YES:
The act of boycotting is a form of protest that is by no means new. Recently, however, the public’s inclination to boycott—to refuse to buy a product or take part in an activity as a way of expressing strong disapproval or protest of—has skyrocketed due to, in part, the Israel-Palestine conflict. While many argue that boycotting is a fruitless form of protest, over the years boycotting has proven to be both an effective means of protest and an effective fuel for further activism.
Recently, people who oppose Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip have called for boycotts of companies they claim support Israeli policies, drawing millions of views on social media. Customers, particularly in the Middle East, have refrained from doing business with companies such as Starbucks and McDonald’s. This call for activism has corresponded with an almost two-decade-old movement called Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) that has protested Israel’s actions in Palestinian territories by targeting businesses and institutions that have aided Israel in some form. BDS’s mission statement states that its movement of “targeted consumer boycotts are convincing retailers across the world to stop selling products from companies profiting from Israel’s crimes.”
After Starbucks and McDonald’s perceived support for Israel during the Israel-Hamas war, they have faced continuous backlash. Boycotts have proven to be one of the few ways consumers can make their voices heard. Consumers choosing to not purchase from these companies is letting corporations know what they think—despite being multi-million dollar companies, any loss of revenue is harmful.
According to Yakov Bart, an Associate Professor of marketing at Northeastern University, the success of a boycott is reliant on “the brands chosen as the target.” In the Northeastern global news article, Bart goes on to state that “when the brands are more easily replaceable, then they’re more vulnerable to a consumer boycott.” In the case of companies such as Starbucks and McDonald’s, while they are companies receiving a large revenue on a daily basis, they are arguably easily replaceable to the public. Many other fast food companies serve coffee and burgers—the key is to get people to believe in the cause.
The boycott taking place currently is not the first of its kind. One of the earliest and most significant examples of a successful boycott would be the Montgomery bus boycott, sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks in 1955. The Montgomery bus boycott was a 13-month mass protest in which people of color refused to take the bus. This boycott ended with the United States Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses was unconstitutional.
In 2000, a Mitsubishi: Don’t Buy It’ campaign was launched against the Japanese multinational automobile manufacturer Mitsubishi Motors Corporation. Following a long campaign of protest, Mitsubishi announced that it would pull out of an industrial salt project in Mexico for environmental reasons—protecting an important breeding ground for gray whales. In 2003, the Marine campaign group Oceana’s boycott of Royal Caribbean Cruises led to the company installing Advanced Wastewater Purification technology (AWP) on all its ships. Additionally, in 2010, Nestlé gave in after continuous boycotts of their products and promised a zero deforestation policy in its palm oil supply chain.
These protests highlight how in the long run, boycotts can be key to action to be taken in a movement. Currently, while these companies might not visually look like they are being harmed by the boycotts, they have been affected enough to issue statements trying to clarify their positions and disavow any support for any party involved in the conflict.
McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski made a statement that McDonald’s is “experiencing a meaningful business impact due to the war and associated misinformation.” He went on to state that this “is disheartening and ill-founded.” Additionally, Starbucks Chief Executive Laxman Narasimhan said that people protesting the company and disrupting its stores over the Israel-Hamas war were being misled by false information spread online about the company’s positions. “We see protestors influenced by misrepresentation on social media of what we stand for,” Narasimhan said.
Neither of these statements has deterred people from boycotting. In contrast, analytics show that both companies were hurt financially. Between November and early December, Starbucks’ shares dropped 8.96%, equal to losing almost $11 billion in market value and 9.4% of the company’s total value, Business Standard reported. McDonald’s also faced a loss in shares following boycotts, with the company reporting its first quarterly sales miss in four years.
There may be some skepticism about the effectiveness of boycotts—people questioning how a small group of consumers refusing to give revenue to specific companies can have any real impact. However, it is abundantly clear that boycotts are an opportunity for people to put their money where their values are—and they are often successful. Boycotts offer people a way to stand up for what they believe in. In the long term, the most effective boycotts do not merely punish these companies, but compel companies to actually change their practices.
