Boycotts
Boycotts are collective actions taken by individuals or groups to refuse to purchase goods or services from a business, organization, or country, often as a means of expressing disapproval or enacting social change. The term originates from the actions taken against Charles C. Boycott in the 1880s by Irish tenant farmers who were protesting high rents. Boycotts can serve as powerful tools for labor movements, where they have been employed to challenge unfair labor practices and improve working conditions when other methods, like strikes, are ineffective. Historically, marginalized groups have used boycotts to combat discrimination, notably during the civil rights movement in the United States, where actions like the Montgomery bus boycott were pivotal in advocating for equality and justice.
In modern contexts, boycotts continue to be a way for consumers to influence corporate behavior and are often driven by political, social, or ethical considerations. For instance, boycotts have emerged in response to companies' stances on issues such as LGBTQ+ rights or racial justice, reflecting the growing intersection of consumer behavior with social activism. Trends show that boycotting is prevalent across various demographics, with differing motivations depending on political and social contexts. Overall, boycotts remain a relevant form of protest that allows individuals and groups to leverage their economic power to effect change and promote their values.
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Subject Terms
Boycotts
Definition: A group’s refusal, as a form of protest, to use or buy a product or service
Significance: Boycotts can work as a censorship force
Boycotts were named after Charles C. Boycott, a land agent who was shunned by Irish tenant farmers for refusing to reduce his rents in the 1880s. When effectively employed by a collective, boycotts can effectively impose penalties on businesses, countries, and organizations. Sellers can also boycott, as for example if a group with a critical resource (oil, or atomic weapons technology) decides not to sell that resource to another party.
Boycotts or economic sanctions can work as censorship forces when collectives join together and refuse, for example, to buy any books that a company has published because one book that the company has published offends them. The purpose of severing the established relationship between the collective and the designated entity is to punish the concern in order to bring about practices that conform to the group’s interests.
Consumers have used boycotts when they have been interested in persuading businesses to improve their labor practices. Boycotts have been employed when strikes or other measures failed to bring about meaningful changes in work conditions, salaries, and other job-related benefits. The economic conditions that limit the effectiveness of strikes are numerous. Boycotts have been the preferred method used by consumers to demonstrate their disapproval of businesses when the labor market is saturated with a high percentage of unemployed workers, thereby limiting the success of strikes. When this occurs, boycotts, when properly organized and implemented, have been successful alternatives to other efforts on the part of labor.
Economic sanctions are effective political measures that restrain trade and may even destroy a targeted business if they are instituted with widespread support. Consumers, supporting labor, have made boycotts formidable censorship forces against businesses when the following elements are addressed. First, there must be solidarity among workers and all consumers who intend to participate in the boycott. Second, organizers must ensure that the boycott has received adequate publicity to garner support from appropriate segments of the population. Finally, all participants (producers and consumers) in the boycott are expected to have a common political identity. Hence, they expect that using their purchasing power will have a significant impact on the businesses’ labor practices. In some cases fines and other negative sanctions have been imposed on consumers to ensure compliance with the boycott.
Historically oppressed groups, such as Black Americans, have used boycotts or the use of economic sanctions against businesses to improve their participation in companies that have restricted their participation through legislation, policy, and force. For example, Black Americans and other civil rights activists employed boycotts successfully on a large scale during the civil rights movement, including the famous Montgomery bus boycott involving Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. Recognizing the importance of boycotts as censorship forces, civil rights activists effected social change by collectively refusing to patronize businesses that had established discriminatory practices. Such boycotts brought about an end to discrimination in public transportation and in public facilities and a decrease in overt discrimination in employment.
Because of the successful use of boycotts during the civil rights movement, they have been employed subsequently by Black Americans and other groups to increase their purchasing power, improve their economic status, and to enhance employment opportunities, particularly in the private sector. Labor leader Cesar Chavez was jailed for leading a national lettuce boycott in 1970, but the movement helped bring support for laws that improved the conditions for farm workers.
Countries have also used boycotts as a means of collectively expressing their disapproval of another country’s actions. When countries apply economic sanctions against a designated country it is generally argued that denying resources to the targeted country is employed to encourage compliance with a covenant. For the most part, while boycotts have proven to be an effective means of improving labor relations, their success has been credited to sanctions as well as solidarity.
Other notable boycotts of the twentieth century included the Olympic boycotts in 1980 and 1984 by the United States and the Soviet Union, respectively, due to political objections, and the 1985–7 boycott of the restaurant chain Burger King by the Rainforest Action network environmentalist group over the importation of beef from the tropics.
