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No. 19-2004 ICCSR Research Paper Series - ISSN 1479-5124 Buyers be Wary: Marketing Stakeholder Values and the Consumer James A. Fitchett Research Paper Series International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility ISSN 1479-5124 Editor: Dirk Matten International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility Nottingham University Business School Nottingham University Jubilee Campus Wollaton Road Nottingham NG8 1BB United Kingdom Phone +44 (0)115 95 15261 Fax +44 (0)115 84 66667 Email [email protected] http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/business/ICCSR Buyers be Wary: Marketing Stakeholder Values and the Consumer James A. Fitchett Abstract Marketing theory has limited appreciation for stakeholder values. They sit uncomfortably alongside the one-dimensional obsession with consumers propagated by much marketing idealism. There is a real difficulty in reconciling an ideology which declares the consumer supreme and sovereign on the one hand, with practices that construct the consumer as malleable and passive on the other. Consumers gain most voice and power through active disengagement from organisational initiatives including those that acknowledge stakeholder and other relational values. It is in the realm of consumption that individuals are most able to exercise opportunities for selfinterest, irresponsibility and irrationality and these characteristics run contrary to both the rationalism and multi-interest orientation of stakeholder democracy. The Author: James Fitchett is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at Nottingham University Business School. Prior to appointment at Nottingham James held positions at the University of Exeter and the University of Stirling. His main research interests are concerned with cultural readings of consumption and marketing practices. He has published research articles on a wide range of topics including environmentalism and consumption, morality and consumer behaviour, the role of market place symbolism during cultural transition, and intepretivist epistemology in marketing. James has held visiting lectureships at several European and UK universities and colleges including Odense, Reutlingen, Lanacaster, Yaroslavl and The European School of Management in Paris. Address for correspondence: Dr James A Fitchett, Nottingham University Business School, Jubilee Campus, Wollaton Road, Nottingham, United Kingdom, NG8 1BB, Email: [email protected]. Introduction This discussion piece begins by assessing the development of stakeholder theory in the marketing literature by considering the parallels between core marketing concepts and stakeholder concepts. It then questions the basis for assuming that consumers constitute a legitimate stakeholder constituency by evaluating the conditions and features of firm-consumer interactions. The final section looks at the prospects for fostering stakeholder values within marketing activities and questions the circumstances under which such initiatives could be considered to be of benefit to consumers. The rights of man(agement) An interesting collection of Essays written by members of Lancaster University Centre for the Study of Cultural Values were published in 1994 as an edited volume titled The Authority of the Consumer. After locating the black and white photograph of the Musee d’ Orsay on the cover one finds three bold pronouncements shouting out from the blurb on the reverse: “Do processes of consumption rule our lives?” “What power do consumers have?” “Does consumption undermine authority?”. Usually we ignore the first page of most books we read. As with many academic writers weaned on the fetishism of citation I have often been annoyed with myself when I’ve photocopied a chapter from a book but failed to copy that first leaf giving the authors details, date and place of publication and other information invaluable for recording a full reference. But this time I read it closely. And here is what it said, just below the cite: “All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission from the publishers.” This passage resonated with me this time firstly because it seemed to stand in stark contrast to the three emboldened questions posed on the book’s reverse, and secondly because it reveals something of the unique character of consumer – firm relations. 1 “All rights reserved” for instance, is an interesting turn of phrase. As well as stating that the published retains all legal rights over the product it also implies that the consumer has no rights despite purchase unless a benevolent publisher should grant them. Not only is the consumer denied any right to rights here, but agreeing to the terms of no rights is a condition of consumption. If you pay for this book you must accept the terms. These rights are not negotiable, i.e. the consumer cannot request that they be modified prior to purchase but they are legally enforceable if the consumer disregards them once a purchase has been made. We are informed that it may not be reprinted, reproduced, or utilised (i.e. used) in any form or by any means. Thus I suppose I am allowed to tell you about the book, but not about its contents, at least not in any detail. The publisher treats the purchaser as an economic cul de sac, a dead end. Things go in but nothing comes out. These “other means, now known or hereafter invented” reveals a deep fear among producers than consumers are infinitely creative and entrepreneurial and will get round the constraints placed upon them by some means or another. I am not sure if it is legal to legislate for things not yet in existence but what really interests me is why firms deem it necessary to constrain their consumers is such an authoritarian manner. After all marketing is supposed to defend the consumers’ absolute sovereignty. These terms and conditions of sale are not unique to the publishing industry. Similar and comparable terms are imposed, or rather implied on individuals when they make any purchase, at least in advanced capitalist societies. In a contrasting gesture I turned to a second-hand copy of Karl Marx’s A contribution to the critique of political economy published by Progress Publishers in the USSR in 1970. The first leaf contained no warning of trespass, no threat of sanction and no conditions applicable to generations and technologies yet to be born. On the final leaf, which is fact the last page of the index a small statement is given as a final post-script. Under the index entry for “World Money” the statement reads: 2 REQUEST TO READERS Progress Publishers would be glad to have your opinions of this book, its translation and design and any suggestions you may have for future publications. Please send your comments to 21, Zubovsky Boulevard, Moscow, USSR. As well as bringing into question the assumption that the Americans invented customer service, this short request also re-affirms the belief that many of us had otherwise suspected, namely that the marketing concept was alive and well in the USSR throughout the Cold War, at least at Progress Publishers, and that it was a lack of market choice rather than a lack of an established marketing ideology that finally sent Soviet consumers on their revolutionary path Westward. The wide ranging centenary collection edited by the well respected Marxist Scholar David Mclellan (1983) titled Marx: The first 100 years published by Fontana failed to carry forward the ideals of customer sovereignty championed by Progress Publishers on Zubovsky Boulevard, Moscow. Not only was this book sold on the condition that: it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent re-sold, or hired out without the publishers formal consent,” it further added, presuming the appropriate pardon be granted by the publisher, that “this condition be imposed on the subsequent purchaser.” In principle any subsequent consumer is bound by the conditions and terms of sale laid down by Fontana even though the book was purchased independently of them. As a consumer I am legally obliged to obey terms from an organisation that are completely removed from the transaction I undertook with the seller. So much for Marx’s view that “in consumption the product becomes the direct object and servant of an individual need.” (Marx 1970: 194). It seems, at least for Routledge, Fontana and other publishers, bar Soviet ones of course, intervention and control of the free consumer market is absolutely necessary. 