Premium
Market Movements: Nongovernmental Organization Strategies to Influence Global Production and Consumption
Author(s) -
O'Rourke Dara
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
journal of industrial ecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.377
H-Index - 102
eISSN - 1530-9290
pISSN - 1088-1980
DOI - 10.1162/1088198054084608
Subject(s) - consumption (sociology) , business , certification , stakeholder , sustainability , leverage (statistics) , production (economics) , sustainable consumption , industrial ecology , marketing , negotiation , sharing economy , economics , public relations , political science , sociology , ecology , social science , management , macroeconomics , machine learning , computer science , biology , law
Summary This article analyzes nongovernmental organization (NGO) “market campaigns” that seek to motivate changes in global consumption and production patterns. Through campaigns targeting products as diverse as paper, shoes, and computers, advocacy groups seek to use existing concerns of consumers to influence producers, and simultaneously, to expand and deepen consumer demand for more sustainable products and services. NGOs deploy both negative information to critique leading brands, and positive information to help build new markets for improved products. Successful market campaigns construct networks of actors that identify points of leverage within global production and trading regimes; coordinate research, exposure, direct action, and negotiations with brands; identify solutions; advance new multi‐stakeholder standards and monitoring and certification schemes; build new nongovernmental regulatory institutions; and occasionally attempt to strengthen state regulation. Through an assessment of three market campaigns focused on Staples, Nike, and Dell, this article describes the nature of these campaigns, discusses how they function, assesses their central strategies and tactics, and analyzes whether they are actually having an impact. The article concludes by discussing the relevance and implications of these campaigns for the field of industrial ecology, and how industrial ecology might support future efforts to advance more sustainable production and consumption.