Fair Trade Advertising: What Messages Do Fair Trade Fashion Brands Send to Consumers?

Abstract

<p>Using content analysis, this study explores what types of approaches and messages are commonly used in fair trade advertising in the fashion business sector from the social marketing advertising perspective. Drawing upon Zharekhina and Kubacki's (2015) framework of social marketing contents, two social marketing approaches (empowerment and patronizing) and the valence of consequence (positive or negative) together with its beneficiary (i.e., company, society, or consumers) were identified. Our results indicated that the empowerment subcategories were far more dominant in the fair trade fashion advertisements than the patronizing tactics. As for consequences, positive consequences were more significantly featured than negative consequences. Especially, society was most commonly mentioned as the beneficiary across both consequences. By analyzing different extant approaches, this study enriches the current understanding of strategic communication techniques and ad messages in fashion fair trade business.</p>