Australian ethical consumer segmentation of food and agricultural products and export opportunities for the Pacific Islands

Abstract

Abstract Ethical consumerism is one of this century’s retail success stories and has continued to grow despite the global pandemic and economic contraction. Consumers worldwide are increasingly putting their money where their values are in purchases of food and drink, clothing, housing, and financial and other services. Understanding these consumers is key to competing successfully in markets for ethically sourced products and presents opportunities for reducing poverty in developing countries where food and agricultural production is the dominant economic activity, such as small island developing states (SIDS) in the Pacific. While ethical consumerism is an expanding research field, findings rarely are analysed in detail for market development. Rarer still is segmentation in terms of product attributes aimed explicitly at poverty reduction in slow-growth, emerging economies like those of the Pacific. Here we report a latent class cluster analysis of survey responses by ethically conscious Australian consumers ( n = 637) associated with Oxfam, the development charity. Four distinct consumer segments were identified with implications for Pacific producers. Product origin and ‘the story behind the product’ were particularly important to these consumers. The findings provide practical insights to agricultural stakeholders in the Pacific and those similarly situated around the globe that are in need of new economic opportunities.