The consumer’s power

The concept of a flashmob might be known by lots of people, as there have been many of such gatherings lately.

One great and widely recognized example during election time in Germany was the flashmob called “And everyone goes Yeah” that was organized by the online community during a speech of Angela Merkel, where the people present shouted “Yeah” after every sentence she finished. Merkel was pretty disturbed at the beginning and the initiative even made the evening news.

But while flashmobs are often criticized by certain people and characterized as being senseless, the alternate concept of smartmobs is making positive headlines. One sub-category of the smartmob movement is the one of carrotmobs. The initiative’s name derives from the image of a donkey longing to eat the carrot someone is wagging in front of his nose. In our case, the donkey stands for the business sector and the person holding the carrot is the conglomeration of customers. For organizing a carrotmob, it therefore takes a group of customers that are linked throughout some device (most of the times an online community) and a group of companies competing for the carrot which symbolizes the consumer’s spending power.

How Organized Consumer Purchasing Can Change Business from carrotmob on Vimeo.

The first group decides which kind of products they want to buy and what will be their requirements for doing business. Most of the times, the requirements are socially motivated ones, as carrotmobs are designed to make socially responsible businesses also the most profitable ones. Examples for requirements are recycling, change of energy sources (towards sustainable ones like solar energy), a ban on all products made through child labour etc.
The consumers then publish their requirement towards the businesses in town. The store that is willing to spend the highest percentage of sales (made during the time the carrotmob takes place) on the idea the consumers pursue (see examples above) will then be the place where the group meets to do their shopping.

Consequently, a carrotmob is a profitable deal for both groups. The consumers can be sure that the money they spent in return is (at least partly) used for doing something they believe to be necessary. Most of the times, the things they buy would have been needed anyway, so they even do good without any additional work (except for the ones organizing the mob).
The business on the other hand will probably sell a lot more products than on a normal business day and additionally will be able to improve its way of doing business towards a more sustainable one.

So when the consumer begins to play the game business-style and lets the companies compete for his spending power after the rules of the free market, then that’s what I call power of the consumer!