Consumer activism

Consumer activism is a process by which activists seek to influence the way in which goods or services are produced or delivered. Kozinets and Handelman attempt to define the broad concept as any social movement that uses society's drive for consumption to the detriment of business interests. Consumer activism includes both activism on behalf of consumers for consumer protection and activism by consumers themselves.Consumerism is made up of the behaviors, institutions, and ideologies created from the interaction between humans and materials and services of which they consume. Consumer activism has several aims:

Historian Lawrence B. Glickman identifies the free produce movement of the late 1700s as the beginning of consumer activism in the United States. Like members of the British abolitionist movement, free produce activists were consumers themselves, and under the idea that consumers share in the responsibility for the consequences of their purchases, boycotted goods produced with slave labor in an attempt to end slavery. Other early consumer activism included the creation of consumer cooperatives in Northwestern England in 1844 as a measure against local monopolies and high commodity prices.

Activism on the behalf of the consumer began around the 20th Century in the United States, in what scholars Tim Lang and Yiannis Gabriel term the "value-for-consumer" wave, and which sociologist Hayagreeva Rao calls the antiadulteration movement. It was during this time that consumer organizations began to emerge in the United States, starting with a Consumers League in New York in 1891 which merged with other regional branches to form the National Consumers League in 1898. One of the first consumer protection laws in the United States and worldwide, the Pure Food and Drug Act, was passed in 1906. More legislation around the world followed. During this time consumer-led activism like boycotts continued, largely in response to domestic and international socio-political concerns.

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