Values-based shopping at Alonovo.com

A few days ago I came across a website that fits nicely with my shopping-season mantra of values-based consumerism: www.alonovo.com. It's slogan is "intelligent marketplace" and it's mission is "to connect the concept of corporate behavior directly to the profit motive."

Shopping from this site helps you save the world in several ways, each of which I happen to think is pretty neat:

• Like many online shopping sites, this one collects revenue from Amazon for directing buyers to them - but these guys donate at least 20% of their ad revenues to charity. If you register with the site, you can choose which charity you'd like to support from a long list, but registration is not required to shop.
  
• Next to each product is an easy-to-spot and easy-to-read chart with a "value rating" for the company that sells it, based primarily on data from KLD and the Federal Elections Commission. You can view five sub-ratings (CSR, environment, workplace, ethics, and customer focus) without registering, and more detail after you register.
• After registering, you can also set your own relative values, so that the ratings become personalized to the issues that are most important to you.

There are a bunch of things that I like about this set-up. One is that it's as easy as you want it to be - no registration required and easy-t0-read charts. And yet, the more detailed data is there. In fact, accessing KLD's Socrates database is usually quite expensive, so having some of its data available for free is a huge plus. Also, indicating what's important to you as an individual has the potential to educate companies much more rapidly on what's really important to consumers. Finally, if you're using the site as an alternative to a trip to the mall, think of all that petroleum and CO2 you're saving!

Comments

[Anonymous]

Dear Melissa,Thanks so much for finding us, and writing about us. Without significant resources (thus far I have privately funded the effort on my own), we rely on our relationship with many amazing non-profit organizations and earned media opportunities to gain visibility for our effort. We are most certainly in our infancy, we are working to secure resources to integrate new streams of data for a comprehensive corporate behavioral (CSR) data experience. We also are working toward the concept of a "Universal Shopping Cart" that is within the scope of a single purchase transaction, the alonovo community can either shop via amazon, or many local community economy and emerging sites such as The Greenloop.Without the courage and vision of Peter Kinder, Steve Lydenberg and Amy Domini and all those at KLD Research & Analytics we would not exist and I always find myself thanking them for their early belief in our model.There is alot to do, but as more people find out about us, benefit their cause of choice through completed transactions and use our service we will be able to accumulate more resources so we may vastly improve the experience.Thanks so much again, and happy holidays -George Polisner,Founder, alonovo.com

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