Selling Australia as 'Clean and Green'

'Green and clean' has been used as a key marketing tool to promote Australian products overseas. The rationale is that consumers are generally concerned about personal health and the environment and will choose, and pay price premiums, for products that are, or perceived to be, clean (good for them) and green (good for the environment) over alternative products. But is Australia seen as clean and green? Is it really why people buy Australian products? And how effective is it as a marketing tool? This paper attempts to answer some of these questions. The study found that Australia may have a clean green image at present in some of her overseas markets, but to maintain such an image over time, concrete proof of environmental and quality credentials need to be provided to satisfy increasingly more educated and better-informed consumers. Wide adoption of integrated EMS and QA systems by Australian producers and food companies appears to be a means to establish such credentials and substantiate any 'clean and green' claim. Therefore, government policies should focus more on developing a range of tools to encourage good environmental and quality management practices, rather than on promoting the 'clean and green' image. Such campaigns may be counter-productive in the long run as it leads to complacency, rather than raising environmental and quality awareness.export marketing, clean and green, EMS, QA, Environmental Economics and Policy, International Relations/Trade,

Selling Australia as "clean and green"

"Green and clean" has been used as a key marketing tool to promote Australian products overseas. The rationale is that consumers are generally concerned about personal health and the environment and will choose, and pay price premiums, for products that are perceived to be clean (good for them) and green (good for the environment) over alternative products. But is Australia seen as clean and green? Is it really why people buy Australian? This paper attempts to investigate such questionsexport marketing, clean green image, Marketing,

`Human clones talk about their lives': Media representations of assisted reproductive and biogenetic technologies

This article examines New Zealand print media representations of assisted reproductive and related biogenetic technologies, conceptualized as the products of a concordance of interest between media workers and reproductive specialists, biogenetic scientists and consumers. Such concordance is evident in the predominant use of media frames of anecdotal personalization and technoboosterism, which typically amplify the voices of proponents of emerging technologies while marginalizing and delegitimizing counterdiscourses. Thus, the perspectives of consumers and 'expert' sources are privileged at the expense of a more balanced assessment of the value and social, ethical, legal and health implications of assisted reproductive and related biogenetic technologies. Source dependence also detracts from much-needed recognition of the professional and financial interests at stake in the growing privatization and commercialization of these technologies, and in the local context potentially undermines journalistic independence and integrity

Science and Risk Analysis in CPTPP/SPS-Plus: Role Model or Unbearable Burden?

Trade in food and agricultural products accounts for a major part of global trade, and the trade continues to alert domestic consumers to the risks associated with modern food processing and production methods. The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), now rebranded as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), represents a new model of mega-regional trade pacts posed to set higher standards for promoting and streamlining trade liberalization. Because of concerns with national food safety regulations that could constitute forms of non-tariff barriers, the CPTPP, in contrast to the World Trade Organization (WTO), stipulates further rules on parties’ sanitary and phytosanitary measures (SPS), achieving a type of role model of SPS-plus. This article explores the legal implications and progressiveness of the SPS-plus design, particularly focusing on the requirements of scientific evidence and risk analysis. The SPS-plus that sets hurdles for national regulatory regimes largely reflects WTO jurisprudence, international health standards, and the national regulations of the United States. I argue that the role model may provide momentum to modernize parties’ food safety regimes, but the cost of full compliance could be high. Genuine collaboration, experience-sharing, and technological and financial support between developed countries and less developed countries may alleviate the difficulties of implementation and promote coherence

Optimising self-managed funding for people with a long-term disability: dialogue summary

A day-long stakeholder dialogue was held on 5 March, 2015 to consider the factors which influence the uptake of self-managed funding by people with a long-term disability, and identify barriers and facilitators to the implementation and uptake of self-managed funding. Sixteen people participated. Discussions noted the following key considerations: The term ‘self-managed’ funding is more appropriate for people with long-term disability, particularly those who experience cognitive impairment. It should be assumed that all people with a long-term disability have the right to take up self-managed funding. Every person with a long-term disability has some capacity to self-manage their funding, and efforts should focus on building this capacity through education and training. Although people with a long-term disability may not want to take up self-managed funding the first time it is offered to them, every effort should be made to allow them ample time to consider it and opportunities provided to enable consumers and carers to ask for more information about what is required to participate. The approach to self-managed funding needs to be different for people with catastrophic injury compared with other conditions. Self-managed funding should be offered early for maximal uptake. To date, in the early implementation stages of current models, more people with spinal cord injury (SCI) than people with traumatic brain injury (TBI) have taken up self-managed funding; this is assumed to be a reflection of the additional complexities in the needs of people with TBI. To have greater success in the uptake of self-managed funding for people with a traumatic brain injury (TBI), there needs to be considerable thought about making the processes involved appropriate, particularly for those with cognitive and behavioural impairments. The capacity of people with a TBI to undertake the tasks associated with self-managed funding needs to be assessed by staff who have trained skills and also reasonable expectations of what can be accomplished. The relationship of the Carers and Family members with a person with a TBI needs to be supported through a range of offerings for self-managed funding. Funding agencies and service providers need to build trust and be willing to work collaboratively with people with long-term disabilities to ensure that they can consider self-managed funding as a means of empowerment and control. Encouraging and actively supporting people in peer support networks to talk to others about what the experience of self-managed funding is like and/or having consumer organisations conduct forums that present real-life experiences were considered next steps to increasing the uptake of self-managed funding

