Our Model
OUR VISION
The private sector has phenomenal power to create change in the world, for good or for ill. In today's marketplace, however, companies are often not rewarded or punished for their social impact. And consumers are not exercising their market power on social issues. Consumers have demonstrated a growing interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR), but they need reliable information and tools to make responsible marketplace decisions.
We have a vision where consumers will think about CSR as naturally as they think about product price and quality today. The hidden costs behind products will be uncovered and social performance will be fully integrated into business strategy. Companies will compete on every issue in our database, including global warming, sweatshops and job parity for women and minorities. The opportunity is unprecedented - and the potential is unlimited.
OUR SOLUTION
Our nonprofit organization, Citizens Market, is developing a user-generated database to gather reliable information on the social and environmental performance of companies. The database will be free, transparent and accessible online.
Volunteers can contribute information about individual companies' performance in certain categories, such as labor practices, environmental impact or community development. All information is subject to community oversight. Ratings and supporting reviews will be filtered and weighted for reliability, as measured by peer reviews. We're currently designing a data point model to accompany the review model; data points will be selected from reputable sources. Our staff will monitor the inputs and aggregate them into profiles and scores for each company in each social topic. Each company's profile will be linked with its brands and products' barcodes.
Our database is designed for customization. Consumers can assign priority weights for the various social topics and - once we launch our data point model - will be able to indicate their preferred balance between the qualitative review and the quantitative data point methods. The result is personalized CSR scores for each company.
Consumers will have convenient access to the scores as they move through the real or virtual marketplace. We will partner with mobile communications companies to develop our "Mobile Service": text messaging and barcode scanning technologies to facilitate rapid interaction between our database and cell phones or personal digital assistants (PDAs). In this way, consumers will have an unprecedented opportunity to rapidly compare the social performance of two or more companies as they physically move through the marketplace.
OUR COMPETITIVE EDGE
Other organizations have developed online corporate rating systems, but not with our unique combination of convenience, capacity and credibility:
- Convenience. Our Mobile Service will make our database accessible in every store with a cellular signal.
- Capacity. Our open-source model allows users to contribute unlimited information about an unlimited number of companies, from the largest multi-national to the diner down the street.
- Credibility. Our peer review and data point systems balance the database and leverage our reliability.
OUR MARKET & FINANCIAL PLAN
We will initially target our strongest consumer segment - people who already try to shop responsibly - but over time we will broaden our target audience. We will accept individual donations to our website and recoup revenues through subscriptions to our Mobile Service and annual data reports.
Our open-source model allows us to do a lot with a little. Our expenses will be limited to the salaries of our small staff, prizes for quality reviews, and costs related to our hardware, supplies and office space. During our first year we will develop software, pilot the website, and recruit volunteers for our open-source database. We plan to launch our website after one year of development, with rapid growth in earned income in the first few years thereafter.
OUR PERFORMANCE MEASURES
Our value will be measured by the vibrancy of our community, the quality of our database, the degree that consumers factor in CSR while they shop, and the degree to which the business community responds. Our metrics include: growth in volunteers, reviews and companies reviewed; number of website visits, consumer registrations and subscriptions; and surveys of consumers and corporations.
You can be a part of our solution! Get started.
