Any U.S. consumer walking down the supermarket aisle will find berries, tomatoes, and other vegetables that are labeled “responsibly grown,” “farmworker-assured,” and “fair-trade certified.”
But behind the labels, the Mexican workers who harvest these fruits and vegetables live and labor in conditions they call “twenty-first century slavery.”
Thanks for the paper. I wonder though how often politics really is on the marketing boardroom table when talking about food. There are so many ways to slice and dice the food market that surely politics is one way, but for food, it seems that products naturally gravitate towards a political type of person based on their own attributes already that the marketing is just calling out like “organic”, “sustainable”, “traditional” etc. Like a foreign food for instance according to the linked paper would not appeal as much to conservative people so why even put that spin on it. Just market the foreign food to those who love foreign food including some who will identify as conservatives. Maybe I just missed the messaging at the grocery store. Are there some good examples I can review?
Marketers don’t slap a “For Liberals!” sticker on an item; it’s almost never that crass or blatant. Instead they put the item on the shelves of Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s, stores where liberals tend to shop; they package it in environmentally-friendly packaging; and they slap a “Fair Trade!” sticker on it. I imagine this market segmentation stuff is taught in marketing schools.