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Complementing the Dominant Social Paradigm with Sustainability
Abstract
The dominant social paradigm (DSP) defines the basic belief structures and practices of
marketplace actors and is manifested in existing exchange structures. Sustainability – a
so-called megatrend – challenges the DSP by questioning its underlying assumptions,
resulting in tensions or conflicts for different marketplace actors. This study examines a
specific case of an alternative market arrangement that bridges tensions between the DSP
and environmental concerns. Ethnography in the context of retail food waste disposition
reveals tensions experienced by several marketplace actors – namely consumers, retail
firms and regulators – and investigates an alternative market arrangement that alleviates
those tensions by connecting the actors and their practices in a creative new way. We
identify complementarity as the underlying mechanism of connection and resolution.
Compared to previously identified alternative market arrangements that are either
oppositional or parallel to the DSP, complementarity opens another path toward greater
environmental sustainability through market-level solutions.
Keywords: Sustainability, Dominant Social Paradigm, Food Waste, Market-level
solution, Ethnography
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Introduction
The dominant social paradigm (DSP) structures society’s beliefs and perceptions of the
world (Kilbourne, McDonagh, and Prothero 1997). The DSP drives hyper-consumption
and is based on the assumption that ever-increasing consumption lies at the core of
satisfaction and happiness (Baudrillard 1998). On a macro-level the DSP relies on
economic growth that can be achieved only to the detriment of the environment
(Kilbourne et al. 1997). One manifestation of the DSP is that large quantities of
potentially valuable resources are lost and wasted. As such the DSP is often perceived as
opposed to environmental and sustainable issues (Prothero, McDonagh, and Dobscha
2010).
Sustainability and environmental issues are on the rise and could be considered as
a megatrend (Varey 2013). Environmental concerns such as pollution (Humphreys and
Thompson 2014) or waste issues are of concern to different marketplace actors (Brosius,
Fernandez, and Cherrier 2012). Activist consumers often strive to assert their world-
views and ethics into the DSP (Kozinets and Handelman 2004), which causes conflicts or
tensions. For instance, Guillard and Roux (2014) describe how sustainable ideas oppose
hygienic ideas that have been nurtured under the umbrella of the DSP.
Research in marketing has often treated sustainability as a micro-level problem
that should be solved through changes in the awareness, attitudes and actions of
individual actors (Connolly and Prothero 2003; Prothero et al. 2010) and appealing to
them through tactics such as greener marketing mix (Ginsberg and Bloom 2004). Such
initiatives, however, yield minor results, as evidenced by an intransigent attitude-
behavior gap among consumers (Holt 2012). We argue in line with macro-marketing
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thinking, that environmental issues are not mainly caused through individual behavior
(Prothero et al. 2010), but flow from systemic problems (Holt 2012). Meaningful
progress toward sustainability requires a macromarketing approach to research and
practice (Ertekin and Atik 2014; Varman and Costa 2008).
To better understand the relationship interaction between dominant belief
structures and sustainability initiatives (Campana, Chatzidakis, and Laamanen 2015), we
study an alternative market arrangement that has managed to achieve some success in
reducing food waste in the retail sector. Alternative market arrangements are often
grounded in non-capitalist roots (Williams 2005) with major goals that background
profit-maximization in favor of postmaterialist objectives of a more ethical, sustainable,
political or humanistic nature (Geiger-Oneto and Arnould 2011; Tencati and Zsolnai
2012; Ertekin and Atik 2014), creating inevitable tensions with the DSP. We investigate
an alternative market arrangement that became a viable and attractive choice for different
marketplace actors (Prothero and Fitchett 2000) both within the DSP and among
postmaterialist activists. We study the idiosyncratic perspectives and objectives of food
retailers, consumers and public policy regarding retail food waste, and we examine
arising tensions. We then introduce the case of Foodsharing, a consumer-driven initiative
against food waste. Foodsharing negotiates and alleviates tensions experienced by the
different marketplace actors by complementing instead of opposing the DSP (Kozinets
and Handelman 2004; Williams 2005) or running parallel to it (Tencati and Zsolnai 2012;
Ertekin and Atik 2014). Our findings offer some interesting insights for researchers and
practitioners in the area of macromarketing.
Sustainability and Alternatives
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Postmaterialist values are ascending in our time (Pepper, Jackson, and Uzzell 2009; Jägel
et al. 2012). Researchers have identified sustainability as a megatrend (Kotler 2011;
Prothero et al. 2011). Consumers are increasingly aware of the impacts of their actions on
society and the environment, and increasing numbers strive for more sustainability in
their consumption behavior. Some do this through means such as reduced consumption
described as voluntary simplicity (Shaw and Newholm 2002; Etzioni 2004), downshifting
(Schor 1999), or consuming in an ethical, sustainable way (Carrigan and Attalla 2001;
Carrigan, Szmigin, and Wright 2004; Cherrier 2007).
