The Successes of Political Consumerism as a Social Movement

The chapter aims at providing a set of interpretive tools to analyze the outcomes of consumer activism when performed through collective action. In the last years, there has been a shift from political consumerism understood as a practice of the individual citizen-consumer to political consumerism performed by a growing number of organized collectives like solidarity purchasing groups, consumer-producer cooperatives, ecological communities, etc. This implies that a reconceptualization of political consumerism should be accompanied by renewed interpretive frameworks and methodologies. Drawing from the literature on social movements and their outcomes, the chapter proposes an interpretive compass composed of six main features (type, domain, nature, target, timing, duration) that help in understanding the effectiveness of consumer activism. The authors then underline the importance of taking into account factors like resources, media outreach, and alliances as well as political, socioeconomic, and cultural contexts.