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UnionConsumer.com is a community site focused on encouraging conscious consumerism by exploring the labor, environmental and social responsibility practices of companies.
GoalsThe goal of this project is to develop profiles about what type of consumer cares about the impact of the purchases they make and how much an emotional connection can influence consumer behavior. Ultimately a set of questions to be answered, for example, would be who cares whether a tee-shirt, pair of jeans, consumer electronics or car they were considering purchasing was made by union members earning a living wage in their home state or 12-year-old girls toiling in Asian sweatshops for pennies? The potential payoff for promoting sales of union produced products would be to reward companies contracting with organized labor unions, leveraging consumer behavior as a competitive advantage of union production. Likewise, a significant growth in popularity or consciousness about purchasing union produced products would penalize non-union producers. A long-range utopian vision of this project would be to develop global communications channels that educate about methods of production, encouraging pro-worker efforts (labor union and cooperative ventures) while identifying the worst abusers of workers and those contributing the most to global income inequality and often justify the worst human rights and environmental abuses. A short-range practical version of this project is to promote union goods with affiliate programs and performing simple online surveys to sell market research to companies with unionized workforces so they might leverage this status as a competitive advantage. Research QuestionsWhat level of importance might consumers attribute to whether a product is produced by union labor? How would this importance relate to other concepts such as environmental considerations, or the product’s “footprint” or “lifecycle” including whether the product is produced locally and the political and social activities of the parent company? How might these factors be measured against more traditional consumer motivating factors such as price, perceived price, convenience, etc? Can a profile be developed of consumers who would likely be receptive to messages related to the conditions of the company? What overall import would such messages have in a mainstream media campaign (such as social/corporate responsibility related to working conditions)? What elements and message should a targeted strategy be sure to include? Who is UnionConsumer.com?UnionConsumer.com is a community site that depends on your active participation. The site, initial research and information has been developed by Nat Bender.
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