Consumers whose values conflict with those of prevailing market logics may also
take activist positions with respect to market entities. They attempt to hold companies
more accountable for their actions, and they expect more sustainability through the whole
production chain (Albinsson and Perera 2012). Activism may take the form of consumer
movements such as anti-consumption (Price and Penaloza 1993; Fournier 1998) or
boycotts (Klein, Smith, and John 2004; Kozinets and Handelman 2004), with the aim of
pushing companies to change market practices that the activists judge to be socially or
environmentally harmful.
Alternative markets or alternatives to markets may arise from postmaterialist
values and consumer activism. In line with the call for this special issue, we focus on
alternative market that mainly have their roots in cultures of resistance (Williams 2005).
We use the notion of alternative market arrangements as those allow us to include
entirely alternative markets and/or alternative systems within markets. For example, a
particular sustainable supply chain may not constitute a market per se, but it may
constitute an alternative arrangement operating on postmaterialist principles within a
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more traditional market. Alternative market arrangements mainly pursue postmaterialist
goals of ethical, humanistic or environmental natures (Geiger-Oneto and Arnould 2011;
Chaudhury and Albinsson 2015). They may include monetary exchanges; however, profit
maximization is not necessarily their major goal (see for instance, Tencati and Zsolnai
2012). Sharing models such as carsharing provided by huge car manufactures (Bardhi
and Eckhardt 2012) do not fall under our definition as they do not stem from
postmaterialist values, but should be more seen as a business model innovation.
Expressing non-capitalist roots, alternative market arrangements often encounter
tensions with the DSP and as such offer an ideal setting for investigation tensions
between the DSP and sustainability. For instance, Guillard and Roux (2014) show how
the practice of gleaning for castoff items such as discarded furniture oscillates between
sustainable and hygienic norms (a manifestation of the DSP). Ertekin and Atik (2014)
call out barriers and conflicts encountered by the Slow Fashion Movement as some
people fear that sustainable production can lead to a slowdown in economic growth.
Prior literature establishes that alternative market arrangements mainly display
two major forms of relationship towards traditional markets or the DSP: either they run
counter to it or they run parallel with it (Campana et al. 2015). Examples of alternative
market arrangements that run counter to traditional markets include voluntary simplicity
(Shaw and Newholm 2002; Etzioni 2004), downshifting (Schor 1999), freeganism
(Barnard 2011; Edwards and Mercer 2012; Pentina and Amos 2011), consumer resistance
(Fournier 1998a; Price and Penaloza 1993), brand avoidance (Lee, Motion and Conroy
2009), or buycotts / boycotts (Klein, Smith and John 2004; Kozinets and Handelman
2004; Sen and Bhattacharya 2001). Overall, those alternative market arrangements try to
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abstain from interaction with the traditional marketplace or try to induce change through
their practices. In most of the cases, existing markets and belief structures are portrayed
as incarnations of a consumerist world (Kozinets and Handelman 1998) that is not guided
by ethical or sustainable values (Kozinets and Handelman 2004).
Other alternative market arrangements run parallel to the DSP, meaning that they
enact the major principles of the DSP and compete with traditional businesses for
customers while being grounded in postmaterialist values. They may provide similar
products as traditional market arrangements, but embedded in sustainable production or
consumption. This way they compete for profits with traditional market arrangements.
Two examples are the slow fashion and the slow food movement, which can be
viewed as green alliances between companies and environmental groups. The slow
fashion movement positions itself against unsustainable production and consumption in
the fashion industry. Through local design and production, transparent production
systems, and the production of sustainable and sensorial products, slow fashion has a goal
of offering the necessary mechanisms to produce, acknowledge and cultivate durable
quality (Ertekin and Atik 2014). In a similar way, the slow food movement exists in
parallel to the dominant food industry (Jenkins 2009; Sebastiani, Montagnini, and Dalli
2012; Tencati and Zsolnai 2012; Sebastiani and Montagnini 2013; Chaudhury and
Albinsson 2015). According to the slow food movement, food must taste good, but it
should also be ecologically and socially sustainable. Eataly, an innovative Italian food
company, advances the slow food movement by grounding its retail format on concepts
such as sustainability and responsibility (Sebastiani and Montagnini 2013). Eataly blends
belief structures from the DSP (such as profit-orientation and retail stores) with
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alternative beliefs (e.g. sustainability). In contrast to alternatives that are manifested in
consumer resistance, parallel market arrangements accept and enact the belief structures
of the DSP while combining them with other values. They run parallel as they compete
for the same customers as existing marketplace structures.
