Editor’s Note: For an alternative viewpoint, please see: Counterpoint: Consumer Boycotts Are an Important Form of Protest — Including Against Trump
The campaign rhetoric this past election was more heated than usual — culminating with Donald Trump’s victory. Trump is a businessman whose family has numerous business interests. Many Trump haters decided to send a powerful message by encouraging people to boycott as many Trump enterprises as possible.
The online initiative #GrabYourWallet was organized by a San Francisco-based digital marketing specialist to track firms doing business with the Trump family. At last count, around 57 companies are on the boycott list, including Macy’s, L.L. Bean, Amazon and numerous others. Interestingly, most of the companies are apolitical, but some happen to carry Ivanka Trump apparel.
If advocates are successful in convincing retailers to pull all Ivanka Trump merchandise from store shelves it won’t change anything. The president is not going to step down.
Do consumer boycotts really achieve anything? According to experts the answer is: No, not in the long run — at least not in a meaningful way.
Professor Maurice Schweitzer of the University of Pennsylvania has studied boycotts. He told Forbes, “Boycotts typically have more symbolic value than economic impact.” On a recent podcast for Freakonomics radio, UCLA economics professor Ivo Welch said, “Boycotts almost surely will never work.”
A boycott is often joined by people who would not have purchased a company’s product anyway. The diehard activist will look for alternative products to buy. However, marginal customers who participate in boycotts lose interest quickly. They ultimately give in to their preferences and yield to convenience if the boycott requires any effort. Boycotts are typically just short term PR headaches for the targeted company.
Sometimes the only impact is to harass firms and their employees by tying up phone lines with calls claiming to be dissatisfied customers.
A potential victory — albeit a rather small one — is to discourage companies from weighing in publicly on political issues that would be better left to individual debate. Chick-fil-A learned this lesson in 2012, when the chief operating officer got into trouble for comments he made regarding his opposition to gay marriage. There were subsequent calls for a boycott and even threats from a couple local officials to block new franchises.
Chick-fil-A is a Georgia-based fast-food chain whose wealthy founder long supported religious organizations that hold traditional views on marriage. In response to the boycott, a counter boycott was organized by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. The result was huge crowds and a 30 percent boost in sales that day.
By all accounts Chick-fil-A is doing well, with 2,000 locations and $6 billion in annual revenue. The only change since the controversy is the chain is more careful to avoid inadvertently offending potential customers. Other than practicing smarter public relations, its business and philanthropy have not changed.
Brayden King is a professor at Northwestern University, where he researched consumer boycotts conducted over a 15-year period from 1990 to 2005. King found boycotts did not reduce sales to a significant degree. This is something that most experts who’ve studied boycotts agree on. The targeted companies changed some aspect of their business practices in only about one-third of the cases. The bad PR did affect the stock price, but typically for a couple months.
In August 2009, Whole Foods’ CEO John Mackey wrote a commentary in the Wall Street Journal critical of Obamacare. The backlash from his liberal customers was fast and furious. What was the long-term effect? At the time Whole Foods’ stock was selling for just over $14 a share. Two years later it had doubled and four years later it was $65.
L.L. Bean landed on the GrabYourWallet boycott list when a wealthy heiress — one of more than 50 family members who own stock — contributed to a pro-Donald Trump political action committee. It’s not clear what the boycotters hope to achieve; L.L. Bean a private company and does not endorse political candidates or make political contributions. In a statement its executive chairman said, “… we stay out of politics.” Any harm will likely hit workers the hardest. More than half of L.L. Bean stores are in blue states and most of its employees presumably did not vote for Trump.
Left-wing advocates are pushing so many consumer boycotts and counter-boycotts simultaneously — hundreds by some estimates — that it is impossible for any campaign to make much difference. Boycotts may boost promoters’ egos or temporarily make supporters feel good until the cause is forgotten. The biggest effect is probably a case of heartburn for the targeted company’s corporate communications director.
