Jeff Church: Conscious Consumerism

I wanted to chat briefly about another topic that's really near and dear to my heart. And I think there's something that's really evolving. It's called conscious consumerism. I think that there's four forces that are really focused right now on making it so that we as consumers can really choose the products we want to enjoy. And by choosing the right products, we can help end society's most challenging issues. It has to do with four things. The first is the concept of social enterprises. I mean, you're seeing at universities all across the country, coursework being taught now on social entrepreneurship. You're seeing hybrid models where in the past people would never invest money in a for profit business that has a large give back model component to it. You're seeing lots of industry framework beginning to be created. On the right side, you've got the Internet. You know when one in nine people on the planet have Facebook, I mean, it's a huge social media opportunity. You know when there's 200 million tweets a day and 500 million YouTube views a month, you've got this ability, just like in the Kony 2012, for things to go viral right away and very quickly. And at the bottom, you've got money. You've got the millennials that have $40 billion in discretionary purchasing ability. And you've got moms that have become an incredible force not only in the mom blogging communities, but also in the household and controlling over 80% of the purchasing decisions. And what do millennials and moms have in common? They really have in common that they're really much more cause oriented than 50 year old men. So those people, all of a sudden, they really want to support causes. And then on the left side, you've got the consumer. So the consumer. Now, over last year, 40% of consumers said that they actually bought a product because of a cause related aspect to it. That's double what it was in 1993. You also have 80% of consumers saying they want businesses to be more cause oriented. You have over 80% of people saying they would actually buy a more expensive product or actually try a new product, which is even more challenging to get people to do if it was a cause based. And all these forces really give us, I think, an obligation as consumers and that whatever we're buying, we should do a little homework on it. We should make sure that it's supporting the right cause. And by God, if they say they're cause oriented, dig a little deep on it to make sure that they're actually not charlatans that are just saying it to be commercial about it go on their websites. When you go on the NECA website and you drill down on where we've donated our money, I have contact information, I have emails, I have telephone numbers. I encourage people to communicate, to call these people and talk to them. Oftentimes I'll drill down on somebody's cause based page and it'll be a dead link. And you kind of know there's a problem when it's a dead link. Right. But even beyond that, if you're buying something, we as consumers have the ability to control what we buy. There's lots of good products out there. Choose one that's got a good, that's got a good cause to it.