Rather than incur the 'risk' of advertising for new prospects and turning those prospects into customers, e-merchants are enabling virtually any website to get a commission on actual purchases by referred customers. These affiliate commissions are less than the traditional retail distribution cost, which is fair, because the e-merchant is doing much of the heavy lifting, in terms of merchandising, transactions, stocking, transactional websites, and so forth. But the affiliates are also doing heavy lifting in terms of traffic and customer loyalty. The birth of e-charity One interesting trend that has arisen from the fertilizer of affiliate commissions is that of splitting the commission with the consumer's chosen charity. Again, so far, so good.
Consumers appear to love the idea.
Now, when they shop online for the things they need or want, a percentage of the purchase goes to a worthy cause. In many cases, to the individual's personal favorite worthy cause - the medical research that will help their descendants, or their kid's school, or the mission that is helping to educate inner city kids, or the pet rescue charity in town. And merchants appear to benefit. Marketing statistics indicate that consumers have a strong preference for doing businesses with corporations that are good citizens, and that when the merchant is making a donation of part of the sale price to the consumer's cause, consumers see a very tangible demonstration of corporate citizenship. In time, the economy is efficient, and drives prices toward cost.