Shifting conceptualizations of ethical consumption: Cause-related marketing in India and the USA

Cause-related marketing (CRM) is a popular ethical consumption model where a for-profit company makes a donation to a non-profit organization each time a consumer purchases a certain product in the name of a particular cause (e.g., education). As a form of ethical consumption CRM has been documented and debated by academics in the Global North, but this is not the only place in which the CRM model is employed. This paper investigates the growing popularity of CRM in India, where it is used to target middle-class consumers. It explores how a shift in the place where CRM occurs necessitates a shift in the way that researchers conceptualize it. Drawing on economic, feminist and postcolonial geographies, this paper puts forward a framework for conceptualizing ethical consumption in emerging economies as both place/context specific and embedded in broader power dynamics and global processes. The paper details four CRM campaigns underway in the USA and India and investigates the contexts in which each is situated. The analysis moves beyond a straight comparison of the Indian and American cases to examine CRM as constituted through various places and practices.