Los Angeles Public Relations

People trust word of mouth and personal recommendations more than they trust an advertisement on television or the internet. Getting people to talk about your business and your product is the best form of advertisement. Though it sounds pretty good on paper, getting it to work on a large enough scale is the hard part.

One of the basic principles of economics is this: People respond to incentives. Consumers for the most part can be assumed to be selfish. If there isn’t something in it for them, they will seldom take time out to promote the interest of a third person. If a company can bring in a measurable benefit for the consumer in getting their neighbors involved they can develop a fiercely loyal consumer base. This concept of getting a local group of people to be actively involved is called community organizing.

There are many forms of community organizing, each with its framework based on what their end goal might be. Political and social community organizing exists today with varying levels of influence. They both work under the principle of common interest of the people, but vary in how they view the community itself. The social approach looks at its community as an organism. They identify things that don’t work, and try to advocate towards fixing those issues. The political approach however looks at its people as a political entity. It sees it as the base for votes, and to gain political power. They too identify things that don’t work in society and in exchange for power they advocate issues of the common interest. There is a third approach; the neighborhood maintenance approach which looks at society as one that has a commercial value attached to it. The neighborhood maintenance approach is the least rigid form of community organizing and from the outside looks like it will be close to what a businessman might be interested in.

The neighborhood maintenance approach is essentially a local movement. People from within a community co-operate amongst themselves to set up certain civic amenities that help the welfare of everyone. An example is the setting up of local clubs. People within a community who have similar tastes and need the support of more individuals to realize their ambitions come together. For example, let us take a very simple issue that exists at the local levels. People are looking for organic food in the market, but they find that the organic variety costs twice as much as the regular stuff. For obvious reasons, the organic farms have to charge higher prices because of higher costs of organic farming.

Let us assume that we are the owners of an organic farm, and we are trying to maximize our sales. We can see the following benefits of having community organizing for your business.

• Cut the middle man In almost any business, the most notable cause in price increase is the money that gets spent on the means that gets the produce from the producer to the consumer. Dealing directly with your consumers greatly reduces the price at the point of sale.
• Offer incentives Make it known to a community that you can give them lower rates if the community buys in bulk. Simple economics of demand and supply dictate that with larger quantities, prices drop.
• Reduce transportation costs Another invisible cost that gets added on products is that of transportation. For your carrot to go to your consumers table, it starts off in a producer go-down, and then moves through a wholesaler’s go-down, a retailer’s go-down, the retailer’s shelf and finally reaches its destination. Recruiting a local, who drives up to the farm weekly and delivers it to his immediate community, can reduce prices dramatically. To get people to volunteer, offer them additional benefits like an hourly wage and gas money. When people who reside in a tough economy hear of any plan that can reduce their prices, they will most likely do as much is needed to help its cause.
• Reduce frills An organization can shelve some spending required on the externalities. Fancy packaging for instance can be replaced by generic packaging. Consumers value your product more than they do for your brand logo.
• Shelve times are reduced Due to just-in-time demand facilitated by this direct relationship with the consumer, goods can be consumed fresh.

With this symbiosis, your business volume increases, consumer prices drop, brand loyalty goes through the roof and mother earth isn’t hurt half as much in the process. It’s a win-win situation.