Politicized consumer choice among brands and products is increasingly accepted
as a novel mode of nonconventional political participation. However, scholars
often overlook developing societies and seldom discuss consumers’ perception of the
marketplace as a political arena. This study reviews evidence of political consumerism
in Latin America, measuring individuals’ perceptions of corporations as agents that
affect public goods, examining feelings of political effi cacy over corporations, and analyzing
motivations behind market-based activism. Research is grounded on representative
samples of urban adults from Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. Logistic regression
confi rms political consumerism as driven by distrust of government and concomitant
engagement with politics, suggesting a diversifi ed repertoire of individual political action
in Latin America.