With apologies to Kevin Costner, we ask the question: If you go green, will they (customers) come? The answer is yes when it comes to a new form of consumer power called the Carrotmob that rewards greener companies.

Carrotmob is the invention of Brent Schulkin. He pits a few businesses against each other, promising to drive business to the one that does “the most good.”

Example: Schulkin challenged 23 convenience stores in San Francisco to make their lighting more energy-efficient.

After determining the K&D Market was the winner, a Carrotmob descended on the store, spending more than $9,200. K&D used 22% of the revenue for greener lighting.

The idea: Instead of using boycotts (sticks), Schulkin uses the power of buyers (carrots) to encourage businesses to become greener.

So far, Carrotmobs have focused on small businesses in 11 cities. The group intends to expand into more cities and target big companies in the future.

What if Carrotmob rewards a company, and then finds out they’re doing something else bad? The Carrotmob Web site says it’s a matter of “one step at a time,” and gives a fictitious example:

Festivus Inc. manufactures poles for Festivus. But they dump toxic chemicals into a river, have a terrible maternity leave policy and test their poles by smacking chipmunks with them.

If the company promises to stop dumping the chemicals and smacking chipmunks, that’s a big improvement. It still may not have a good maternity leave policy, but on balance it’s improvement, so Carrotmob would encourage its members to buy poles from them.

Carrotmob was recently profiled in Time.

Tags: Brent Schulkin, Carrotmob, energy efficient, lighting, reward greener companies