Prior research has shed light on a diversity of alternatives, however it falls short
of capturing the whole variety of alternatives (Campana et al. 2015). In this paper, we
study an alternative market arrangement than runs neither in opposition to existing
market structures nor in parallel with them. Instead, our empirical example becomes
embedded in existing traditional marketplace structures and complements them in a
beneficial way resulting in more sustainable outcomes. Or in other words: The emerging
alterantive market arrangement neither competes for profits with the traditional market
(i.e. does not run parallel to it), nor does it blame or abstain from the traditional market,
but rather builds on collaboration. As alternative market arrangements that complement
existing structures seem to be a viable way towards more sustainable marketplaces, we
explore how Foodsharing became an attractive option for several marketplace actors
within the DSP.
Foodsharing
This paper focuses on an alternative market arrangement called Foodsharing, which
distributes unsold food products from retailers to ordinary consumers without monetary
transactions. Foodsharing facilitates the sharing of food among private persons, however the
greatest impact comes from cooperation with retailers that allow the organization to
redistribute edible food originally destined for destruction. This paper focuses on the
Foodsharing arrangement with retailers. Foodsharing represents an ideal context for studying
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alternative market arrangements in that it is rooted in sustainable values and represents a
special case of cooperation between retailers and activist consumers, all of which highlights
developing tensions within the DSP and their eventual resolution to the satisfaction of both
retailers and food activists.
Foodsharing is a consumer-driven platform founded in Germany at the end of 2012
by activists for the purpose of reclaiming edible food discarded by retailers and redistributing
it among members of the Foodsharing community. Driven by sustainability-related
motivations, the Foodsharing organization has as its prime directive the reduction of food
waste in the retail sector. Retailers have traditionally culled for destruction massive amounts
of safe, edible food. Recent reports estimate that about 2.500.000 tones of food waste occur
at the retail level, of which 90% could be avoided (Noleppa and Cartsburg 2015). The
reasons include aesthetic imperfections in produce and pending expirations of best-before
dates (FAO 2011). Foodsharing is a volunteer-based community organized and
communicating through an online platform, foodsharing.de. Volunteer Foodsharers, trained
by the organization, interact directly with retailers to collect food that would normally be
sent either to landfills or to utilities for anaerobic digestion or burning for energy generation
(Zhang et al. 2007). The recovered food is then made available to consumers that participate
in the program, regardless of relative need or affluence.
With the cooperation with retailers, Foodsharing has managed to save over 5.3
million kg of safe food waste. Over 19,000 active Foodsharing members and almost 3000
retailers were collaborating in this arrangement as of September 2016. Foodsharing is more
prevalent in bigger German cities than in the countryside, and the most active cities are
Berlin, Munich, Cologne and Hamburg (Foodsharing Statistics, 2016). Food is often picked-
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up several times of a week in agreement with the cooperating retailer. The amount of food
varies from day to day as it depends on how much the retailers cull. In contrast to food banks
or other charities (Hill and Stamey 1990; Riches 2002), the food items are allotted to
everyone who is interested, whether indigent or affluent, without any monetary transactions.
Foodsharing gives food banks and charities – in the German speaking area those are mainly
represented under the concept “Die Tafeln” – the first pick of food items (press release,
foodsharing.de, April 2015), and only collects and distributes food items after charities have
taken their share. However, catering to the needy is not their primary goal (Gollnhofer,
Hellwig, and Morhart 2016). Their main objective is reducing food waste. The decision of
retailers to cooperate with Foodsharing is notable in that giving free food to non-indigent
individuals (i.e., potential costumers) might have the power to cannibalize their sales and
profitability and therefore violate the retailers’ primary business objectives. This study
examines the perspectives of the various stakeholders, namely retailers, consumers and
policy makers, in the context of retail food waste and uncovers how Foodsharing
accommodates their idiosyncratic and sometimes conflicting agendas.
Research Methods
The first author collected ethnographic data from January 2013, shortly after the official
launch of the online platform of foodsharing.de, until August 2015. The author’s deep
immersion as an active member in the Foodsharing community enabled data collection from
diverse sources. Data include in-depth interviews with foodsharing members and cooperating
retailers, fieldnotes that capture observation, online data, sustainability reports of 6 major
retail chains and a Wikipedia on food waste. For a detailed list, please refer to table 1. This
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diversity of data allowed us to capture the perspectives of different stakeholders, namely
retailers, consumers and public policy makers.
