Through partnerships with telecommunications service providers, manufacturers and software designers, we will enable our consumers to access our online database of corporate social and environmental behavior as they physically move through the marketplace. Examples of our services will be text messaging, mobile internet search functions, integrated or attached barcode scanners (or RFID scanners) for cell phones and PDAs, and plug-in software for these mobile devices. (See our YouTube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdTieTqOg2M.)
References / Past Projects
Citizens Market, Inc. is an exciting new nonprofit organization in Cambridge, MA, that is developing a user-generated website for ethical consumption, where information about corporate behavior is organized into scores that consumers can see while they shop.
Citizens Market will invite anyone to contribute information – i.e., a review and a rating – for any company’s performance on a certain issue, such as treatment of minorities, political lobbying or toxic emissions. Submissions will be reviewed and rated for quality by peers, so that persuasive reviews have a higher impact on the company’s final score. For each company, the website will automatically generate a “report card” of issue scores. Each company’s profile will be linked with its brands and products’ barcodes. We’ll post our algorithms and code base to ensure total transparency and encourage feedback.
The database will deliver personalized results. Consumers may assign priority weights for the various social and environmental issues. When a consumer requests a score for a brand, that score will incorporate a weighted average of the issue scores, thereby reflecting the consumer’s values.
Consumers will have convenient access to the scores as they move through the real or virtual marketplace. Anyone will be able to quickly search the website for free. A widget will enable consumers to view company scores while shopping at other websites. With new mobile technologies, such as barcode scanners and text messages, consumers will use their cell phones to instantly view scores as they walk down the store aisle. In this way, consumers can rapidly compare the social performance of companies as they move through any marketplace. (See our YouTube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdTieTqOg2M.)
Citizens Market, Inc. is well-positioned to execute our concept. We incubated in the "Social Enterprise Collaboratory" course at the Harvard Kennedy School. Our team has since tripled; we now have nine devoted volunteers with expertise in cutting-edge web development, community-building and corporate accountability issues. Our Board of Advisors has strengthened our connections to Harvard University, Oxfam America, the Omidyar Network and website start-ups in the Boston area. We receive ongoing legal services from the CyberLaw Clinic at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. A full description of our volunteers and Board of Advisors can be found at http://www.citizensmarket.org/h_about.php.