3 Publishing perestroika These hypocrisies of democracy and consumer freedom are at once amusing and bewildering. Why do we persist in propagating an ideology of consumer sovereignty whilst seeking above all else to constrain, manage and bind the consumer into submission? As if this wasn’t enough to muddy the waters of consumer democracy there is ample evidence showing that consumers are forced to cope with an array of corporate double standards. To illustrate this I will turn from the obscure world of Marxist publications and criticism to the familiar consumer-scape of the Hollywood blockbuster. In its opening weekend in May 2002 the movie Spiderman grossed $114m at the US box office and over 11m DVDs of the movie were sold in the first three days of November following release. It is regarded as one of the most successful movies of all time. Despite this overwhelming financial success, concerns remain over pirating and the devastating impact it is expected to have on the industry unless controls and prosecutions are enforced. Not only do pirates crack DVD encryption code and copy movies either to other DVDs or straight to PC hard-drives so that they can be sold at a fraction of the list price, they also remove otherwise unskippable commercials that some movie studios are fond of shoving into their DVDs, and remove “region controls”. As with all films bought by consumers in the UK the terms and conditions are given prior to the opening credits and are even more restricting than those imposed by publishers on readers. Not only do movie retailers put conditions on the sale and re-sale of the item but also on how, where, when, who and under what circumstances the product can be consumed, they typically read something like this: WARNING The copyright proprietor has licensed this programme (including, without limitation, its soundtrack) contained in this Digital Versatile Disc for private home use only. Unless otherwise expressly licensed by the copyright proprietor, all other rights reserved. Use in other locations such as airlines, clubs, coaches, hospitals, hotels, oil rigs, prisons, schools and ships is prohibited unless expressly authorised by the copyright proprietor. Any unauthorised copying, editing, exhibition, renting, hiring, exchanging, lending, public performances, diffusion and/ or broadcast, in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited. Any such action establishes liability for civil action and may give rise to criminal prosecution. 4 Spiderman was produced by Columbia Pictures, a wholly owned subsidiary of the SONY corporation. In addition to buying movie companies SONY has pioneered the development DVD. Just as BETAMAX and VHS formats struggled for dominance when video was first introduced there are currently two DVD formats commonly referred to as DVD- and DVD+. Although the ‘–’ format looks like it may win through, the format developed and promoted by SONY, the ‘+ format’ remains popular and may come to dominate the DVD recording market. SONY was also a market leader in the introduction of DVD players that would be capable of playing self recorded DVDs, has a significant market share in the multimedia PC market, the main technology used for pirating DVDs, as well as franchising its brand to a line of DVD-R disks that boast a 4.7GB, 120min, Capacity for Video & PC convergence and are rewritable up to 1000 times. SONY are also a market leader in the ‘Home Cinema System’ market supplying products that quite literally bring the cinema into your living room. This example illustrates a curious development in the types of relationships that firms seek to foster with their global consumers. Not only do they provide products under strict license and control that dictate to consumers how they can and cannot consume the products they purchase, and enforce controls through legislation and other social regulation introduced by intervening governments, they also pioneer, mass market and promote the very instruments, means and technologies which enable consumers to transgress these licenses. Where necessary they also presumably prosecute their consumers whose only real crime is to take full advantage, or in marketspeak, extract maximum value, from the company’s full product range. It is in contexts such as these that one needs to evaluate the value of stakeholder theories for consumers. If consumers are to be stakeholders then what type of dialogue is being promoted? Marketing theory and stakeholder theory Marketing theory has given very limited attention to stakeholding. As with many management sub-disciplines there has been a tendency for attention to focus on the specifics of a perceived functional realm and to examine these functions in a somewhat isolated fashion rather than one that is integrated or co-operative. Marketing has laid claim to one specific stakeholder community, namely the 5 consumer, just as one suspects that professionals in the area of human resource management have laid claim to the dynamics of employee relations, and operations management researchers have laid claim to represent supplier and out sourced stakeholders. The limited attention given to stakeholder concerns by marketing theorists has tended to focus on those areas of marketing where multiple constituency views are hard to ignore. Whysall (2000) and Arnould and Luthra (2000) for example both call for stakeholder theory to be given a much more prominent place in retail studies, especially in assessing marketing entry strategies for large retailers where the impact of location decisions clearly influence a plethora of local, regional, national and international stakeholder interests. Although there are barely a handful of articles on stakeholder theory written from a specifically marketing orientation or for a specific marketing audience (Jackson 2001, Miller and Lewis 1991) there are clear parallels between theoretical developments in marketing and some stakeholder theory. It appears for example, that stakeholder theory became popular at the same time as marketing scholars were heralding the merits of relationship marketing theory and other conceptual developments based on the acknowledgement of networks and other community influences (see for example Gronroos 1997). This perhaps suggests that the growing interest in stakeholder values over the last decade or so is at least in part attributable to broader trends with management and social science research more generally that examine management concerns from multiple and network perspectives rather than singular ones. The stakeholder literature is diverse and wide-ranging. It seems that it has developed into a mature sub-discipline all of its own, that is abundant with alternative theories, view-points and analyses. There are traditionalist critiques of stake-holding (e.g. Sternberg 1997, Barry 2002), debates over the normative and descriptive credibility of stakeholder theory (e.g. Reed 1999), radical stakeholder manifestos, as well as conventional pragmatic defences that point to the proposed benefits of stakeholding for the firm (Vinten 2001). Like many areas of management