*Insert Table 1 about here*
Interviews with retailers and with Foodsharing members started with “grand tour”
question and the focused on the activities, practices and perceptions of the respective
interview partners (McCracken 1988). The interviews with consumers also included question
regarding occupation and financial status. All of our informants had sufficient monetary
means or most of them were employed full-time. Our interview partners from the
cooperating retailers are all managers that initiated the cooperation with Foodsharing.
Throughout the interviews, we were especially interested in macro-economic factors such as
cultural tensions and objectives of the interview partners. The diverse nature of sources
allowed for triangulation (Denzin 1970) of the data and greater confidence in the findings.
Our analysis followed the hermeneutic method advocated by Arnold and Fischer
(1994), which relies on researchers’ acknowledged pre-understandings of the research
context, interpretation by a dialogic community, and use of the hermeneutic circle. Pre-
understanding reflects “the accumulation of the beliefs, theories, codes, metaphors, myths,
events, practices, institutions, and ideologies” (Arnold and Fischer 1994, p. 56) that
researchers bring to the interpretation. The first author is German, has a lifelong interest in
sustainability, social justice and activism, and brought to the analysis the knowledge and
experience built over two and a half years of deep immersion in the field. The second author
is American and brought to the analysis a comparatively naïve perspective with respect to
German food retailing and social movements. The dialogic community included primarily
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the two authors but also members of the Foodsharing community, with whom the first author
repeatedly shared insights and sought opinions.
The hermeneutic circle involves moving back and forth between interpretation and
empirical data, within and between individual narratives, between individual utterances and
the developing gestalt, and between the findings and extant theory. This is done iteratively
until such time as the overall interpretations can accommodate all levels of analysis either as
consistent with the whole or as meaningful and explicable exceptions to it (Arnold and
Fischer 1994). Following Spiggle (1994) we engaged in an initial coding process focusing on
the motivations and on the macro-cultural influences for each marketplace actor. We then
sought logical relationships among the codes, building themes and testing them against
individual understandings and against plausible theoretical frameworks (Strauss and Corbin
1990). Throughout the process we compared interview data with media data and with
fieldnotes from participant observation. This allowed us to take into account the cultural
context of the empirical context (Askegaard and Linnet 2011) and to explore the emergence
and the characteristics of an alternative market arrangement from a macromarketing
perspective.
Findings
Embedded within a German and European regulatory structure, within an increasingly
sustainability-conscious macroculture, and within a competitive retail environment, the
Foodsharing project and organization require the coordinated activity of multiple stakeholder
groups: retailers, consumers and regulators. Each of these stakeholder groups, in its own
ways, strives for sustainability; however by acting on their own they are restricted in their
actions. The success to date of Foodsharing resides in the efforts of activist consumers, who
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took the initiative to organize an alternative market arrangement that has allowed the
different stakeholders to work together for a common cause without compromising their own
idiosyncratic objectives, such as profit (retailers) or consumer protection (public policy). We
illustrate how foodsharing became a viable and attractive choice to the marketplace actors.
Finally, we identify complementarity as the underlying mechanism that allows for combining
the DSP with sustainable concerns.
Public policy: Consumer Protection and Food Waste
Prior research has highlighted the role of regulators in constructing an economic
infrastructure (Gonzalez-Padron and Nason 2009; Phipps and Brace-Govan 2011). Similar to
European politics (Waterfield 2014; Chrisafis 2015), German public policy takes an active
stance against safe food waste. Through public policy interventions such as education
(Rothschild 1999), regulators strive to counter safe food waste. For instance, they launched a
broad education campaign that was meant to educate the consumer on wasting behavior. The
campaign provides recipes for cooking with left-over foods, gives advice for shopping
behavior and tries to raise the awareness of safe food waste by research and videos (Public
Campaign: Too good to waste).
The following quote by an official government representative illustrates the
prevailing perspective of public policy on the question of food waste:
“I see the chance for Germany to engage in a broad cooperation. We’ve
already started to work on strategies to reduce safe food waste. Norms and
conventions should not be a pretext to throw perfectly consumable food
away.”
(Online Data in form of a newspaper article)
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One identified problem is that food gets thrown away because of norms and conventions
such as the best-before date. The best-before date itself is a regulation intended for consumer
protection. It acts like a warranty and assures the quality of the product up to the best-before
date. However, the best-before date is listed as one of the main causes for waste at the retail
as well as the consumer level (Bundesministerium für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft 2012).
Food waste as such could be seen as an unintended consequence of the best before date
(Gollnhofer 2016). Although retailers are allowed to sell food items after the best-before
date, few do so as they can then be held responsible for the quality of the food items (Article
5 Regulation (EC) no. 852/2004). Because consumer protection through the best-before date
causes large amounts of good food to be wasted, regulators encounter tensions in form of
conflicting objectives.
Retailers: Consumers’ Expectations and Food Waste
Retailers also pursue sustainability goals with respect to food waste. Analysis of corporate
social responsibility statements reveals different ways of coping with the problem. For
instance, Edeka (the biggest German retailer chain) states that “before throwing food items
away, we use other possibilities in order to convey the food items to another use” (Edeka,
2016). Such possibilities include anaerobic digestion (Zhang et al. 2007), where food waste
is used for energy production. The energy generation process is exemplified in a CSR
statement of one major supermarket chain in Germany:
“Organic waste is used in material and energy recycling. For instance, through
anaerobic digestion it is transformed into electricity and heat. This way, the
company saves up to 15.000 tons of CO2 ... The gained energy is sufficient to
deliver electricity to 5600 three-persons households.”
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(Report on Sustainability, retrieved online)
It is argued that large quantities of food are reused and diverted from the landfill. However,
using food items for energy generation is a from of downcycling (Steinhilper and Hieber
2001; Zhang et al. 2007) as the inherent nutritional properties are not used at their maximum.
Available data on how much actually is wasted at the retail level is diffuse and obscure
(Noleppa and Cartsburg 2015) and retailers transfer the responsibility towards consumers:
For instance, Edeka sacrifices several pages in explaining how consumers can avoid food
waste (Edeka Ernährungsservice, 2016). Admonitions include using one’s senses to
determine the real usability of foods despite the best-before date, using perishable foods in a
timely manner, and storing foods properly when once purchased. These steps, while
valuable, do nothing to reduce waste generated at the retail level, which never makes it into
consumers’ shopping baskets.
The role of the consumer is also highlighted in the following quote of Sandra, one of our
interviewed retail managers.
“What else are we supposed to do!? The consumer walks in here, five minutes
before closing time. And he wants to have the choice. He wants to have fresh
bread. If we do not have it he will just go to the next shop and never come
back. We try everything to reduce our safe food waste, but at the end of the
day we still have to throw large amounts of food away. But when the
consumer continues to expect that availability, we cannot do anything about
it. We also have to look after our profits.”
(In-depth interview with cooperating retailer)
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The store manager points out the tension between catering to consumers’ expectations and
engaging in sustainable behavior. Due to consumers’ expectations and the retailer’s goal of
profit maximization, retailers need to have large amounts and varieties of food on their
shelves. However, such food items often end up in the landfill. The extent of the problem of
safe food that still goes to the landfill is illustrated by the mere existence of Foodsharing.
This is backed up by a recent report of the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) estimates
that in Germany about 7% of the food items in supermarkets are wasted due to aesthetic or
marketing reasons. They estimate that about 90% of this waste can be avoided (Noleppa and
Cartsburg 2015).
Although retailers strive for sustainable behavior regarding safe food waste, their actions are
compromised by their idiosyncratic goal of profit maximization, which they achieve through
the fulfillment of consumers’ expectations. Further, retailers transfer the responsibility for
the food waste to the consumer-level.
Consumers: Looking for Ways to Fight Retail Food Waste
Some Germans are attentive to environmental concerns. This might be a heritage from the
green movement in the eighties (Schulze 2004). Pro-environmental attitudes are reflected in
political decisions such as the bailing out of nuclear energy power (Smedley 2013). Through
impressive German and Austrian films such as “Taste the Waste” of “We feed the world” the
attention of consumers has been drawn to the large amounts of food that get wasted at the
retail and individual levels. Our consumer-informants try to fight food waste through their
own consumption behaviors. As reports our informant, Andreas:
“I pay a lot more attention to the question of food waste. I try to throw
nothing away. This starts with when I go grocery shopping. I always use a list.
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And sometimes when I have too much I try to conserve it. Hmm, I cook it in.
Or I just give it to my neighbors”.
(In-depth interview with foodsharing member)
Andreas highlights different strategies for minimizing food waste at the individual level.
However, he and many other consumers also struggle to see ways to deal with food waste at
the institutional or retail level.
Together with regulators and retailers, consumers are caught in an ideological system
(Holt 2012) that leads to massive amounts of safe food waste. Some consumers are actively
trying to cope with the repercussions of their expectations – for instance regarding product
availability – however, as individual actors they lack influence and decision power at the
retail level.
