Cash Mobs

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= a group of people organize themselves through social channels and get together at a certain time and go shop at a local business.


Description

"Cash mobs encourage people to go into small, local businesses and spend their money, en masse, to give the business owner a little bit of economic stimulus. We’d help businesses grow, we’d make people happy, we’d get stuff for ourselves, have a great time, and maybe we’d get a drink to celebrate afterward." (http://cashmobs.wordpress.com/about-us/)


FAQ

"What are Cash Mobs?

The general idea is to encourage people to go into small, local businesses and spend their money, en masse, to give the business owner a little bit of economic stimulus. We’d help businesses grow, we’d make people happy, we’d get stuff for ourselves, have a great time, and maybe we’d get a drink to celebrate afterward.

Who Started Cash Mobs?

Andrew Samtoy, an attorney in Cleveland, OH, organized our first “Cash Mob” on November 16, 2011. Although at the time we thought the name was original (and some in the media gave us credit for it), we later learned that the first gathering called a “Cash Mob” appears to have been held in Buffalo, NY, on August 5, 2011, and was organized by blogger, Christopher Smith.

Since then, Cash Mobs have been sprouting up all across the U.S., Canada, and around the world. While organized by many different groups of people, all appear to have the same goal in mind: to support local businesses that they love!

Who Is/Are Cash Mobs?

“Cash Mobs” isn’t a political or social organization, a corporation, a movement, or meant to be an answer to economic crisis. By and large, those that organize Cash Mobs are simply people trying to make a positive impact on the businesses in their communities (and have fun while doing it)!" (http://cashmobs.wordpress.com/about-us/)


Examples

  • One can follow the Cash Mobs twitter account and see these things in cities such as Cleveland, Houston, Ann Arbor, Kansas City, via https://twitter.com/#!/Cashmobs

Carrotmobs

" Carrotmob is another organization: "instead of organizing boycotts, we offer to spend money as a group if a business agrees to make a socially responsible change."


Discussion

A. Weissmann:

"But instead of sharing excess capacity around our stuff - our cars, apartments, clothes - what if the most powerful thing about collaborative consumption is organizational. For many decades we've been trained as consumers to receive offers - discounts, coupons, groupons, daily deals - from entities who want to sell us things. Many of these offers are valuable. But we receive them as they are marketed to us.

Instead, what if we defined the offers ourselves, around the local communities and merchants who make up the fabric of our daily lives? What if people became their own self-organizing local marketers? Maybe then the idea of Cash Mobs is so interesting because it is a reverse-daily-deal, a reverse-Groupon, type of business relationship. One that, by shifting the production, marketing and distribution of the product to the users themselves, is entirely consistent with the peer-to-peer power of Internet and social connectivity." (http://blog.aweissman.com/2012/01/cash-mobs.html)


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