From "pink" cereal that supports breast cancer research to bottled water that helps fight disease abroad, non-profits and companies are increasingly working together to address social problems. Together these two actors create coordinated marketing campaigns for specially made or marketed products?a portion of the sale of these items benefits a designated cause. The intense marketing of products tied to social causes, or "commodity politics," challenges conventional political research that organized interests lobby the government when they wish to address social problems. Indeed, non-profits and companies have provided another arena in which citizens (as consumers) get involved?the nation?s supermarkets and shopping malls. The actions of these activists open up a number of questions that current research cannot answer: Why have non-profits and companies turned to cause marketing for issues already addressed by the federal government? What effect does marketing of public problems have on citizens? perceptions of policy issues and of the government's role in ameliorating them?
Scholars know little about how market-based activism works and the broader effect it has on the way that we think and act on social problems. To answer the questions above, this research project has two components. (1) To understand when and why organizations turn to commodity politics, the study examines three policy areas (breast cancer, lung cancer, prostate cancer) and two organizations within each area to map both population-level characteristics and individual-level decision-making. It draws on data from non-profit databases, public records, a survey of organizations, archival documents, and interviews. (2) To understand the effect of market activism on citizens' perceptions of policy and government, the study creates a new nationally representative 15-minute survey on citizen and consumer attitudes, which includes questions about knowledge, consumer habits, political behavior, and views on government.
Ultimately a study of commodity politics leads to us to ask under what circumstances organizations seek remedies in the political arena rather than assume that they always will or do. It also suggests political research that views individuals only as citizens who participate in political action (narrowly defined as voting or contacting a member of Congress) misses key questions about how advocacy in one sphere influences the other. If activists choose to market solutions to health problems already addressed by the federal government, does this boost or weaken support for federal public policy? And, in turn, what effect does policy have on the market for these kinds of causes? By looking more closely at seemingly non-political action, scholars can better understand the wide-ranging influences on and effects of public policy as well as the government's role in addressing social problems.
