Ethical Consumerism and the Target Segment for Fair Trade Coffee

The fair trade movement is a social entrepreneurship project that deals with a subsistence marketplace in order to improve the lives of suppliers in the ways of improved pay, increased opportunity fair treatment , positive environmental impact and more. Marketing is important in promoting and growing the fair trade movement and it is important to me to assist in this movement because I have become passionate about the rights of farmers after my immersion to Nicaragua. The first step in improving a marketing campaign is conducting market research. This research aims to answer the question: What is the target segment for Fair Trade coffee based on the measures of demographics , psychographics , behaviors, attitudes, and values? How can these measures enhance the promotion of the fair trade movement domestically and globally in a subsistence marketplace? In order to answer this question a survey, which can be viewed in appendix A, was distributed primarily through Amazon\u27s Mechanical Turk and supplementary through the John Carroll community. These submissions were anonymously recorded and analyzed using SPSS to find frequencies, correlations, and driver s of likelihood to buy fair trade coffee in order to find the target segment consumer. Conclusions show that the demographics of a typical fair trade consumer of the respondents was a male , age 24-35 who value s a world of beauty and capability, spend s time on social media , frequents coffee shops, is of a minority group, lives in a city or rural location, and makes $25,000-$ 50,000 with a bachelor\u27s degree. The fair trade movement will be enhanced by a campaign that focuses on helping others, societal impact , environmental impact, and ethical treatment of workers to enhance buying behaviors and encouragement of others to buy fair trade coffee. People will be incentivized by free samples and will enjoy learning more about the fair trade movement through social media and documentaries