Citizens Market Pilot
This entry has been selected as a finalist in the
We Media PitchIt! Challenge: How can we use media to inspire a better world? competition.
Citizens Market is developing a website and mobile phone app for ethical consumption, where information about corporate behavior is organized into scores that consumers can see while they shop. Our crowdsourced information model offers a unique combination of capacity, credibility and convenience for consumers.
About You
Section 1: About You
First Name
Stephane
Last Name
de Messieres
Organization
Citizens Market
Country
United States
Section 2: About Your Organization
Organization Name
Citizens Market
Organization Website
Organization Phone
(617) 429-3702
Organization Address
5 Linda Lane, Apt 43 Boston MA 02125
Organization Country
United States
Your idea
Name Your Project
Citizens Market Pilot
What is your idea? What makes it innovative? Why is it important?
Citizens Market is developing a website and mobile phone app for ethical consumption, where information about corporate behavior is organized into scores that consumers can see while they shop. Our crowdsourced information model offers a unique combination of capacity, credibility and convenience for consumers.
Will you launch your idea as a business or non-profit?
Non-profit
Country your work focuses on
United States
What will be the impact of your idea?
Our model will leverage market forces to change corporate behavior on a wide range of social and environmental issues.
Americans household expenditures are about $6 trillion per year. Two thirds of American consumers say they would be willing to pay an average premium of about 10% for sustainable products. But 75% of these interested consumers don’t know which these products are. This suggests that in the United States alone, there is ($6 trillion x 66% x 75% x 10% =) $300 billion per year waiting to be spent by consumers who are interested in sustainable products.
If Citizens Market reached only 5% of these interested consumers and influenced only 10% of the purchasing power of those we reach, we would shift $20 billion towards socially responsible products and companies each year. That’s nearly the size of the entire American organics industry.
As consumer spending shifts, corporate behavior will follow. Over time we’ll expand our market by educating consumers about their leverage on social issues and translating our tools to reach a global audience. We’ll develop reports for companies to clarify the financial impact of our community.
Who will help you develop your idea? Why are you the one to make this happen?
Citizens Market is well-positioned to execute our concept. We incubated at the Harvard Kennedy School and won a $70K Echoing Green Fellowship that enabled us to hire our founder as a full-time Executive Director for two years. We recruited six devoted volunteers with expertise in web design, community-building and corporate accountability issues.
We have excellent partners and networks to support our launch. We recruited 20 members to our Board of Advisors. We refined our legal strategy with the CyberLaw Clinic at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. We partnered with teams of MBA students at Boston University’s School of Management to develop our human resource management and marketing strategies. We have free office space from BzzAgent, a hip marketing firm in Boston’s South End.
Our director, Stéphane, holds a Master in Public Policy degree from the Harvard Kennedy School, where he was the Co-President of the student Corporate Responsibility Council. In addition to leading Citizens Market, Stéphane has consulted to the Private Sector Team at Oxfam America for two years, designing tools for innovative collaborations with companies.
How much will it cost to launch your idea? (This can be an estimate)
Our team has prepared a business plan, incorporated our nonprofit organization, developed partnerships and networks, and published an online prototype with over 200 registered users. Our volunteers are now completing designs for a beta website with improved features for community engagement. We’ll enable our users to rate peer reviews, add local companies to our database, and customize company scores according to individual values.
We risk losing our momentum, however, without financial support to program these features and manage our beta launch. Funding of $25K will enable us hire web developers to program these features and launch the beta website.
The momentum of our beta launch will help us raise a further $150K to increase our technical capacity to pilot our model. We’ll hire a full-time Technical Director to modify the beta website according to user feedback and pilot our mobile phone application and widget tools. We’ll also establish our own office and cover expanded server hosting, hardware, services, travel, marketing and other pilot expenses.
This Entry is about (Issues)
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| CitizensMarketLogo.jpg | 20.24 KB |
| 1._companyprofile.jpg | 331.14 KB |
| 2._browsecompanies.JPG | 310.47 KB |
| 3._browsereviews.JPG | 562.92 KB |
| 4._ratecompany.jpg | 172.32 KB |
 | CitizensMarketLogo.jpg | 20 KB |
 | 1._companyprofile.jpg | 331 KB |
 | 2._browsecompanies.JPG | 310 KB |
 | 3._browsereviews.JPG | 563 KB |
 | 4._ratecompany.jpg | 172 KB |
