While I am always an advocate for TOM’s shoes, I stumbled upon’s Jessica’s blog  and came to realize that I had a few skeptical remarks about TOM’s business value. The company strives to create shared value through using the advertising strategy of BOGO (Buy One Give One), stating that for each pair of TOM’s shoes purchased, there will be a pair of shoes given to children in a third world country in need. Although I do agree that this is heartwarming, I question whether this strategy really is the best for both sides. For one, this marketing strategy is largely dependent on the children as the company needs the poverty situation in order to sell shoes, or at least advertise their shoes. Perhaps it is a better method to reallocate the resources and supplies to investing in a strategy to solve the root causes of poverty in third world countries. This may be a overly harsh and critical comment for TOM’s because truly it is not their responsibility to alleviate poverty and that they are indeed already indeed trying to improve the situation more than other businesses.