Voting with your wallet to make progress for veganism?

[Second Summer]

In your opinion, how effective is "voting with your wallet" in making progress for veganism? Are market forces (supply & demand) generally helpful or unhelpful in achieving a vegan society?

 

[Moll Flanders]

I think buying vegan products from mainstream stores will let the companies know that there is a market for vegan goods. Most of the vegans I know boycott McD's and other fast food places though.

 

[Alice-Bee]

I agree Moll. some veg/ns boycott places like Asda for example as they sell meat, dairy and fish, also their own brand products are tested on animals. I think thats defeatist. Yes buy from a place that is 100% friendly if you can but for me thats simply not possible. I buy what vegan products I can from Asda/Sainsburys and any other supermarket. I feel it shows theres a market for them. For example my last ASDA shop apart from a small block of dairy cheese for M my £40 shop was 100% vegan. I was so proud!
The rise in availablity of Vegan foods/products will only come from demand for them. Tesco now has its own vegan range. It started in larger shops but through demand they rolled out the products to smaller local ones.

 

[beancounter]

Veg*ns will be a niche market for a long time. There is just so much market influence 3% of the population can have.

That being said, it's a big enough market for compaznies to profit from, so veg*n products will be a (small) fixture in every major venue.

 

[Josh James xVx]

The animals and their suffering are my focus as an advocate. People who choose to eat vegetarian part of the time because places like Wal Mart or Burger King offer plant based options are sparing animals the same as a full time strict vegan, only in smaller quantities. If you take seven people who are vegetarian one day a week, they have the same positive net impact on the world as one vegetarian does. I think part of the long term progress of animal protection is to encourage the conversion of more people as a transitional form between where the majority of eaters currently are and where we'd like them to be.

 

[Underdog]

The thought of eating animal bits makes me feel unwell... but it's impossible to live without contributing to exploitation
... that vegan choccy bar may have had it's cocoa sourced by kid slaves on the Ivory Coast... your bank likely gives money to dictators, arms dealers, animal abuse and fossil fuels...

In some ways, buying vegan could help more vegan products get on to the market... the bigger picture is that it's a sparrow fart amidst a typhoon. Hence I disagree that veganism can be more ethical as an end to itself. We need to change the system, not make a tiny part of it a bit fluffier.

That's just my view... based on my ethics (utilitarian, wanting to reduce suffering). I'm not sure of the best model to achieve it.

 

[Second Summer]

It would be interesting to hear from someone who have worked in the upper echelons of the retail industry how decisions to continue or discontinue products are made, how new products make it onto the shelves in the first place etc. I suspect consumer demand is not always the bigger factor.

 

[Calliegirl]

I think it does work to a point. There aren't enough veg*ns yet to make a significant difference, but in some markets we are. Look at the dairy industry and how much shelf space is now given to nondairy milk. You can tell they (dairy industry) are very worried about it; look at how their advertising has changed. Instead of promoting their own product, they are trying to discredit their competition.

It would be interesting to hear from someone who have worked in the upper echelons of the retail industry how decisions to continue or discontinue products are made, how new products make it onto the shelves in the first place etc. I suspect consumer demand is not always the bigger factor.

Years ago, when the main choices for nondairy milk were soy or rice, I preferred the rice milk. It was constantly sold out (I guess others preferred it as well), and one day they stopped restocking it. I asked a friend who worked in the dairy department why they no longer stocked the rice milk. He said he had no idea, since it was one of their biggest sellers.
It would be interesting to hear what kind of logic is used in deciding what products to sell.

 

[peacock]

I think it does work to a point. There aren't enough veg*ns yet to make a significant difference, but in some markets we are. Look at the dairy industry and how much shelf space is now given to nondairy milk. You can tell they (dairy industry) are very worried about it; look at how their advertising has changed. Instead of promoting their own product, they are trying to discredit their competition.



Years ago, when the main choices for nondairy milk were soy or rice, I preferred the rice milk. It was constantly sold out (I guess others preferred it as well), and one day they stopped restocking it. I asked a friend who worked in the dairy department why they no longer stocked the rice milk. He said he had no idea, since it was one of their biggest sellers.
It would be interesting to hear what kind of logic is used in deciding what products to sell.

The biggest factor generally is the amount of profit generated per X amount of shelf space. The lower the profit margin, the higher the turnover rate has to be for the product. In the case of the rice milk, the product could have had a high turnover rate (which is good), but there could have been supply issues (very bad). If a product sells out quickly but cannot be restocked, then that shelf space is effectively "dead" for the store for a period of time. Grocery stores tend to work on fairly thin margins, and can be very sensitive to price and consumer behavior changes on products that are not loss leaders.