NO:
Historically, protesting has been a way for people to voice their opinions on issues they feel strongly supportive of. Various methods of protest exist, including petitions, public speeches and strikes. Boycotting is another form of protest that has been rising in popularity these past few years. However, it is not effective and often does not achieve its intended purpose.
The definition of “boycotting”, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, is “to refuse to buy a product or take part in an activity as a way of expressing strong disapproval.” In essence, if a group of individuals strongly disapproves of something a company or organization is doing, they will avoid interacting with them. For example, Starbucks has been a heavily boycotted company for their comments regarding tensions in the Middle East. A boycott was organized online where people refused to buy products from the company.
However, the nature of consumers is simple. People desire products that companies make, and despite actively denouncing the actions a company might make, there are possibilities that these consumers will justify their purchases because they have grown a dependence on it. This concept is similar to “separating the art from the artist”.
Cody Mello-Klein, a reporter for Northeastern University—an institute for policy research—explains that boycotts are ineffective because of “consumers’ habitual nature”. They further elaborate that individuals “who publicly denounce a company might still purchase that company’s products.”
Essentially, consumers will be consumers. The facade a user presents can differ from their consumerist nature. There are high possibilities that one can digress from their own perspectives and continue to purchase products they enjoy using. This removes the entire purpose of the boycott, where individuals are attempting to financially collapse a company to a point where they are forced to change.
Moreover, countless users online are comfortable with the convenience social media provides in regards to spreading awareness about certain issues. In today’s society, it is convenient for people to spread awareness about an issue due to the interconnectedness of the internet. Individuals can also easily involve themselves in different movements without actually participating in it.
A prominent example that was mentioned in the article “Do boycotts against McDonald’s and Starbucks work? They can, just not for the reason you might think”, written by Cody Mello-Klein is that “it’s easy to say or put #boycottAmazon on social media”. However, “it’s much harder to reduce your dependency on Amazon, which for a lot of people is substantial these days.”
Mello-Klein further mentions that a lot of these companies that advocates are boycotting are in “saturated” markets, meaning that there is a lot of competition against them concerning their products. Boycotting Amazon would be more difficult, as the company is one of the world’s largest online retailers. Due to its position and influence, efforts to boycott Amazon would not make a dent.
Mello-Klein writes, “efforts like the boycotts against Bud Light and Target, which resulted in plummeting sales for both companies, are successful less because of how effective anti-LGBTQ political organization is and more because those companies exist in markets that are saturated with options.” Boycotts, in this sense, are more market oriented rather than the form of protest actually being effective.
Moreover, the impact of boycotts are minimal. According to “Here’s when boycotts have worked — and when they haven’t,” University of Pennsylvania Professor of operations and information management Maurice Schweitzer, explains that “very few boycotts have led to changes”. A lot of the boycotts “lack a sustained effort” and most consumers lose interest in it. Following the trends, researchers have mentioned that most boycotts are not impactful, nor successful. This leads to little to no changes in terms of company policies or viewpoints.
This is further emphasized by “Do boycotts really work?” written by Bruce Watson. He states that boycotts cause an economic recession for certain companies, but there is little to no long-term effect.While boycotts can be used to express displeasure, there is little to no change in the long-term and that “they aren’t all that successful when it comes to changing a company’s policies.”
A notable instance is the 2003 boycott of French wines. Watson explains that the boycott quickly caused a 26% drop in sales, but had little long-term effect on either France’s wine industry or its politics.”
As a result, boycotts can provide short-term downfalls for companies but will do little to no damage in the long term. It’s difficult to truly measure the scale of damage boycotting does to a single company, and even then, financial status—which is one of the easier measurable statistics—doesn’t show enough long-term damage to truly dictate the effectiveness of boycotting.