Foodsharing and the Idiosyncratic Goals of Retailers and Regulators
Certain activist consumers began thinking about other ways to decrease the amount of safe
food waste. One of these ways is sharing food items you no longer want or need. Sharing
here is an emic term and refers to a redistribution of resources. Prior literature has already
established sharing as an etic term (Belk 2013). As illustrated by Luisa, one of the founders
of Foodsharing:
“Before I throw food away I share it. I give it to neighbors when I go on
holidays. It would be such a pity to throw all the good stuff away. And then
we built a platform where people can contact each other and share food. So
less food gets thrown away”.
(In-depth interview with foodsharing member)
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Redistributing food among private persons seems a fruitful way to counter food waste. From
the simple idea of redistributing surplus food among private consumers, the idea for
Foodsharing evolved. Foodsharing.de is an online platform that allows for connecting parties
that want to share food. Initially, this sharing of food was restricted to the private sphere, that
is, among consumers. Then the idea developed further. Says Marian:
“And then we thought: Where else is food wasted? From my own experience
with dumpster diving I knew that retailers throw large amounts of food away.
Such a shame! So we approached the retailers. And yes, right now we save
significantly more food via retailers than among consumers.”
(In-depth interview with foodsharing member)
As a former dumpster diver Marian became sensitized to the large amounts of food that get
wasted at retail stores. As a Foodsharing co-founder he also saw the potential in a social
platform for redistributing surplus food.
The activist consumers in the forefront of Foodsharing thus identified retailers as
potential cooperative partners in the fight against food waste. However, retailers have to
conform to a profit-maximization goal in order to compete. In order to gain retailers’
cooperation in redistributing excess food some convincing arguments and actions were
needed. Foodsharing activists suspected that retailers might decline to cooperate, fearing that
by giving away good food they might be cannibalizing their sales. Maria, one of the founders
of Foodsharing, explains that their message to retailers was one of sustainability and values
that they and the retailers actually shared. Says Maria:
“It is not about the money. And we do not want to transmit this perception to
retailers. So when we come to pick up the food and they say, “we do not have
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anything for you today,” we just say, “that is perfect,” instead of complaining
that there is no food available. Because the most important concern for us is
that there is no food waste. So when they do not have anything for us our goal
is achieved”.
(In-depth interview with foodsharing member)
This kind of thinking, when communicated to retailers, establishes the values-based nature of
the Foodsharing proposition and moves the discussion into the realm of ethical action and
out of the realm of monetary exchange.
Foodsharing members try to convey their non-monetary message in different ways.
Many of them dress up in professional attire when picking up the food at a retail store. The
rationale is that proper professional attire should convey an underlying meaning that
Foodsharing is not driven by financial concerns. The goal of foodsharing, as stated on their
website, is to “to live a new culture of respect vis-à-vis the food item” (Wikipedia on food
waste) through sharing.
Foodsharing representatives point out that they do not threaten the profit goals of retailers.
Rather, they voice support for retail profits while simultaneously showing how Foodsharing
caters to the goal of sustainability. For instance, foodsharing offers a sticker that retailers can
display for shoppers, emphasizing their concerns and activities on behalf of food waste and
sustainability goals. Foodsharing also offers to mention their cooperating retail partners on
their official website, providing a platform for retailers to communicate their sustainability
actions (Wikipedia on food waste).
Foodsharing offers a way to address social and sustainability goals without
compromising the idiosyncratic goal of retail profits. All of the retailers interviewed reported
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that they did not experience any decline in profits once they began cooperating with
Foodsharing. Says Ludwig, a retail manager:
“No, I don't believe that, and it is not our experience. A lot of our customers
just want to buy their bread and not take discarded food. Our customers
actually really appreciate that we don't throw it away”.
(In-depth interview with cooperating retailer)
The initial fear that Foodsharing might compromise some revenues did not materialize.
Rather the opposite seems to be true, as cooperation with Foodsharing may even attract
consumers that value sustainability and attempt to support stores that mirror their values.
Regulators also supported the efforts of Foodsharing and cooperating retailers in an
active way. Foodsharing offers regulators a way to advance goals of both consumer
protection and sustainability, rather than compromising either. Foodsharing found a way to
allow for consumer protection while also allowing for less wasteful food-handling practices
(Gollnhofer 2016). A legal disclaimer relieves the retailer of any responsibility for food
items distributed by Foodsharing. Retailers cannot be held responsible, and consumers can
make an active choice whether they agree to take food items without warranty by signing the
legal disclaimer. This way consumer protection is upheld for those who need it, whereas in
other cases consumers can engage in more sustainable actions. Once regulators were
convinced about the complementarity of their goals, they supported Foodsharing in an
official way. Several regulators expressed public support for Foodsharing – among them the
minister for environment of the largest federal state of Germany – and Foodsharing is listed
as a strategy to fight food waste on information flyers produced and distributed by the
government (Zdravkova 2014).
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The consumer-driven initiative of foodsharing assured that regulators and retailers are
no longer trapped between seemingly incommensurable goals of consumer protection,
consumer satisfaction, and sustainability. By taking charge of food waste at the retail site,
Foodsharing volunteers relieve retailers from the responsibility of food they can no longer
sell, without compromising the retailers’ bottom lines. By facilitating a network of people
that are willing to consume the food and take ultimate responsibility for it, they also relieve
pressure on regulators to safeguard consumer safety. These relaxations of responsibility
allow all the major stakeholder groups to make meaningful progress toward the values-
driven goal of reducing food waste, progress that otherwise was hindered by conflict with the
idiosyncratic goals of each institution. The non-monetary market arrangement essentially
functions as a flexible buffer that absorbs the problems of excess food and unwanted
responsibility.
Complementing the Dominant Social Paradigm with Sustainability
In analyzing this case we were interested in how Foodsharing manages to bridge the tensions
that are often encountered between sustainable concerns and the DSP. We now discuss the
underlying mechanism of complementarity in the context of Foodsharing and retail food
waste. Based on empirical data we find that Foodsharing did not attack existing marketplace
structures and practices in an aggressive manner such as occurs in cases of consumer
resistance or boycotts; neither did it produce a parallel market to compete with the traditional
market for profit and consumers. This gentle, non-threatening and non-competing approach
made Foodsharing a viable and attractive option, even for stakeholders deeply embedded in
the DSP. Complementarity, as the underlying mechanism of tension resolution, refers to an
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alternative market arrangement that adds to existing structures, instead of building competing
structures or challenging existing ones. We show how Foodsharing complemented the
existing structures by expanding the What, the How, and the To Whom in the retail food
system.
First, the What of Foodsharing is rescuing surplus food for consumption. The
organization redistributes food items that have been rejected or culled by retailers and
diverted from the waste stream (Albinsson and Perera 2012). Second, the How of
Foodsharing is non-monetary exchange. The organization does not sell the diverted surplus
food items, but rather redistributes them for free to interested individuals enrolled in the
program. Monetary exchange or the selling of the food items is strictly prohibited. Third, the
To Whom of Foodsharing does not align directly with any given store’s customer base.
Distribution relies on so called fairteilers, a German construction that denotes a point of
distribution where discarded food from several retail stores in any given geographical area is
gathered and made available to those who want it. Those three points assure that Foodsharing
does not enter in competition with the DSP but, by complementing and expanding
particpants’ value chains, builds a supporting structure that reduces food waste.
Discussion
Our analysis highlights the positions of key stakeholders in the retail food-waste problem,
namely food retailers, regulators and the consumer-led Foodsharing organization. The first
two stakeholders are firmly embedded in and committed to the dominant social paradigm of
capitalism and consumerism. Foodsharing, an activist organization with explicit
sustainability goals in the form of reducing food waste at the retail level, is not committed to
the ideals of the DSP. Indeed, many of its members are ideologically opposed to it.
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Although at least nominally concerned with food waste, retailers and regulators faced
a conflict of motives, wherein their own sustainability goals were compromised by and
subordinated to their primary goals of profit, consumer choice, and consumer protection. As
retailers and regulators stood fast with respect to their primary goals, their practices and
policies made massive amounts of food waste practically inevitable.
Foodsharing, an interloper with limited power in the retail food market, managed to
negotiate a means of achieving reductions in food waste with the cooperation of both
retailers and regulators. It did this, despite formidable tensions, by presenting an alternative
market arrangement that was complementary to the existing structures of the retail food
market. To ease profitability concerns Foodsharing collaborated with retailers on good-will
and image politics, and they relieved retailers of much of the cost and responsibility for
managing their food waste. To ease concerns of regulators the arrangement intervened with a
diversion of responsibility and liability for food safety to willing and educated consumer
collaborators.
This alternative market arrangement provides a meso- or institutional-level solution
to an historically intransigent macromarketing problem, namely tensions between
sustainability goals and conflicting priorities of the DSP. In line with the call for papers for
this special issue (Campana et al. 2015), we were interested in the interaction dynamics
between the alternative market arrangement and the DSP. Historically such interaction has
produced conflicts of an ideological and/or structural nature. The difficult integration
between postmaterialist practices, beliefs and attitudes and the DSP (Kilbourne et al. 1997;
Prothero and Fitchett 2000; Prothero et al. 2010) seems to partly explain the emergence and
mere existence of alternative market arrangements.
