For those of you who missed Part I of this blog I will recap my assertion that for a public, organized boycott to be successful it must have not only widespread participation but also a real reduction in demand for the product or service being offered by the person or company being boycotted.
Last week I took a look at what I call the one day boycott. This week I take a look at a second type of boycott (and my favorite to make fun of)...
The political/philosophical disagreement boycott.
For an example of this type of boycott I will use a recent boycott that involved Target.
Long story short, some people got upset because Target gave money to a political action committee called MN Forward.
The purpose of MN Forward was to “elect a governor and state legislators who understand the importance of creating private-sector jobs and economic opportunity in [Minnesota].”
The problem stemmed from the fact that one of the pro-jobs candidates that received support from MN Forward was a man named Tom Emmer, who also opposed same-sex marriages. Because of this a boycott was organized against Target with the goal of forcing Target to stop supporting MN Forward, and by proxy, supporting the campaign of Tom Emmer.
One major strike against widespread participation in this organized boycott was that there seemed to me to be far too much separation between Target and Mr. Emmer.
Most level headed, rational individuals could easily determine that the money donated by Target to MN Forward was in support of the election pro-jobs (and therefore likely pro-business) candidates in the state of Minnesota and not as a statement of position against the GLBT population or same sex marriage. So while there were some individuals and groups who were quite ardent in their opposition to Target, I doubt that most of the individuals who support or are indifferent to same-sex marriage were devout participants in the boycott.
One major strike against actual reduction in demand for products sold at Target was the publicity that resulted from the boycott. This was a two-fold problem for the success of the boycott. First, just the mere mention of Target spiked as a result of the boycott. The old saying goes “There is no such thing as bad press.”
The second problem was that the views held by those forming the boycott were not universal views. Even if Target had proven to be making a stance against same sex marriage, not everyone in the United States would have disagreed. Because there are two sides to the debate of same sex marriage there were likely many that would choose to START shopping at Target if they felt the company was making a stand against same sex marriage.
I can’t tell you how many times I personally have made the choice to buy a certain product or buy from a certain company specifically because of a boycott that I disagreed with. And not only did I make the choice, but most likely I continued my support long after the boycott ended because I had become accustomed to buy that product or buying from that company.
Example: When the op-ed article by Whole Foods CEO, John Mackey, opposing Obama-care sparked a boycott of Whole Foods at the end of 2009 I made it a point to start shopping at Whole Foods when I could despite the fact that Whole Foods had never been a place I liked to shop before.
Really, the only way a political/philosophical boycott works is if the offensive action taken by the person or company targeted by the boycott is almost universally opposed by the populace and if the disgust for that action is stronger than the desire for the product or service offered by the person or company being boycotted.
No comments:
Post a Comment