Youth identity formation and contemporary alcohol marketing

This paper considers linkages between contemporary marketing theory and practice, and emerging conceptualizations of identity, to discuss implications for public health concerns over alcohol use among young people. Particular attention is paid to the theorizing of consumption as a component of youth identities and the ways in which developments of marketing praxis orients to such schemata. The authors’ analyses of exemplars of marketing materials in use in Aotearoa New Zealand, drawn from their research archive, emphasize the sophistication and power of such forms of marketing.They argue that public health policy and practice must respond to the interweaving of marketing and the self-making practices of young people to counter this complex threat to the health and well-being of young people

Making Sense and Talking Sense: A Case Study of the Correlations Between Sensemaking, Identity and Image in the New Zealand Functional Food Industry

Functional foods are purported by scientists to provide consumers with health benefits over and above food’s most basic uses: providing energy and sustaining life. Western nations, including New Zealand, face significant health challenges as their populations suffer from unprecedented rates of chronic illnesses like cancer and obesity, and health-conscious consumers appear willing and able to purchase these products. The functional food industry has been growing rapidly for the last decade and is widely tipped to continue this growth. However, there is concern that the market is largely unregulated and consumers are confused by the sheer volume of news and information about functional food and health issues. The purpose of this study is to examine the way that a functional food producer makes sense of its role in this complex social, political and economic context, particularly regarding its contribution to public health. The study takes a communication perspective and uses primarily a thematic analysis. Theories of organisational sensemaking, identity and image provide a framework for the case study analysis focusing on organisational communication with stakeholders and attempts to manage contextual issues that affect both the case study organisation and the whole industry. Data was gathered by interviewing higher-level managers from a range of divisions in the organisation, and by collecting a selection of corporate communication documents produced by the organisation for consumers. The study found that the case study organisation’s identity was heavily influenced by health values that align with the product’s proven health benefits. However, the organisation promotes the product as a premium food product, which prices a number of consumers out of the market, and illustrates the limitations this particular product has for improving consumer health. At the same time, the organisational identity comes under threat from challenges to the sustainability of the organisation’s production methods. Analysing the way organisational members respond to these threats provides an interesting picture of the way sensemaking processes are affected by external influences as internal stakeholders re-assess the organisation’s identity

Nudging the FDA

[Excerpt] The FDA’s regulation of drugs is frequently the subject of policy debate, with arguments falling into two camps. On the one hand, a libertarian view of patients and the health care system holds high the value of consumer choice. Patients should get all the information and the drugs they want; the FDA should do what it can to enforce some basic standards but should otherwise get out of the way. On the other hand, a paternalist view values the FDA’s role as an expert agency standing between patients and a set of potentially dangerous drugs and potentially unscrupulous or at least insufficiently careful drug companies. We lay out here some of the ways the FDA regulates drugs, including some normally left out of the debate, and suggest a middle ground between libertarian and paternalistic approaches focused on correcting information asymmetry and aligning incentives.

Disabled Māori and disability support options

The goal of this research project was to provide information to enhance the development and implementation of an effective model of disability support service provision to Maori with disabilities. This was done by identifying and documenting the needs expressed by disabled Maori and their carers living in the Midland area, and by considering the experiences and observations of a key informant group. From our reading of the literature and the feedback we received from participants, a proposed model of disability support service provision has been proposed. In five sections, this report begins by defining disability, and also by defining the act of caring for the disabled. Focussing on the Maori experience, obstacles, access to existing support services, cultural barriers, and health policies are discussed. In the second chapter, the research methodology is described, along with how the information was gathered. Following this is the third section which presents the opinions and reflections of Maori with disabilities. It concludes strategically with a view of the ideal community, suggesting possible resolutions, by exposing current flaws and inadequacies. Chapter four records the views and perspectives of key informant/whanau carers who participated in the project. They offer an insightful account of the often unrecognised side of the disability experience. Considering the preceding discussions, the final section develops a model of service provision for Maori with disabilities, and proposes this for effective service delivery

The Social Construction of Bottled Water Consumption in New Zealand

This thesis examines the ways in which bottled water consumption is socially constructed and associated with place, nature, gender and health. Consuming bottled water is related to ideas of both sustaining the environment and the body. I explore how performances of both the environment and consuming bodies constitute each other. Consumer performances in Hamilton and various visual and textual representations illustrate spatialities, socialities and subjectivities of bottled water consumption. Geographies of consumption and feminist geographies and methodologies provide the framework for my research. I conducted eleven semi-structured interviews on the Waikato University Campus in Hamilton with participants different in age, gender and ethnicity. Bottled water advertising in international and national lifestyle magazines and newspapers, as well as bottled water websites, are also examined through the lens of critical discourse analysis. The first part of this thesis focuses on bottled water consumption in regard to the environment and explores how the natural and pure image of bottled water is currently linked to notions of green and sustainable consumption. The second part examines the embodiment of the environment in regards to sustaining healthy, pregnant, sporty, sexed and 'green' bodies while looking at gender, health, and consumer performances and subjectivities. Linking bottled water consumption to the environment and the body not only enriches geographies of consumption but also emphasises the paradoxes associated with consuming bottled water