Engaging social movements in developing innovative retail business models

Consumers are increasingly expressing critical stances towards corporate power and mainstream market ideology. Although the literature depicts their attitude as mainly reactive, it is emerging that there is scope, also in retailing, for more proactive forms of collaboration with companies. Our chapter aims to explore the outcomes in terms of new retail formulas derived from the effective interaction between retailers and engaged consumers, such as those belonging to social movements. In our analysis, we refer to a specific context and kind of product, namely food, which has recently been catalyzing an increasing number of concerns as expressed by consumers, eventually aggregating the interests of various social movements expressing new more ethical and sustainable market stances. In particular, we focus on the case of Eataly, a new venture that emerged from an ideological alliance and a mutual organizational commitment between corporate power and the Slow Food social movement. Eataly represents an interesting setting to better understand how such forms of collaboration can occur, how and to what extent the community and corporate stances mutually adjust during the process and which types of reactions emerge from the more radical members of the social movement.