Fair Trade - How to rise its market share? : Problems and restrictions of Fair Trade with a focus on consumer attitudes

One of the world’s most severe problems today is poverty. Can it be solved with Fair Trade? During this thesis the topic of Fair Trade and the problems it has to face will be presented. First an introduction will be given on how Fair Trade works, how it developed and where it stands today. Then the problems and the criticisms it has to deal with will be illustrated. The main focus will be on the problem of the low market share of Fair Trade products and on consumer attitudes towards it. The aim is to find out restrictions and problems of Fair Trade products concerning consumer acceptance, for example reasons why consumers do not buy Fair Trade products and opportunities for further marketing activities to address those problems. For the second part of this thesis, a quantitative study has been conducted by carrying out a survey among potential Fair Trade consumers, mainly students, which has brought insight into their actual attitude towards Fair Trade and their motivation for buying or not buying Fair Trade products. The results of this study confirm the problems defined in existing literature, which are most notably the high price, a lack of information and trust in Fair Trade and a lack of availability of Fair Trade products. In order to help more of the world’s poor to get out of poverty, it is important to address those problems so that the market share of Fair Trade products can increase