criticism has already addressed some commercial choices, as enlightened in the literature (e.g. Greenreport.it, 2007), but also modern consumer expectations in regard to Fair Trade products in Italy are particularly high for what concern the protection of the environment (see GRAPH 4.3.5).

However, the market growth of Fair Trade to levels similar to the UK is considered difficult to reach especially because Italian consumers are described as different from UK’s ones since they are less keen to purchase imported products because of the high availability of commodities “made in Italy” and the perceived high quality of such goods.

This aspect is clearly connected with the theory of ethnocentrism (Shimp, 1984; Pecotich and Rosenthal, 2008; Alsughayir, 2013) and is feared to represent a possible barrier to the expansion of sales of imported Fair Trade products. Italian consumers compared to UK’s ones seem to have higher consideration of products provenance, yet more specific and detailed studies in this area are surely required in order to verify such aspect. However the following consideration want to underline how ethnocentrism might not be such a dangerous barrier for the growth of Fair Trade:

* Food products that are commercialized through the Fair Trade channels are mainly products that are not widely produced in Italy since they require different climate conditions (e.g. bananas, cacao, rice, tea, etc.). Ethnocentrism could be not so relevant in this cases since rarely exist a “made in Italy” option for these products that Italian consumers could prefer to buy.

* Even if ethnocentrism represented an effective barrier to the growth of Fair Trade turnover, spreading the knowledge about Fair Trade amongst Italian consumers could reduce its negative effect; indeed following the survey result most Italian consumers have a high sense of solidarity since they would pay more for products that promote development and would buy Fair Trade products in order to promote the development of the South.