Citizens Market: Empowering The Consumer To Do Good

Consumers are for the most part completely oblivious to the negative or positive social impact created by some of their most trusted companies. Were they to be informed, presumably a significant number of them would change their consumer behavior, especially in situations where no extra hassle would be introduced as a result. Citizens Market is a non-profit organization dedicated to informing the consumer. More specifically, the company promotes socially responsible choices in the marketplace by providing an online platform to share reliable information about the social and environmental performance of companies.

The team, comprised of recent college grads led by Executive Director Stéphane de Messières (MPP 2007, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University), 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. Any volunteer can contribute information about companies’ performance in certain categories, such as labor practices, environmental impact or community development. For those concerned about the validity of information, all submissions are overseen by the community. Ratings and supporting reviews are filtered and weighted for reliability, as measured by peer reviews. The team monitors all of the inputs and then aggregates 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.

An interesting expansion goal for Citizens Market is their intention to partner with large firms such as Microsoft and Hewlett Packard to build a mobile service that will allow consumers to scan barcodes and retrieve corporate social responsibility (CSR) information on their phones. This will certainly increase the impact of their movement dramatically, enabling individuals on-the-go in seconds.

The mobile solution could be even more critical due to the fact that awareness on the web may not lead to action when consumers leave their computers and are faced with decisions. Currently, all of the information sits on the web and as the content grows it will become increasingly difficult to remember which brands are socially responsible. Nonetheless, Citizens Market is heading in the right direction. It seems that they have the vision and the management team necessary to make a real impact. The organization is seeking a grant of $212,000 for the first year of full operations and a total of $884,000 over five years.