studies it appears that stakeholding theory is dogged by early contributions, which on reflection appear naïve, wildly idealistic and somewhat superficially justified in terms of theoretical credibility. It is amusing to read the scathing criticisms of those early theorisations that defined the stakeholder as all and any group that is either affected by or affects 6 the organisation. Critics point out that such crude theorisation demands that all and sundry be considered legitimate stakeholders, whether generations unborn, terrorists and organisational saboteurs, not to mention competitors and environmentalists. It is interesting that almost all stakeholder theory, despite this apparent aspiration for diversity, examines stakeholder issues from a small number of viewpoints and interests, principally from the perspective of management and company directors and from the perspective of the supposed principal objectors, namely stock holders. It is perhaps an irony, if not a contradiction that stake holder theory is rarely presented from the point of view of stakeholders themselves. It is a paradigm very much for stakeholders rather than one authored or designed by stakeholder groups. As Frooman (1999: 191) argues in his comment on the archetypal stakeholder contribution from Freeman (1984): “The stakeholder model [is] a map in which the firm is the hub of a wheel and stakeholders are at the ends of spokes around the wheel…In this hub-spoke conceptualisation, relationships are dyadic, independent of one another, viewed largely from the firm’s vantage point and defined in terms of actor attributes.” The decision, or at least the discussion to grant, deny or withdraw stakeholder status remains within the prerogative of organisational interests, and it is this inability to conceptually ‘let go’ as it were that provides a serious stumbling block for the establishment of stakeholding across other sub-disciplines of management such as marketing. Parallels between marketing theory and stakeholder theory There are parallels between the origins and axioms of the stakeholder concept and the axioms of the marketing concept, and insights from stakeholder theory can be used to interpret and further justify this main stream marketing paradigm. The first principle of departure for the marketing concept is based on a questioning of the assumption that the firm should be organised on the premise that managers have a primary ethical obligation to the firm’s shareholders (to return profit etc). With regards to other stakeholders however, managers only have an obligation to treat them 7 strategically (Cragg 2002). The marketing concept attempts to redefine this obligatory motive by proposing that consumers are the primary ethical obligation for the firm. The marketing concept was in some respects a proto-stakeholder theory in that it proposed that the principle objective and interest for the firm lay not its investors and stock holders but rather in its consumers. Given the management conditions prevalent in the 1950s and 1960s when the marketing concept was developed and proposed it is not surprising that it was initially conceived as an instrumental rather than normative theory. Firms were called upon to implement the marketing concept on the promise that it would secure long term competitive advantage, help protect and build market shares, as well as providing a framework for organising and coordinating business priorities. Discussions over whether firms had a civic or moral responsibility to implement such procedures were far from common place. And yet within the tight orthodoxy of the marketing concept one cannot help but observe a sense of progressive idealism, that somehow it constituted the right thing to do. One of the earliest advocates of the marketing concept, Peter Drucker, writes: “Marketing is not only much broader than selling, it is not a specialized activity at all. It encompasses the entire business. It is the whole business seen from the point of view of the final result, that is, from the customer’s point of view. Concern and responsibility for marketing must therefore permeate all areas of the enterprise. There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.” (Drucker 1954/1986: 37) The parallels with stakeholder theories are more than evident, principally in terms of the sentiment that the firm exists to attend to the expectations of a constituency or constituencies other than its investors. Underlying this early proclamation of the marketing concept is the belief that the modern firm is the result of various political, legal and social regulations. The concept of the firm is sanctioned and protected by social forces for the benefit of society as a whole, or in the case of the marketing concept, for the benefits of individuals via consumption. These parallels do of course need to be reviewed in context. There are some fundamental differences, specifically that the marketing concept is organised around the needs of a single constituency rather than the recognition of multiple claims. Jackson (2001) for example argues 8 that the marketing concept effectively defined the consumer as a type of default priority stockholder. In this regard stakeholder theories can be contrasted against the marketing concept in the same way that they can and are contrasted against stockholder theories. The proposition that managers, employees and other organisational constituencies should operate on the basis that they have been granted authority to act as trustees on behalf of the consumer interest is, in this respect at least, consistent with stockholder theories of the firm. The paradox of the marketing concept was, or rather is, that on the one hand it heralded consumer sovereignty, yet on the other it sought to establish and maintain absolute organisational control (Gronroos 1989). Within the marketing area as presumably with other management sub-disciplines there is a tendency for stakeholders to be represented as forces that management need to overcome or ‘win over’. Both the marketing concept and stakeholder theories are open to the criticism that they imply and further legitimise a type of managerial hegemony despite the use of mutually participative rhetoric (Mellahi and Wood 2003). From a classic shareholder perspective the firm exists to return on investment which is achieved through profit returns on sales. Consumers are in a sense a specific means to a very important organisation end, namely sales. Interestingly, the narrative of the marketing concept is based firmly within this stakeholder principle, that consumers needs, wants and desires are the purpose and priority for the firm, i.e. that consumers are neither a means to an end, nor only one end of many, but rather the end. I would suggest that consumers are on the whole sceptical of such claims of organisational devotion as a result of both reason and experience. The consumer is unable to reconcile the belief that organisations are driven by any other motive, or have any other interest in them, other than as a means to secure sales. In short, the consumer believes that most organisations are governed by a classical shareholder orientation whatever the rhetoric of the marketing concept may state. That said, it is also worth pointing out that consumers have come to believe that it is their prerogative to expect that organisations will prioritise the consumer interest if only because it makes the sales imperative more likely. If consumers feel that organisations are not attending satisfactorily to their needs, wants and desires, and a credible alternative is available then they will presumably switch. Another question then is whether consumers see the organisations as a means to fulfil their own 9 interests or whether they perceive organisations as ends in their own