Fair trade and large-scale distribution.

Summary Fair trade is at a crossroads. Born about fifty years ago, this concept has been gaining interest from large-scale distribution over the past few years thanks to its labelled sector. The sales figures are very promising in North America, but a decline appears in some precursor European countries. This article presents fair trade and its evolution, as well as the debate on the introduction of fair trade products in mass distribution. A statistical study of data collected in the coffee section of supermarkets and hypermarkets in Ile-de-France is also presented. The analysis of the data shows that fair trade is the first argument that discriminates between stores and that coffee sales strategies are decided at the store level.