What is it about?
This paper is about a specific case where a delivery platform in Greece (efood) attempted to restructure the contracts of workers towards more precarity and they organised and mobilised consumers to act politically by boycotting efood and rating it negatively. We analyse the tweets and online news articles related to consumer activism to see how twitter presented the struggle and how news media represented this.
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Why is it important?
This is important as we are increasingly becoming dependent on platforms to communicate and consume and the perspectives of justice are often glossed over by the ease and seamlessness of the platform economy. However, understanding resistant perspectives is important, as the dimension of labour is highlighted. At the same time, understanding the role of consumers within such a context is underexplored, and we want to show how the options for addressing injustice are proposed and promoted in relation to their potential for social change.
Perspectives
Food delivery is a huge business. In Greece, despite the deep and long financial crisis, players like efood have enjoyed profits even during the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the ongoing restructuring of labour laws, Greece is a sensitive case as labour injustices can appear (or go unnoticed) as the platform economy grows. Also, Greece is not a typical example of a country which mobilises consumer power to tackle its contestations, and yet consumer activism has made a significant appearance as it allows for techno-optimist approaches. We hope this case offers as much nuance to the concepts, as clarity regarding their relationship.
Dr Eleftheria Lekakis
University of Sussex
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Digital consumers and platform workers unite and fight? The platformisation of consumer activism in the case of #cancel_efood in Greece, Marketing Theory, August 2023, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/14705931231195191.
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