right. After all, a stakeholder orientation must be mutual and cooperative. Consumers do not believe that they have any duty of care or level of responsibility for the firms with whom they choose to engage. Consumers believe it is their right to choose between competing marketing offerings without regard for the implications for different firms, or for that matter, to the other stakeholders affected by their actions. Do consumers constitute a legitimate stakeholder constituency? From a straight reading of stakeholder theory it would appear that consumers constitute a legitimate and important stakeholder group. Consumers are typically considered to be a core or immediate stakeholder group, along with employees, suppliers and shareholders. As a stakeholder group, consumers are certainly singular if not unique. The first thing to acknowledge is that consumers are only agents of themselves. They have no formal obligation to represent the interests of any other group as part of the legitimate practice of consumption, and nor do they hold in trust the resources or intentions of others. The consumer, unlike the employee or manager, does not act on behalf of, or for the benefit of another stakeholder group. And unlike the shareholder the consumer does not cede responsibility for his or her own interests to others. Thus, the consumer has no ethical responsibility other than the satisfaction of his or her own needs, wants and desires. Unless there were realisable and substantive gains for the individual, there is little reason why the consumer should voluntarily undertake stakeholder responsibilities. Despite whatever the rhetoric of much marketing theory might claim, it is also clear that consumers have no ethical basis to expect other stakeholder constituencies, such as employees and managers, to act in their interests since arguably both these groups have an ethical and legal responsibility to represent the stockholders of the firm and not consumers. There may be times when it appears that employees and managers are acting on behalf of the consumer interest when it seems that the consumer interest is equivalent and common to the interest of stockholders, but this is nothing more than a welcomed coincidence. The intent of stockholders is to return on their investment, which they expect will be achieved by an efficient organisation delivering customer value to consumers more effectively than competitors. 10 Consumers on the other hand are primarily motivated by extracting the maximum value from organisations for the minimum cost. As with any assessment of stakeholder legitimacy it is helpful to set in place a broadly accepted set of principles and then evaluate the extent to which these principles are applicable to the constituency concerned. The stakeholder literature contains many such charters and classifications (e.g. Freeman 1994, Kaptein and Van Tulder 2003). By definition most manifestos for normative theories of stakeholding are generic, i.e. they present a set of universal values which have relevance and applicability to wide set of activities, roles and practices. Freeman’s (1994: 416) ground rules for effective stakeholder management propose six core principles. Under The principle of entry and exit any contract between the firm and its stakeholders should have clear entry, exit and re-negotiation conditions. This principle assumes that both firm and stakeholder interests can only exist on the premise that both parties understand the procedures for embarking and terminating the relationship. To what extent can this principle be applied to consumer stakeholder constituencies? Market exchange (purchase) transactions are regulated by a wide range of legislation, codes of practice and self-regulatory frameworks which demand that consumers are able to access terms and conditions of sale prior to committing to purchase. The process of terminating on-going contracts has to be specified prior to the contract being signed and re-negotiation terms must also explicitly stated before any purchase is agreed. With on-line purchases for example, sellers are required to provide a link to all of the terms and conditions of sale so that the consumer can, should he or she wish to do so, peruse them before clicking agreement to buy. A mobile phone, cable television, or insurance policy contract, for example, must specify exactly what commitment is implied and for how long, as well as giving details of procedures for terminating the agreement. Firms are also required to specify if, when, and under what conditions they will vary the terms of a contract once the agreement has been entered into. There is a strong case to suggest that the majority of legitimate consumer-firm interactions sustain Freeman’s (1994) first principle and consequently one might 11 conclude that the consumer is well on the way to being granted full stakeholder rights and status. One problem with this conclusion is the relative status of firms and consumers in respect of defining the terms of entry exit and negotiation. These terms are largely if not totally imposed by firms rather than arrived at through dialogue, concession and consensus between consumers and the firm (see also Fitchett and McDonagh 2000). This is not necessarily a disadvantage and nor should it automatically be assumed that this constitutes an unjust process. It does however bring into focus the potential limitations of applying stakeholder dialogue principles to firm-consumer relationships at least if one assumes that Freeman’s stakeholder ground rules are accepted as constituting a reasonable set of criteria. The second principle, the principle of governance requires that the procedure for changing the rules of the game must be agreed on by unanimous consent. It could be argued that consumers implicitly accept this condition in their relationships with firms. Consumers agree freely as an implied result of any consumer choice that it is acceptable for the agreement to be pre-determined and therefore non-negotiable. Firms specify the rules as well as the means and prerogatives for changing the rules. Consumers have a role in governance only to the extent that they choose the structures by which they are to be bound from the options and choices available on the market at any given time or place. Arguably this is in reality only a limited opportunity because in many cases competing firms apply similar if not identical governance principles thus removing any basis of consumer choice. Furthermore, there is a slight conflict of interest in that for the consumer to be active in terms of selecting the basis for governance multiple and often contradictory selection criteria must be managed. Unless the preferred choice also happens to be offered by the firm with the preferred terms of governance, the consumer must either choose unfavourable terms so that the preferred choice is obtained, or choose an inferior alternative so that preferred governance structures are entered into. The main reason why this is rarely a major concern for consumers is because the terms and conditions of governance tend not to vary a great deal especially within product classes. Thus most credit cards tend to have similar terms and conditions, as do most vacation providers, airlines, supermarkets and so on. One might rightly conclude therefore that the consumer has little real principle of governance. 