Man, a lot of talk about boycotts lately. Jesse Jackson talking about boycotting Kroger; conservatives talking about boycotting the NFL; people calling for boycotts of businesses that do business with the NRA; Amazon; Facebook; everyone’s talking about boycotts.
How much of an effect do they actually have?
I doubt many boycotts have any real effect, but the threat of a boycott and attendant bad publicity (assuming the boycott has a righteous and/or sympathetic reason behind it) can make a number of companies blink.
It can make Fox News people take Holy Week vacations.
There are too many of them at any given time now for many people to pay attention to so I don’t think they are very effective at all. They can even backfire in a Trump victory kind of way.
Extremely few people are going to stop shopping at Kroger if that is their nearest supermarket just because they closed a shitty store in Memphis. That is just free advertising for them. A lot of people just interpret it to mean that Kroger doesn’t want shitty and unprofitable stores - hardly the selling point of 2018 for a whole lot of people.
Liberals and the Left in general need to change their strategies. They could fuck up a wet dream at this point. They are extremely good at taking a few good points and surrounding it in so much divisive rhetoric and attracting so many loonies as spokespeople that it almost always turns from the winds of change to Hurricane Katrina and just pisses most people off and not in a good way. The Right has similar but substantially different tactics that actually work. Boycotts, sit-ins, marches and amateur level shaming aren’t part of the Right’s strategy because they don’t work.
Boycotts are most effective when they accelerate an existing trend. The Uber boycotts were a really big deal for Uber because before, people would say “let’s take an Uber” when they meant any kind of ridesharing service but afterwards, many people started self consciously talking about “taking a Lyft” to distance themselves from the Uber brand. Similarly, the current Facebook boycott has the potential to be hugely consequential since most people are on Facebook simply because other people are on Facebook so giving people a socially acceptable excuse to leave will accelerate departures.
But for the most part, boycotts against big companies are fighting an uphill battle since big companies generally get big because lots of people like what they do and the thing they liked about the company doesn’t go away just because of a boycott.
You are kidding right?
Right wing groups are constantly boycotting companies.
Keurig
Target
Disney
Starbucks
Nordstrom
Pepsi
Budweiser
Macy’s
Amazon
Ben & Jerry’s
Ford(Jaguar brand more than others)
Those are just off the top of my head. Any company that includes treating gay people with dignity gets added to right wing lists for boycotts, it’s been happening my entire life.
They complain a lot about the NFL too…while I’m not sure if any major conservatives have encouraged boycotting the NFL, I see a hell of a lot of individual people claiming that they’ve given up watching football because of the guys taking a knee.
No argument on that one, until I’m convinced otherwise by the election results.
I think the difference is, the right wing is just really bad at boycotts. How many of those companies have felt enough pressure from the boycott to cave into their demands? Heck, even the NFL, which probably has the highest percentage of right-wingers as customers, is still doing pretty well, despite an incredibly high-profile boycott campaign.
The left wing might not win every boycott battle they engage in, but they do have a significant list of such wins.
Ford hasn’t owned Jaguar for ten years. So are people boycotting Jaguar Cars, or are they boycotting Ford? And either way, why?
I’d say NASCAR outstrips the NFL on the percentage-of-conservatives front, but that’s neither here nor there.
There are particular issues with the NFL that make it almost impossible to boycott effectively anyway. One can boycott a company’s product and, in general, find an acceptable substitute. But the NFL’s product far outstrips the quality of any other in the field. It’s on its own level.
Also, the game inspires strong feelings among its followers that you won’t find with most other products. For instance, I love coffee, hell, I live on coffee. But when was the last time I got excited about having a cup? Now compare that with a football fan’s feelings about his/her team at the beginning of a season, or later on if they’re competitive (and often even if they’re not). Fans are excited every week.
Finally, the basis for the boycott is just plain stupid. Even many conservatives get the distinction between protesting the country’s policies and a lack of patriotism.
So what ends up happening is a lot of lip service and very little action.
An answer to a slightly different question - “Did boycotts ever work?”
There was a Freakonomics podcast about this issue. (Transcript here.) There’s conflicting research but the actual economic effects of boycotts seems to be small. When movements using boycotts do achieve their aims it’s hard to disentangle the boycott’s effects from other actions taken.
Well, yes, that’s part of my point about them being bad at boycotts. You shouldn’t make a big deal out of boycotting something you love so much that you’ll then cheat on the boycott. If the company/organization can’t see any effect on their bottom line, there’s nothing to motivate them to change.
I refuse to answer this question! Who’s with me??!!
Sorry, there are only so many threads I can boycott at any one time. You’re on your own.
So you’re boycotting my boycott? Hey, it works!
Regarding the NRA, Gun owners, incited by the NRA, did manage to make Smith & Wesson to cry uncle.
They are boycotting both still, and still doing so badly. Ford has maintained a pro-gay stance for many years. This angers conservatives.
Jaguar was one of the more embarrassing episodes. Ford announced they were advertising Jaguar in gay magazines. Conservatives didn’t like this so called for a boycott. Ford pulled the adds. Jaguar sales took a hit as a result. Once the numbers were in Ford put the adds back in and actually started funding gay pride events. The net effect of conservatives boycotting Jaguar was Ford increasing gay outreach funding.
Jaguar continues to advertise in gay magazines to this day, as it turns out rich gay men like Jaguars.
There’s something indescribably ridiculous about this whole post. The idea that Jaguar’s advertising would be capable of causing controversy in the US. The idea that the kind of people who would object to Jaguar advertising in gay magazines would also probably be the same kind of people who disliked Jaguar to begin with because it was a British car, an effete foreign vehicle that they also couldn’t afford even if they wanted one. The fact that Jaguars are also known for having huge mechanical problems aside from this whole thing, almost to the point of being a punch-line in America. Also the fact that the brand is called “Jaguar” and there aren’t any other car makers named after any kind of animal that I’m aware of, other than the short-lived Eagle. (Also, now that I think of it, Eagle is also ridiculous.) Also the fact that the ONE car company to be named after an animal, was named after the ONE animal whose name has at least three different pronunciations.
Rabbit came immediately to mind.
A quick google and How Stuff Works provided numerous other examples.