“Buy one, give one” refers to a commitment that for each product sold a company will give the same product for free to the person in need, usually from an emerging country. The truth is that most companies include taking care of the poorer communities in their lofty mission statements, but their actions, although undoubtedly beneficial have rarely a permanent character. On the other hand, companies which committed themselves to “buy one, give one” initiative are not only providing a long-lasting help to the disadvantaged, but also give an extra value to their customers. Thus, “buy one, give one” can become a source of a competitive advantage, differentiating a company’s product from other products with a similar price and quality (1).

Ever since its introduction “buy one, give one” has been lauded as brilliant by many who stress the simplicity and the humane character of this novel idea.  Others criticize it for not addressing the real causes of the poverty, but only alleviating its painful results or even creating deadly competition for the local producers. Interestingly, the “buy one, give one” companies decided to take the critical remarks into consideration and started to look for better ways to  support the local communities (2). One of them is TOMS, a pioneer company, who was one of the first ones to promise to donate an exact number of the shoes it sold to the customers. Their most recent idea (launching today) is creating a virtual TOMS Marketplace for the products of the companies, which somehow support less developed countries. TOMS is giving to those companies a chance of bigger exposure and a chance of reaching more customers, while gaining a bigger diversification of product (3).

There seems to be no doubt that these kind of initiatives are the future for the charitable projects. The Internet seems to be the best possible channel to reach conscious customers, wanting to make a change with their purchases. Online shopping is not only continuously on the rise, annually attracting more and more customers, but also is easily reachable and transparent.  And all these factors combined increase greatly their  probability of success (1).

(1)http://econsultancy.com/ca/blog/63726-buy-to-give-is-philanthropy-a-natural-fit-for-ecommerce

(2)http://www.pri.org/stories/2013-10-08/toms-shoes-rethinks-its-buy-one-give-one-model-helping-needy

(3)http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/05/business/media/buy-one-give-one-spirit-imbues-an-online-store.html?_r=0