12 A political analogy might be thus: Let us consider an imaginary consumer-based democracy whereby ones choice of political governance was determined by ones choice of a particular commodity, such as an automobile or a brand of bread. One could argue that democratic freedom was preserved because the people retained the right to choose between parties and their policies simply by making an informed consumer decision. It would also have the benefit of promoting higher political turnout especially if the commodity selected to function as the political surrogate was a necessity. The only problem, assuming that all of the people are to afford the commodity used as the political surrogate, would be that consumers might have a strong personal preference for the taste of a brand A loaf or the driving experience of a brand X saloon but subscribe to the policies of the political authority associated with brand B bread or brand Y automobiles. The consumer is thus required to weigh up product choice against choice governance. To extend the analogy one stage further, one could question whether the people’s choice would be made all the more easier if all political parties agreed to adopt broadly similar policies and manifestos leaving consumers to focus on satisfying their preferences for one brand over another. This governance dilemma is a feature of many consumer decisions. Should consumers choose fair trade products despite their preference for cheaper alternatives? Should they boycott clothing manufacturers exposed as having exploitative labour practices despite a desire for the brand and its supposed role in self and social identity? Should they choose to buy a desirable automobile despite knowledge that such choices are likely to contribute to worsening environmental and social conditions? It is not that consumer decisions are unique in having a multidimensional quality but rather than the link between governance issues and product features, at least at the point of sale, appears spurious and disassociated. The competing demands involved with consumer decision-making together with the nature of largely prefabricated governance alternatives mean that consumers are poorly placed to exercise an active governance role. Freeman also discusses the principle of externalities, stating that if the contract between firm and consumer imposes a cost on a third party, this third party has the option to become a party in the possible re-negotiation of the contract. This is a 13 particularly difficult rule to incorporate into consumer-firm interactions. Consumers tend not to be in a position to evaluate the impacts on third parties since their relationship with firms is defined in an exclusively dyadic form. Firstly it is questionable whether consumers are ever in a position to have enough information to determine and assess all of the third party consequences of their actions. Secondly, since (as stated above) consumers are rarely in a position to enter into negotiations with the firm with regards to the terms of entry, exit or governance they are equally impotent in terms of permitting or supporting third party involvement or in fact discouraging it were such interventions deemed to have a deleterious impact on their own interests. The principle of contracting costs states that all parties to the contract must share the cost of contracting. This is again a difficult rule to apply to firm-consumer interactions since consumers must ultimately bear all of the costs of contracting, together with all of the costs of production, marketing, research and development and general firm administration. Although the firm may have alternative sources of revenue that it can use to offset some of these costs, they must be retrieved through sales whether directly or indirectly. A credit card company might sell off bad debt to a third party so as to retrieve at least some of the revenue it has nominally forfeited due to customers defaulting on loans, but this cost must eventually be factored into a business model that determines rates and terms of lending and repayment. The point of relevance here is not to critique Freeman’s ideal types or to suggest that the list of principles is either poor or adequate to define stakeholder relations. Although it differs in some respects to other typologies it is reasonably coherent as an ethical framework for governing contractual terms between some stakeholder interests and the firms in which they have a stake. This brief application clearly shows that consumers do not and cannot be classified or conceived of in the same fashion as other core organisational stakeholders. Such terms are perhaps appropriate ideals for dealings between firms and suppliers, labour unions or pressure groups but not to the mass consuming public. For them to be treated as such it would be necessary for individuals to be granted both the moral and economic rights and responsibilities to interact with organisations on a more or less equal basis. This presumably means that they must collaborate and organise themselves 14 together in some formative, constitutive manner so that they are in some capacity equal with the firms they choose to contractually engage. For consumers to become active stakeholders and fulfil the kinds of obligations outlined in these principles they are in effect required to become a kind of quasi-organisation and as such cease to retain many of the characteristics that define the consumer stakeholder role in the first place. Whilst there are many examples where consumer interests have been consolidated in some way to provide a basis for collective action, such initiatives are hardly typical of the majority of consumer behaviour. Consumer Unions (Winward 1994, Furlough and Strikwerda 1999), boycotts (Smith 1990) and other forms of consumer protests can and often do coerce organisations into changing policies deemed to be detrimental or harmful. However, it would be difficult to argue that these forms of expression are typical or even common place features of most consumer behaviour and the motives underpinning these forms of action are far from homogenous. Necessary – but incompatible The stakeholder status of consumers can be further examined in the context of issues regarding parity, conflict and dependency. Friedman and Miles (2002) for example attempt to illustrate the differences between various types of stakeholders based on the extent to which they are necessary or contingent to the firms’ activities, and the degree to which stakeholder activities are either compatible or incompatible with those of the firm. Through their analysis of the impact of environmentalist lobby groups they also show that there is often a marked difference between the way that firms perceive their stakeholders, and how or whether other communities or groups perceive themselves as stakeholders to the firm. A group may consider itself to constitute a legitimate stakeholder interest although the firm may not recognise it as such. Alternatively the firm may acknowledge stakeholder status yet deem the concerns of particular groups to be unimportant and otherwise incompatible with their own objectives and commitments. The firm-consumer relationship is described as having a ‘necessary incompatible’ configuration (Friedman and Miles 2002: 10). Consumers are grouped in same quadrant of the stakeholder matrix of relationship as Trade Unions, Low-level employees, government, suppliers and other creditors. This status acknowledges 15 that the consumer interest cannot generally be dismissed or ignored by firms. They have an interest, obligation and commitment to interact and deal with consumer demands at some level. At the same time the objectives of the firm are deemed to be largely incompatible with the objectives of consumers. Just as Trade Unions would be expected to prefer improved working conditions rather than worsened ones, or more secure employment contracts versus more flexible contracts, consumers would be expected to prefer lower rather than higher prices, wider rather than less choice, longer rather than shorter opening hours, and interest free payment terms rather than interest charged. The best interests of the firm on the other hand have tended