E-commerce and Digital Place-making: The Craft Chocolate Industry

This proposed research seeks to better understand how people make decisions on purchasing consumer goods online. Due to COVID-19, we have seen a massive acceleration of online shopping, especially for essential items such as food. As such, consumers are increasingly relying on digital information to connect to food (and the places it grows). By studying single-origin chocolate, a packaged consumer good product deeply tied to land, we aim to better understand how ‘moral markets’ are using place-based cacao origins to market chocolate in digital spaces. This will lay the groundwork for understanding how the digital spaces of the craft chocolate movement are
influencing consumer awareness and subsequent behavior given the continued need for ethical consumption.

Faculty Supervisor:

Sophia Carodenuto

Student:

Partner:

The Chocolate Project

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Retail trade

University:

University of Victoria

Program: