Alonovo: New Online Retailer Users KLD Data to Inform Shoppers

Using data from KLD, Alonovo, a new online retailer promotes corporate social responsibility and contributes a portion of its revenues to charities launched its "intelligent marketplace" shopping website at www.alonovo.com in August 2005.

Alonovo is the first web portal to incorporate social, environmental, and governance data about companies directly into the shopping experience. Alonovo offers competitive prices and the ability for consumers to know from they are purchasing.

Armed with social, environmental, and corporate governance data found in SOCRATES, KLD's online research database, Alonovo has created a Company Report Card that measures a company's performance in the following areas:

• Social Responsibility
• Healthy Environment
• Fair Workplace
• Customer Commitment
• Business Ethics

Alonovo allows the user to customize the Report Card by giving weight to those issues that matter more to them. "KLD was very interested in working with Alonovo in creating a means for consumers to truly make a difference with their pocketbooks," said Noel Friedman, Managing Director of KLD's Research Products. "The Alonovo site will provide the means for purchasing decisions to directly influence the social and environmental performance of corporations."

Alonovo also reaches out to non-profits through its affiliate-beneficiary program. Non-profits that choose to be part of the program introduce their members to Alonovo. In exchange, users on alonovo.com can choose the non-profit as the beneficiary of 20% of the user's shopping revenue.

With the rise of online shopping giants such as Amazon.com, it is expected that people interested in corporate social responsibility increasingly will turn to these websites as a source of products.

The Alonovo.com website rightly notes, "There is nothing in our economy as powerful as a large demographic shifting their purchases toward companies that balance people, planet, and prices.