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The fair trade system was established as an alternative to the free trade system. In the case of fair trade apparel, certification standards are nascent and there is no consistent logo or labelling to aid consumers in their quest to purchase fairly‐made garments. The purpose of this paper is to examine the practices and marketing strategies of three fair trade apparel businesses based in a metropolitan city in the USA, where there are no clear standards to follow. The interviews taken for these case studies were conducted before the launching of a certification program for fair trade apparel by TransFair USA.

This research comprised three case study fair trade apparel companies – two wholesale and one retail. The case studies are based on in‐depth interviews, the examination of documents provided by business owners, and publicly available information on each of the companies.

These three case studies revealed differences in fair trade practices. The wholesalers communicated that they perceived a hierarchy of importance in fair trade practices, placing an emphasis on labour standards and workers’ rights and considering environmental standards to be secondary. The lack of a standardized logo for labels on fair trade apparel has meant that the businesses have had to find creative ways to communicate their fair trade practices to consumers. None of the participants felt that this lack of standardization negatively impacted their businesses.

There is need for a standardized label to make fair trade apparel easily identifiable for consumers and for the further development of standards for fair trade apparel and the marketing of fair trade apparel.

Standards for fair trade apparel are currently being developed and the paper provides valuable information about the process by which fair trade standards are formed and marketed in practice.

The purpose of the article is to move beyond positivistic political economy analysis of fair trade, and to examine competitive dynamics between competing interpretations in terms of the very fair trade concept itself.

Grounded in an ideational ontology, the paper provides a theoretical framework concerned with the contestation of meaning. Analysis applies this framework through a heuristic reading of fair trade's history, drawing on secondary literature, documents and primary qualitative research; and the discursive construction of Fair for Life – a new programme seeking to negotiate the “constitutive rules” of fair trade.

The article identifies that the history of fair trade and its current competitive dynamics are constituted by a negotiation and contestation of the constitutive rules that set the parameters of the fair trade concept.

The paper complements political economy analysis of socially constructed governance such as fair trade, and adds value to academic analysis by exposing important, yet previously unconsidered, micro‐politics of language and practice. The description and initial analysis of “Fair for Life” opens a new area of empirical interest for scholars of fair trade and sustainability governance.

Analysis highlighting the important implication of discourse and practice for the very definition of fair trade offers practitioners important insights into little considered implication of their practices and their representations in language.

The article complements political economy analysis by demonstrating the value of an ideationally grounded analysis of fair trade and similar socially constructed governance systems.

There is a growing academic literature exploring the fair trade movement but, to date, there has been little explicit discussion of accountability within the movement. This paper aims to cast the development of the fair trade movement within a shift from trust‐based relationships to standards‐based systems. The authors particularly aim to focus on the dominance of an external accountability approach being used for Fair Trade Labelling Organization International (FLO) certified products versus an internal accountability approach being adopted through organizational self‐assessment of World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO) members.

While this is predominantly a conceptual paper, the authors draw on primary research with northern and southern fair trade organizations (FTOs). Five southern FTOs were interviewed along with three northern FTOs.

The paper illustrates the conflict that Power expressed about trust increasingly being placed in formalized “rituals” of auditing rather than in organizations. Standards‐based certification has played a crucial role in mainstreaming fair trade food which reduces the trust relationship to a label and relies on market‐based mechanisms of “ethical consumerism” to signal (dis)content with the operations of the certification system. By contrast, organizational self‐assessment under development by WFTO, which has proven popular amongst southern FTOs, fitting their organisational culture(s) and contributing to organisational learning and democracy, creates greater accountability to internal stakeholders such as producers.

This paper draws direct comparisons between the FLO system of certification of products and the WFTO process of self‐assessment of organizations. It demonstrates that the WFTO system builds on the movement's tradition of democracy and trust. Producers, southern FTOs, and northern FTOs must demonstrate their democratic principles throughout the supply chain up to consumers. Conversely the FLO system governs the products themselves and largely leaves the participants, other than producer groups, free of demands for corporate social responsibility and organizational learning.

