Consommation et innovation sociale inversée dans l’espace francophone : quand les consommateurs participent à l’amélioration des conditions de vie des producteurs

Abstract

Both the European Union and the French public authorities are struggling to find solutions to the agricultural crises. The dairy sector is no exception. In 2016, some 7,000 French consumers actively participated in the co-construction of a dairy sector guided by a social objective: improving the living conditions of producers. The innovation is thus based on a new method for setting the selling price of packaged milk. Based on the dairy sector and on other examples in France, we will show that this type of value-chain co-construction constitutes a reversed social innovation. The latter benefits from half a century of learning based on the institutionalization of the “fair” characteristic of a good, which is at the heart of North-South fair trade. The “fair trade” label is therefore no longer reserved only for developing countries. We will also analyze the scope of digital technologies (DT) that reduce the “social distance” between producers, established in the South or in the North, and the consumers. Thus, consumers can arbitrate across DTs, and this, in several sectors.