Boycott Connect (ish)

There is a problem in the business industry with business practices. Many businesses conduct their business in an immoral way. In fact, there are so many companies that have been caught in immoral practices that many consumers aren't aware of which businesses have been in these types of lawsuits before. Boycott Connect is a website designed to help bring awareness to these consumers before they do business with such companies. The main issue this group saw was because of this unawareness of immoral business practices, consumers were continuing to do business with these companies, making their immoral practices profitable. They used the example of Hershey and Nestle. Hershey was accused of getting cocoa beans from a small village in West Africa that endorsed child labor. Nestle sold baby formula in a third world country where the water wasn't clean and the baby formula was falsely advertised, lacking in nutrition. Yet, just like many consumers, I was completely unaware of these accusations and have been a Hershey consumer for years. After hearing this groups research, I definitely did not want to do business with these companies. I loved the way they broke the immoral practices into sub groups. The environment, slave and child labor, and crimes against humanity are the three groups they mentioned. They had great information to back up their points. The only thing that I kept thinking during their project was that just because a company is accused, doesn't mean they are guilty. Many of these lawsuits were never brought to trial and only settled. For something like a small business, a mere accusation that is publicized could ruin the business. So, how do you shift through rumors versus actual facts? Also, there are so many businesses out there that are conducting their business in an immoral way but haven’t gotten caught yet. So even though there are probably many businesses consumers should not be endorsing, there are so many more under the radar. If the goal is to make immoral business practices not profitable, what are ways the website could empower the consumer to their own research before doing business with a company? Is there a function to ask the website to do research on a business for the consumer that they can see whether or not a business not yet mentioned is moral or immoral? That could add a lot of added interaction as well and even greater awareness. Other than that, I believe the groups idea is great and something like this should exist where all the information about immoral business practices is accessible on one location.