This paper seeks to pinpoint the role played by social enterprises in the growth and mainstreaming of fair trade.

The review encompasses seminal papers on the growth and mainstreaming of fair trade.

A crucial role is played by social enterprises in establishing fair trade in the mainstream. However this mainstreaming is contested and is argued by some to also lead to potential mission drift.

This review primarily investigates the Northern aspects of fair trade, in particular the role of social enterprise in the market growth of fair trade and its mainstreaming. However more research is required to unpack the producer perspectives of mainstreaming fair trade.

The article investigates one of the pioneering fields of social enterprise to see what lessons can be drawn for other social enterprise sectors that have mainstream ambitions.

This contribution provides a novel review to demonstrate the role played by social enterprise in the growth of fair trade. It argues that the dual mission of fair trade is out of balance and is in danger of becoming reduced to a certification scheme based on minimum compliance. However a rebalancing of social and commercial objectives and acknowledging the innovative approach of fair trade social enterprises would strengthen this pioneering social movement.

Smallholder farmers are increasingly subject to different types of standards that offer specific conditions for their market incorporation. The proliferation of private and voluntary (civic) standards raises questions regarding their impact on farmers' welfare and their role in the upgrading of value chains. This paper aims to address this issue.

Based on extensive fieldwork and careful matching of 315 farmers in Northern Nicaragua who produce coffee under Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance and Café Practices labels or deliver to independent traders, the effects on income, production and investments are compared. Moreover, the implications of different contract conditions for risk behaviour, organizational force, loyalty and gender attitudes are assessed.

The paper finds that Fair Trade provides better prices compared with independent producers, but private labels out‐compete Fair Trade in terms of yield and quality performance. While Fair Trade can be helpful to support initial market incorporation, private labels offer more suitable incentives for quality upgrading.

Civic standards exhibit major effects on local institutions' and farmers' behaviour, while B2B standards are more effective for improving production and management practices. Dynamic improvement standards may bridge the gap between both.

Fair Trade standards are useful to provide initial market access to small‐holders, but private standards offer better prospects for subsequent quality upgrading.

This is the first large‐scale comparative impact assessment of coffee standards that delivers unbiased empirical results.

This paper critically examines the marketing of fair trade, arguing that the use of the term producer conflates a number of categories of actors, not all of whom benefit equally. The authors contend that the two existing archetypes – the noble peasant farmer and the independent artisan – and the emerging archetype of the “empowered decision maker” serve to obscure and mask complex labour relationships.

This conceptual paper draws on a wide range of literature and original fieldwork conducted by the authors to illustrate the three marketing archetypes in the fair trade value chain.

Hidden behind the three dominant archetypes used to promote fair trade is a relationship between fair trade “producers” (small farmer, craft enterprise and plantations) and permanent and temporary/casual labourers. The trickle‐down of fair trade benefits to these workers is uneven at best and falls far short of the expectation of empowerment of all “producers” that fair trade promises.

The fair trade project must look beyond the simple archetypes to engage more deeply with labour issues in the fair trade value chain, and to re‐engage with fair trade as a development strategy through which broader and more complex forms of empowerment can be realised.

Fair trade standards are not a substitute for organised labour's activities. Interactions between trade unions and fair trade bodies could ensure that existing labour standards are met, and improvements in the lives of all workers can occur.

This paper conceptualises three fair trade mainstream marketing archetypes and suggests why and how the fair trade movement must move beyond these to ensure empowerment amongst its least well‐off stakeholders.

The purpose of the paper is to critically evaluate the applicability of bio certification in farmers' activity to reduce unfair trading practices in the food supply chain. The secondary purposes are describing the economic reasons of using bio certification and perspectives of using web trading platforms among food producers.

Data collection included face-to-face interviews with 15 Austrian and German farmers who operate on bio food markets as well as a quantitative survey regarding their assessment of unfair trading practices. This study presents both quantitative and qualitative analyses.

Bio certification is more likely unable to eliminate or mitigate unfair trading practices in the food supply chain, however bio certification is able to increase efficiency of farmers together with other web tools.

