‘The certificate doesn’t taste like anything’: Perspectives of sustainability signaling in global supply chains

Kauppi, K, Hannibal, C and Bryde-Evens, M ORCID: 0000-0003-0940-0863 (2025) ‘The certificate doesn’t taste like anything’: Perspectives of sustainability signaling in global supply chains. European Management Journal. ISSN 0263-2373

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Abstract

Multi-tier supply chains remain under pressure to communicate their sustainability credentials to stakeholders. Supply chain sustainability is a credence characteristic that poses challenges to signaling because the sustainability of a product cannot be verified upon consumption. Supply chains thus rely on the signaling mechanism of third-party certification to alert consumers to sustainability attributes. Despite the proliferation of sustainability certificates, we lack detailed understanding of whether certification is a functional signaling mechanism for credence characteristics in global food supply chains. This is the focus of our study, and we examine specifically Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance, UTZ and Marine Stewardship Council certification. We conducted interviews with manufacturers and retailers and focus groups with consumers; there were a total of 52 participants. Our results demonstrate that manufacturers perceive the supply chain traceability offered through certification to be a market requirement but lack confidence in full information symmetry. Consumers are confused by multiple certificates, and as a result signal attention is limited and interpretation is distorted. From a theoretical perspective, in this credence characteristic context it appears to be the presence of the signal, rather than the quality the signal conveys, that is of importance to both manufactures and consumers. Our results suggest that companies and policy makers relying on certificates as sustainability signals need to focus attention on educating consumers about the meanings behind the labels. Such efforts can equip customers to distinguish the different levels of stringency and coverage associated with certification in order to inform their purchasing decisions.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	social sustainability; supply chain; food products; certification; signalling theory; credence goods; 0806 Information Systems; 1503 Business and Management; 1505 Marketing; Business & Management; 35 Commerce, management, tourism and services
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HF Commerce > HF5001 Business H Social Sciences > HF Commerce > HF5001 Business > HF5410 Marketing. Distribution of Products
Divisions:	Liverpool Business School
Publisher:	Elsevier
Date of acceptance:	23 November 2025
Date Deposited:	25 Nov 2025 12:04
Last Modified:	25 Nov 2025 12:04
DOI or ID number:	10.1016/j.emj.2025.11.003
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/27617

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