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This research identifies a previously unrecognized form of alternative market
arrangement. Prior literature has characterized alternative market arrangements, especially
those with postmaterialist sensibilities, as either oppositional to existing markets or parallel
to and in competition with them. Foodsharing is neither. Instead it operates in a
complementary fashion, bridging and resolving the classic tensions between sustainability
and key priorities of the DSP, including profitability, consumer choice and at least a
modicum of consumer protection.
The success of Foodsharing and its strategy of complementarity reveals interesting
macromarketing insights into the DSP and the potential for activism to bring about
meaningful changes in market practices either within or in spite of the DSP and its
prioritization of capitalist and consumerist interests. One implication is that, although the
DSP may not currently prioritize environmental sustainability to the extent that holders of
postmaterialist values would desire, neither is the DSP patently anti-sustainability. Both
retailers and regulators in Germany demonstrated clear concern about the problem of
massive food waste. Constrained by prior and institutionally binding obligations, they simply
lacked the tools to combat food waste without compromising their main missions. The
complementary solution provided by Foodsharing expanded the available tool kit and made
waste reduction more feasible and practical for retailers.
A second and corollary implication is that the simplistic reduction of consumer
activism or social entrepreneurship into binaries such as oppositional versus sympathetic to
the DSP, may be counterproductive to both research and practice. Foodsharing grew from an
ideological place that was not sympathetic to the DSP, but by taking a collaborative,
respectful and diplomatic attitude toward major institutions the organization was able to find
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common ideological ground, and on that ground to construct effective mitigations to a
serious problem. By contrast, a more oppositional approach to food-waste activism, namely
dumpster diving, had already occasioned backlash that made collaborative problem solving a
non-starter (Gollnhofer 2016).
One effect of an oppositional-versus-sympathetic binary is that it also tends to hang
the label of cooptation on successful collaborations with traditional institutions. The
implication is one of moral inferiority, of sleeping with the enemy and selling out principles
for cash. Thompson and Coskuner-Balli’s (2007) study of community supported agriculture
provides an example of this thinking. Clearly there is another perspective worth considering,
namely that cooptation equals success. Initiatives such as organic food production that are
coopted or embraced by massive market systems gain the advantages of their power and
scale in production, distribution, promotion, influencing legislation and so on, effectively
bringing better practices to the masses.
A final implication that flows from the previous ones is that the DSP may be less of
an immovable impediment to more sustainable systems than what much of the
macromarketing literature has tended to suggest. The institutions studied in this case are at
their very bones pragmatic. To a lesser but significant degree they are also adaptive.
Foodsharing activists didn’t need to convince retail managers or regulators that food waste is
bad. They just needed to imagine an alternative arrangement for dealing with it, or more to
the point, an arrangement that wouldn’t upset the apple carts of profitability and bureaucratic
duty. Complementarity in alternative market arrangements may provide creative activists
with the entry into existing market systems that allows them to influence how those systems
work, thereby helping to bring about market level change in the realms of sustainability and
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social welfare. However, complementarity is only the first step that treats more the
symptoms than the actual cause. It might even have reverse effects such as retailers that see
the problem as solved or activist consumers that even wish for more trash. Complementing
might be a viable strategy in the short term, however for the long-term strategies, actions and
behaviors that grasp the problem at the root are required. Further research would be required
to investigate in-depth the impact of foodsharing on the market level in terms of market level
change.
.
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Tables
Table 1. Overview of data
In-depth Interviews with foodsharing members
13 in-depth interviews (average length: 47 minutes with foodsharing members; including four interviews with co-founders of foodsharing)
In-depth Interviews with cooperating retailers
Six managers of grocery stores that cooperate with Foodsharing (average length 36 minutes)
Observation & Participation
Observational data over the spam of three years resulting in 60 pages of fieldnotes
Observation Sites Community meetings (8), fair-distribution points (13), retailers stores (14), International foodsharing gatherings (2)
Online data Media articles, blog entries, and forum discussions regarding foodsharing, resulting in 43 newspaper articles and 25 written pages of relevant blog entries and forum discussions
Wikipedia on food waste
Written by foodsharing members on topics such as ethical questions, guidelines and events. Retrieved online, resulting in 24 pages of single-spaced text
Reports on sustainability
Reports on sustainability – retrieved online from major German supermarket chains
Photos 78 photos for triangulation purposes
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