to be predicated on the highest possible returns on per unit sold, standardised rather than customised market offerings and so on. Of course the long term viability of trade union members is also dependent on a viable and profitable firm, as is the long term viability of consumer expectations. Although interests of the firm and its customers are incompatible there is a recognition that some necessary contractual obligation exists and that a key function of the firm is to compromise or convince such groups that stakeholder concerns have been listened to and addressed. This conceptualisation recognises that the stakeholder relationship between the firm and its customers may not be all together positive, active or constructive but rather combative, and that the way firms perceive customer stakeholder interests may differ significantly to the way customers perceive their own stakeholder rights. Perhaps the best way to conceptualise the relationship between firms and consumers is as one of mutual contempt or mistrust, or constrained opportunism. Both customers and firms seek to exploit one another to the maximum extent without destroying the future potential for further interactions. The consumer motto is thus “Offer us more for less or be warned that we may go elsewhere and get should the opportunity arise.” It is also logical to assume that customers do not represent a coherent stakeholder interest, but rather one that is highly fragmented and disparate. Although most customers might be ‘necessary incompatible’ others may be(come) ‘contingent incompatible’. For example Relationship Marketing theory suggests that less profitable, highly promiscuous or highly unpredictable customers might be deemed irrelevant to the firms’ objective of generating and maintaining sales. The cost of 16 retaining such customers might outweigh their lifetime value to the firm and as such they might be re-classified as a contingent (i.e. non-necessary) and incompatible stakeholder sub-group. Although customers have grown to expect that firms will always respond favourably to the threat to leave, in reality the firms response to some customers may actually be: “Good riddance, don’t come back until you can give us more”, or “You do not merit the expense we would incur to seduce you.” The relative status of consumer stakeholder values It might seem logical, obvious, even common sense to assume that employees, consumers or suppliers would want, value and take responsibility for their status as stakeholders but such assumptions deserve closer scrutiny. Defining consumers as a stakeholder community is technically accurate according to most stakeholder literature, and rarely questioned but it is practically inappropriate. In one sense consumption is simply an activity that individuals undertake. The concept of the ‘consumer’ is in this regard a managerial reification. Of course the individual is aware that he or she buys, shops, desires and even consumes, but the means of becoming a consumer are largely organisational means. The question is not whether consumers constitute a stakeholder community or not, but rather whether individuals seeking stakeholder expression and representation are able to do so via their consumer behaviour as opposed to the other roles they inevitably fill as part of their every day lives, as members of civil communities, as employees, trade union members, members of political parties, investors, as activists, or as members of other cultural and sub-cultural groups. Miller (1995: 20) questions the real opportunities that non-consumption based modes of representation can offer to individuals in an increasingly globalising economy stating that “Consumption... is the one arena where most of us still feel we have some power left to influence what we might become.” Although this view promotes consumption from a passive to an active function and appears to offer an optimistic and representational capacity to the consumer, it is in fact a fundamentally pessimistic perspective. The benefits and potential of consumption as a form of representation is predicated on the acknowledgment that other forms of non-consumption expression are being gradually disabled and undermined. In short consumer representation may not be perfect but it is becoming 17 the only form of representation for the majority of the worlds consumer-citizens. Inevitably the values of the consumer contrasts vividly with many non-consumption values in terms of opportunity for self expression and representation. After all the consumer ethos is founded not on the principle of stakeholder but rather on the principle of sovereignty, i.e. of privileged status and as such the extent to which stakeholder values can be incorporated into consumer relations is highly spurious. The first question to be considered then is whether individuals are more or less able at present to enact stakeholder responsibilities and receive stakeholder rights when undertaking consumer activities compared to the other roles they perform as part of their social lives. Debates regarding citizenship versus consumerism have clear relevance here. At present, at least in western democracies, there is an assumption that the political establishment has precedence over any one particular group or commercial interest. As a citizen of that democracy individuals are able to exercise choice through elections and other public pressure (popularity, participation in polls etc) which in theory has a direct influence over the means and direction of government. The right to vote provides the individual with stakeholder status together with the responsibilities that go with it. A rational model would expect that, where possible, an individual would seek to be consistent in terms of values, behaviour and actions across the range of activities they undertake. The problem here of course is that individuals do not necessarily behave in a congruent manner across all of the roles and actions they undertake. Thus, for example, an individual might vote for a political party that has given a manifesto pledge to address environmental problems whilst continuing to desire and purchase automobiles that are less than fuel-efficient. As Miller (1995) shows, in some cases consumer decisions have far greater political consequences than voting decisions, especially in developing economies. Furthermore this is more likely to be the case given the trend towards globalisation which often directly undermines national government efforts to instigate policy. Equally an individual may be a member of a trade union that seeks to safeguard employment conditions by, for example, opposing the relocation of certain organisational activities to developing economies where labour in cheaper and working conditions poorer, but at the same time purchase goods and services purely on the basis of value for money. On an even 18 more abstract level, individuals may strongly criticise fund managers who invest in firms that are exposed as exploiting cheap labour, low environmental standards, and undertaking anti-competitive trading practices yet base investment decisions solely on good financial performance so that they will more than likely gain higher interest returns or sustain more favourable pensions that will allow them to retire earlier. These examples illustrate that consumer actions can and often do conflict with other actions, many of which have a direct impact on the same individuals making the consumption choices in the first place. To be fair, consumers often lack the necessary information to make fully informed choices although one assumes that if consumers demanded it firms would respond by supplying it. That consumption is largely defended on the grounds of the individual’s right to choose, and that it is socially constructed as an activity