Mobilizing Consumers Through Certification

Mobilizing consumers through certification. One way to enlist consumers directly in the cause of business reform involves certification — that is, letting consumers know when companies’ production and distribution methods meet standards of social responsibility. Some or all of the companies in an industry may be willing to confer with nonprofit advocacy groups and others to set achievable standards for producing goods that are, for example, “eco-friendly” or “sweatshop free.” The advocacy groups may also bring the issues directly to public attention, to create an awareness of standards and which companies are meeting them.

A grantmaker who supports environmental causes found that certification could be a powerful way of drawing corporate attention to problems that would normally lie outside companies’ market calculations. “The breakthrough came when some very smart people in environmental advocacy groups began to realize that you could identify the market into which a company was selling. And if the way they were producing the product was socially unacceptable, you could go to their customers and say, ‘Do you want to be associated with the purchase of this socially and environmentally unacceptable product?’” The result, the grantmaker said, was that companies began to seek ways to earn certification in order to have their brand name associated, in consumers’ minds, with desirable practices.