[amc] Ten Thousand Villages in NY Times Magazine
- From: wseverin1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Werner J. Severin)
- To: amc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2006 13:49:42 -0500
From the New York Times Sunday Magazine, March 19, 2006, page 20
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/magazine/319wwln_consumed.html?_r=1&oref=s
login&pagewanted=print
March 19, 2006
Consumed
Values Chain
By ROB WALKER
Ten Thousand Villages
A few years ago, Dwayne Ball went to buy a gift for a friend who had
cancer; Ball was looking for something meaningful. He chose a teapot from a
store called Ten Thousand Villages. It was nice-looking and could be used
for tea meant to relieve the effects of chemotherapy. Also, like everything
else for sale at the store, it was made by an artisan in the third world
who (as the store's clerks and signage informed him) would be fairly
compensated. "So there were multiple motivations," Ball says. Aside from
aesthetics and functionality, it had "spiritual value."
The relationship between consumer behavior and spiritual values is
something Ball has thought about more than most. In fact, he has researched
and studied the subject, with Ronald Hampton who, like Ball, is an
associate professor of marketing at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. In
particular, they have looked at the difference between what they call
"doctrine centered" and "other centered" purchasing behaviors. While they
have not focused specifically on Ten Thousand Villages, the 100-store chain
is a useful lens through which to view their work.
Ten Thousand Villages is a nonprofit project of the Mennonite Central
Committee, which is the "relief and development" arm of the Mennonite
Church, explains Doug Dirks, a spokesman. Mennonite aid workers operate in
about 50 countries, and the idea is to give people in impoverished regions
access to first-world consumers. Pricing is agreed upon with the artisan,
who receives half of his or her fee in advance and half after an item is
bought in a store. Among the houseware and gift items are $10 "friendship
pins" from Kenya, often fashioned from discarded cans and obtained through
a group called Bombolulu, which helps disabled people. More recently, a
Mennonite volunteer came upon the work of nomadic Tuareg silver
craftspeople in a market in Burkina Faso. "They were looking for a way to
earn more income because the traditional markets were going away," Dirks
says; their work is now available at the chain, whose sales in the United
States and Canada totaled about $22.7 million in its most recent fiscal
year.
Dirks says that while the business does not hide its Mennonite connection,
it also doesn't flaunt it. Most of the artisans are not Christian, and the
stores don't aim to attract a religious or even spiritual consumer. But, as
Ball learned when shopping at the store in Lincoln, the workers (who are
often, but not always, Mennonites) will tell customers about the business
model and the people it benefits. And it is here, in Ball's view, rather
than in the link to a religious organization, that the "spiritual value"
resides.
When he and Hampton began conducting surveys and interviews for their
research, they asked people about connections between their consumer
behavior and their religious or spiritual beliefs. Sometimes the answers
were obvious Orthodox Jews buying kosher foods and so on. More interesting
to them was the idea that apart from a "doctrine centered" and rule-based
notion of spirituality, there is a notion of "faith development" found in a
variety of religions that involves moving beyond the self and seeking "to
act in the world in a way that increases the total well-being of the rest
of the world," Ball explains. Few attain such a state, he adds, but many
people strive for it. "The neat thing about Ten Thousand Villages," he
says, "is that they have taken this whole business of caring about others
right into the marketplace."
Lately, Dirks says, Ten Thousand Villages has been doing more research
about its customers, finding that many are female, ages 30 to 50, well
educated and interested in international issues and culture. It has found
advantages in locating new stores near colleges and ethnic restaurants. "We
don't really hear a lot about" spirituality per se, he says, but repeat
customers do seem to operate on a kind of other-directed basis: the unusual
merchandise attracts people, but it's the idea that they are helping others
that brings them back. "They get interested in what's going on behind the
transaction the story behind it," Dirks says. And that works for Ten
Thousand Villages: "Our job here is to sell as much as we can."
E-mail: consumed@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Werner J. Severin
3108 Silverleaf Drive
Austin, Tx. 78757-1611
(512) 452-5080
-------
Austin Mennonite Church, (512) 926-3121 www.mennochurch.org
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