that is undertaken in isolation or small groups also limits the prospect of greater consideration for different stakeholder consequences. There is a strong argument to suggest that individuals are far more empowered when they accept the boundaries and conditions of collective action, whether this is through trade union membership, membership to groups seeking to support the advancement of particular issues (e.g. environmental groups, campaigns to address third world debt), or membership to political parties. It is only through formal organisation and channels of representation that legitimate stakeholder status can be enacted, including both the rights and responsibilities that come with it. Although there is a case to suggest that individuals are emancipated and liberated through their ability to participate in mass consumer society (Firat and Venkatesh 1995) this freedom is mainly limited to the boundaries of the self, and adoption of prefabricated agendas and actions. Consideration of an holistic view of social action and stakeholder representation would probably conclude that clearer demarcation between the individual’s expectations from consumption and his or her expectations from other activities, as for example, workers, voters, or investors, is probably the most sustainable way forward. Whilst efforts that blur the boundaries between these very different types of roles is to certain extent inevitable, this is likely to undermine stakeholder relevance, especially if more and more individual behaviour becomes represented as consumption behaviour and inherits the corresponding consumption characteristics identified above. 19 A further question then is whether individuals are likely benefit from being granted stakeholder status by those firms who actively target them with products and services. To address this issue it is necessary for us to briefly consider how firms and consumers protect themselves against each other from what has been termed here mutually constrained opportunism. Firms can manage the uncertainty associated with consumer interests in a number of ways. They can compete with rival firms and seek to offer a better product or service alternative on the assumption that consumers will gravitate around superior product offerings at the most competitive price. They can attempt to construct barriers to exit, such as loyalty schemes on the assumption that consumers will become less promiscuous if they are offered marginal perceived benefits and incentives. They can attempt to monopolise a particular product through aggressive competition or dumping and thus limit the potential variety of choice consumers have available. They can try to attract and seduce the consumer by enthralling and ensnaring them through playful marketing communications and appealing to the consumers’ insatiable desire for the desirable (Brown 2001). The consumer has only one means of defence against the powerful strategic efforts of organisations, the freedom to choose. That this choice can be made on the grounds on rational preference, irrational desire, or on no apparent grounds at all and thus appear completely random is a principle means of consumer empowerment. Stakeholder values, like relationship marketing initiatives can be interpreted as an organisational effort to colonise and constrain the unmanageable consumer (Gabriel and Lang 1995). Individual, relatively weak consumers are protected against the collective and relatively powerful efforts of firms only by the mechanism of the market together with legislative and other restrictions that provide for the basic rules of engagement. A radical stakeholder theory of marketing would require firms to focus their efforts on the types of relationships and interactions they have with their customers rather than on the types of products and services they deliver. The golden axiom of marketing is still the satisfied customer - which translates into the provision of a product or service that delivers, or enables the consumer to enact, satisfaction. It is simply not sufficient for firms to liase with customers about the types of products they do and do not want. Consumers do not necessarily know what they will and will not want in the future, 20 especially for new and innovative products and services. Furthermore even if they do have a clear idea about their future wants and needs it is far from certain that they will be willing to make these explicit or that they will remain consistent for any definite period of time. The suggestion that formal routine marketing research provides a means for consumer representation with firms or affords them a voice in the strategic development of, for example, new product development is in this respect doubtful. Marketing research as a marketing function is organised not by consumers but by firms. In short, marketing research is conducted by firms to establish intelligence deemed useful by firms. For commercial marketing research to function as a democratic instrument a system would be needed whereby firms are obliged to conduct research so that consumers can voice their preferences and requirements and that some method be established to evaluate the extent to which these preferences are instituted. In some ways a stakeholder theory of marketing calls for the firm to be less, rather than more customer focussed. Marketers would need to examine, implement and offer social, even moral innovations in a similar fashion to the way that new technological innovations are introduced into the market place. Consumer democracy and freedom As long as firms legitimise their commercial activities on the grounds that there is consumer demand, prospects for progressing an alternative marketing paradigm other than one based on mutual mistrust and competition are severely limited. Likewise if individuals legitimise their choices and the consequences of these choices using a justification of consumer sovereignty then there is limited scope for any notion of individual responsibility to be fostered. Embedding stakeholder values of cooperation, human rights and democracy within certain product offerings only serves to commodify these values so that they become a set of choice criteria like any other. As Abercrombie (1994) argues, authority rests in the power to control meaning, the meaning of goods, the meaning of roles, and the meaning of transactions. All practices, even ones that appear subversive, are contained within the jurisdiction of a given institutional authority. Extending consumer choice to more and more products and services cannot be defined as democratising process because consumer choice is only potentially endless so long as it remains largely politically harmless. Bauman (1988: 88) summarises this argument well: 21 For most members of contemporary society individual freedom, if available, comes in the form of consumer freedom, with all its agreeable and not-sopalatable attributes. Once consumer freedom has taken care of individual concerns, of social integration and of systematic reproduction (and consumer freedom does take care of all three), the coercive pressure of political bureaucracy may be relieved, the past political explosiveness of ideas and cultural practices defused, and a plurality of opinions, life-styles, beliefs, moral values, or aesthetic views may develop undisturbed. The paradox is, of course, that such freedom of expression in no way subjects the system, or its political organisation, to control by those whose lives it still determines, though at a distance. Consumer and expressive freedoms are not interfered with politically so long as they remain politically ineffective. If the fight for fair trade is to take place on the supermarket shelves then the fight is already lost. Likewise if the protection of the environment comes down to effective branding efforts then there is limited prospect for stakeholder values to be fostered. Furthermore there is limited evidence to suggest that marketing theorists have yet to establish an alternative mainstream paradigm that incorporates some of the broader ethical and moral issues raised here despite recommendations as to how the development of alternatives might be approached (Crane and Desmond 2002), and what they might contain (Kilbourne et al 1997). Authority and democracy in consumption are not really about who has the right to own and buy, or whether consumers have a legitimate right to complain or be adequately represented. Before the issue of stakeholder democracy can be given serious consideration in the context of consumer-firm interactions it is necessary to establish who or what group has legitimate claims to sovereignty and authority, who or which group has the legitimate charge to represent those deemed to have sovereignty, and how do those with sovereignty make their claims and actions known to those charged with representing them. Until such a time that a consensus on these issues emerges consumer interests are probably best served by adopting a healthy scepticism and wariness to organisational initiatives such as stakeholding which are likely to diminish the already limited opportunities for resistance and the implicit protection afforded them by a free market ideology. References Abercrombie, Nicholas (1994) Authority and Consumer Society. In: R. Keat, N. Whitely and N. Abercrombie (eds.) 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Mellahi, Kamel and Geoffrey Wood (2003) The Role and Potential of Stakeholders in “Hollow Participation”: Conventional Stakeholder Theory and Institutional Alternatives. Business and Society Review 108(2), 183-202. Miller, Daniel (1995) Consumption as the vanguard of history. In: Daniel Miller (ed.) Acknowledging Consumption. London: Routledge, 1-59. Miller, Richard Lee and William F. Lewis (1991) a Stakeholder Approach to Marketing Management Using Value Exchange Models. European Journal of Marketing 25(8), 55-68. Reed, Darryl (1999) Stakeholder Management Theory: A Critical Theory Perspective. Business Ethics Quarterly 9(3), 453-483. Smith, N.Craig. (1990) Morality and the Market: Consumer pressure for corporate accountability. London: Routledge. Sternberg, Elaine (1997) The Defects of Stakeholder Theory. Corporate Governance 5(1), 3-10. Winward, John (1994) The organised consumer and consumer information cooperatives. In: R. Keat, N. Whitely and N. Abercrombie (eds.) The Authority of the Consumer, London: Routledge, 75-90. Whysall, Paul (2000) Addressing ethical stakeholder issues in retailing: a stakeholder perspective: International Review of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research 10(3), 305-318. Vinten, Gerald (2001) Shareholder versus Stakeholder – is there a governance dilemma? Corporate Governance 9(1), 36-47. 24 Research Paper Series International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility ISSN 1479-5116 Editor: Dirk Matten The ICCSR Research Papers Series is intended as a first-hand outlet for research output of ICCSR. These include papers presented at symposiums and seminars, first drafts of papers intended for submission in journals and other reports on ongoing or completed research projects. The objective of the ICCSR Research Papers Series is twofold: First, there is a time goal: Given the quality of ICCSR publication, the targeted journals normally require large time spans between submission and publication. Consequently, the ICCSR Research Papers Series serves as a preliminary airing to working papers of ICCSR staff and affiliates which are intended for subsequent publication. By this, research output can be made available for a selected public which will not only establish ICCSR’s lead in advancing and developing innovative research in CSR but will also open the opportunity to expose ideas to debate and peer scrutiny prior to submission and/or subsequent publication. Second, the ICCSR Research Papers Series offers the opportunity of publishing more extensive works of research than the usual space constraints of journals would normally allow. In particular, these papers will include research reports, data analysis, literature reviews, work by postgraduate students etc. which could serve as a primary data resource for further publications. Publication in the ICCSR Research Paper Series does not preclude publication in refereed journals. The ICCSR Research Papers Series consequently is interested in assuring high quality and broad visibility in the field. The quality aspect will be assured by establishing a process of peer review, which will normally include the Editor of the ICCSR Research Papers Series and one further academic in the field. In order to achieve a reasonable visibility the ICCSR Research Papers Series has full ISSN recognition and is listed in major library catalogues worldwide. All papers can also be downloaded at the ICCSR website. Published Papers No. 01-2003 Wendy Chapple & Richard Harris Accounting for solid waste generation in measures of regional productivity growth No. 02-2003 Christine Coupland Corporate identities on the web: An exercise in the construction and deployment of ‘morality’ No. 03-2003 David L. Owen Recent developments in European social and environmental reporting and auditing practice – A critical evaluation and tentative prognosis No. 04-2003 Dirk Matten & Andrew Crane Corporate Citizenship: Towards an extended theoretical conceptualization No. 05-2003 Karen Williams, Mike Geppert & Dirk Matten Challenges for the German model of employee relations in the era of globalization No. 06-2003 Iain A. Davies & Andrew Crane Ethical Decision Making in Fair Trade Companies No. 07-2003 Robert J. Caruana Morality in consumption: Towards a sociological perspective No. 08-2003 Edd de Coverly, Lisa O’Malley & Maurice Patterson Hidden mountain: The social avoidance of waste No. 09-2003 Eleanor Chambers, Wendy Chapple, Jeremy Moon & Michael Sullivan CSR in Asia: A seven country study of CSR website reporting No. 10-2003 Anita Fernandez Young & Robert Young Corporate Social Responsibility: the effects of the Federal Corporate Sentencing Guidelines on a representative self-interested corporation No. 11-2003 Simon Ashby, Swee Hoon Chuah & Robert Hoffmann Industry self-regulation: A game-theoretic typology of strategic voluntary compliance No. 12-2003 David A. Waldman, Donald Siegel & Mansour Javidan Transformational leadership and CSR: A meso level approach No. 13-2003 Jeremy Moon, Andrew Crane & Dirk Matten Can corporations be citizens? Corporate citizenship as a metaphor for business participation in society (2nd Edition) No. 14-2003 Anita Fernandez Young, Jeremy Moon & Robert Young The UK Corporate Social Responsibility consultancy industry: a phenomenological approach No. 15-2003 Andrew Crane In the company of spies: The ethics of industrial espionage No. 16-2004 Jan Jonker, Jacqueline Cramer and Angela van der Heijden Developing Meaning in Action: (Re)Constructing the Process of Embedding Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Companies No. 17-2004 Wendy Chapple, Catherine J. Morrison Paul & Richard Harris Manufacturing and Corporate Environmental Responsibility: Cost Implications of Voluntary Waste Minimisation No. 18-2004 Brendan O’Dwyer Stakeholder Democracy: Challenges and Contributions from Accountancy No. 19-2004 James A. Fitchett Buyers be Wary: Marketing Stakeholder Values and the Consumer No. 20-2004 Jeremy Moon Government as a Driver of Corporate Social Responsibility: The UK in Comparative Perspective No. 21-2004 Andrew Crane and Dirk Matten Questioning the Domain of the Business Ethics Curriculum: Where the Law ends or Where it Starts?