The study is the first to empirically investigate the applicability of bio certifications, its advantages and impact on unfair trading practices in the food supply chain. It focuses on small and medium-sized food producers and farmers. The research also reveals the perspectives of using web trading platforms in farming activity.

The movement of profit‐orientated corporations into the fair trade value chain has caused some socially orientated fair trade organizations to question the direction the movement is taking. One organization at the forefront of the debate is Trade Aid (NZ), Inc. (hereafter Trade Aid), a New Zealand based socially orientated fair trade organization actively engaged in fair trade since the 1970s. This paper seeks to evaluate how Trade Aid is seeking to reformulate fair trade's vision of empowerment and partnership constructively.

A single case study approach is undertaken to examine how a socially orientated organization is adhering to and seeking to advance fair trade values. This research draws from the global value chain literature, which analyses how industries are governed. The relational co‐ordination or governance mode, which is characteristic of mutual dependency between supplier and buyer firms, is used as a framework for investigating the fair trade industry. Distinction is made between the corporate and social economy variants of the relational governance mode.

Trade Aid's commitment to producer groups is demonstrated through various initiatives the organization is undertaking as they work both with producer groups and corporate actors to expand the fair trade market. Trade Aid is part of a worldwide socially orientated movement seeking to reformulate the vision of fair trade.

To date the fair trade literature has largely focused on socially orientated fair trade organizations in the Northern hemisphere. This research contributes to a gap in the literature in that it examines Trade Aid and the way this organization is addressing mainstreaming.

Purpose– The article aims to examine principles of fair trade in public procurement in Europe, focusing on legal dimensions related to the European Public Procurement Directives. Design/methodology/approach– The article situates public procurement of fair trade products in relation to the rise of non‐state regulatory initiatives, highlighting how they have entered into new governance dynamics in the public sector and play a part in changing practices in sustainable procurement. A review of the legal position on fair trade in procurement law is informed by academic research and campaigning experience from the Fair Trade Advocacy Office. Findings– Key findings are that the introduction of fair trade products into European public procurement has been marked by legal ambiguity, having developed outside comprehensive policy or legal guidelines. Following a 2012 ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union, it is suggested that the legal position for fair trade in procurement has become clearer, and that forthcoming change to the Public Procurement Directives may facilitate the uptake of fair trade products by public authorities. However potential for future expansion of the public sector “market” for fair trade is approached with caution: purchasing fair trade products as a marker of sustainability, which started to be embedded within procurement practice in the 2000 s, is challenged by current European public austerity measures. Research limitations/implications– Suggestions for future research include the need for systematic cross‐institutional and multi‐country comparison of the legal and governance dimensions of procurement practice with regard to fair trade. Practical implications– The paper provides a clarification of current state‐of‐play with regard to legal aspects of fair trade in public procurement of utility for policy and advocacy discussion. Originality/value– The article provides needed elaboration on an under‐researched topic area of value to academia and policy makers.

The paper aims to investigate the value of a network perspective in enhancing the understanding of the business to consumer marketing of high‐involvement product categories. This is achieved through the analysis of the development of fair trade marketing in the UK.

The paper addresses the research question through an analysis of relevant literatures from both marketing and other disciplinary areas. The paper is thus multidisciplinary in nature. Findings from a series of in depth, semi‐structured interviews with senior representatives of a fair trade wholesaler, of a specialist fair trade brand, of supermarket retailers involved with fair trade and of other fair trade labelling and support organisations are reported and discussed.

The relevance of an actor network theory (ANT) informed interpretation of the development of the fair trade marketing network is revealed. Its emphases on the processes of exchange and the role of human and non‐human actants in enabling interactions within the network are shown to be important. fair trade marketing is shown as occurring within an unfolding network of information exchanges. Analysis of this emerging network highlights a shift of emphasis in fair trade marketing from the fair trade process to fair trade products and, latterly, fair trade places.

The paper highlights the requirement for further conceptualisation of the business to consumer marketing of high‐involvement product categories, and reveals the potential of ANT as one approach to meet this need. The paper also provides a detailed insight into the development of fair trade marketing in the UK.