Consumer Activism

Consumer activism is a term that describes a variety of disparate movements that seek to influence the behavior of companies through activities ranging from providing information to boycotts, pickets, and litigation, with the aim of forcing companies to act in a way that benefits the perceived interests of consumers. Underlying the unifying idea of consumer activism is the belief that consumers can and should exercise their market power to improve not only the quality of products but also the conditions under which they are made, distributed, advertised, and sold. Consumer activism takes Adam Smith's dictate that the consumer is king to mean not only that the market responds to consumer demand for products but also that consumers can translate that demand into power for the sake of social transformation.

Consumer activism has played a role in debates on many important issues in the past several decades, from environmental activism and workers rights to antiglobalization and fair trade movements. In mobilizing consumer power on behalf of these issues, activists have occasionally been able to effect changes more quickly and more effectively than they would have by going through governmental or regulatory institutions (although these institutions have also been affected by consumer activist movements).

Early consumer activism movements included the work of the National Consumer's league, which worked in the first half of the 20th century to improve the labor conditions of workers through the promotion of “ethical consumption.” In using consumer power to create pressure for social change, this organization had some success in the 1930s in bringing about better labor standards for American workers.

The contemporary period in consumer activism may be said to have begun with the publication of Ralph Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed in 1965. As an exposé of the American automobile industry, this book revealed a number of the hazardous practices that were common among car manufacturers. He subsequently founded the group Public Citizen, through which he continued to work on consumer issues.

In the 1990s and into the 21st century, consumer activism has become much more closely involved in movements critical of the phenomenon of globalization and the concentration of corporate power. Activists such as David Korten have written critiques of the global economy, not on anticapitalist grounds, but on the ground that an unregulated global economy creates the conditions for an unhindered expansion of corporate power, the degradation of democracy, and the inability of consumers to control key aspects of their lives as both citizens and as participants in the [Page 417]market. Such critiques are also often tied to environmental concerns about the effects of particular patterns of production and consumption that become more difficult to control in a global economy.