Boycotts continued to be employed in the twenty-first century for various social, political, and business purposes. In a similar way to the use of boycotts by Black Americans during the civil rights movement, the first two decades of the twenty-first century saw increased boycotts by members and advocates of LGBTQ communites against businesses and institutions that were viewed as having policies or beliefs that discriminated against LGBTQ communities. One of the more prominent and ongoing relevant boycotts pertained to the restaurant chain Chick-fil-A, whose chief executive officer (CEO) indicated an opposition to gay marriage in the 2010s; at the same time, many boycotted the revelation that the business had long donated funds to organizations with anti-LGBTQ policies or stances. As the issue of systemic racism in America came to the forefront once more following the death of George Floyd, a Black man, in police custody in 2020, boycotts occurred such as advertisers coordinating against using Facebook over criticism of its handling of posts that have inflammatory, hateful contexts, as well as consumers rallying to stop buying from certain brands and companies considered to perpetuate racist stereotypes or that did not have employment policies in line with labor rights.
In the early 2020s, Reuters reported that a survey showed that boycotting is utilized fairly evenly across generations, however, those who earned six-figure salaries were more likely to boycott products or companies than those in other economic ranges. In addition, people who claimed to be Democratic (31 percent) were more likely to boycott products or companies than those who claimed to be Republican (24 percent). The survey also found that the most cited reasons for boycotting in the early 2020s were political donations (34 percent), treatment of employees (34 percent), stance on social issues (33 percent), and policy positions (30 percent).
The early 2020s continued to see a number of highly publicized boycotts in the US by both liberals and conservatives as the country's intense political polarization continued. For example, in April 2023, Bud Light, the leading beer brand in the US at that time, hired a transgender social media influencer, Dylan Mulvaney, to post an Instagram video promoting Bud Light. This video triggered a massive backlash from conservative consumers and grew as multiple conservative celebrities and commentators promoted the Bud Light boycott on TikTok and other forms of social media. This occurred as part of a larger backlash against transgender people in the US which was ongoing at the time, and many observers argued that the Bud Light boycott had strong undertones of transphobia and homophobia. The boycott led to declining sales for Bud Light, which subsequently laid off a number of executives involved in the campaign.
Some of the same impulses driving boycotts during this time also motivated a number of efforts to ban books, particularly in school libraries but also in public libraries. Between 2021 and 2023, there was a significant increase in attempted and successful book bans in the US. Organizations such as the American Library Association (ALA) noted that, in contrast to earlier disputes about library content, which often involved an individual making a complaint about a single book, this surge was driven primarily by organizations seeking to ban entire lists of titles. The ALA estimated that, in 2022 alone, more than 2,570 unique titles were targeted for bans across the US, with the majority of these attempts occurring in Texas and other Republican-leaning states. While some liberal activists sought to censor or remove content viewed as racist, homophobic, sexist, or otherwise offensive, the majority of bans during this time were sought by conservative groups and focused on content either written by authors of color or LGBTQ+ authors or dealing with themes including anti-racism and LGBTQ+ identity and acceptance.
Bibliography
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Alter, Alexandra, and Elizabeth A. Harris. “A Fast-Growing Network of Conservative Groups Is Fueling a Surge in Book Bans.” The New York Times, 12 Dec. 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/12/12/books/book-bans-libraries.html. Accessed 26 Jul. 2023.
Friedman, Monroe. Consumer Boycotts: Effecting Change through the Marketplace and the Media. New York: Routledge, 1999. Print.
Hay, Jeff. The Montgomery Bus Boycott. Farmington Hills: Greenhaven, 2012. Print.
Hern, Alex. "Facebook to Be Hit by Its Largest Ever Advertiser Boycott over Racism." The Guardian, 24 June 2020, www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/24/ben-and-jerrys-joins-facebook-advertising-boycott-racism. Accessed 15 July 2021.
Jackson, Clayton. The 1980 and 1984 Olympics: Boycotts, The Cold War, and Foreign Policy Impact. Ogden: Weber State U, 2012. Print.
Mayer, Grace. “Bud Light has been embroiled in backlash since a beer promotion by a transgender influencer. Here's a timeline of how the controversy has played out.” Insider, 21 Jul. 2023, www.businessinsider.com/bud-light-transgender-controversy-backlash-boycotts-history. Accessed 26 Jul. 2023.
Taylor, Chris. "Boycott Nation: How Americans are Boycotting Companies Now." Reuters, 29 June 2022, www.reuters.com/markets/us/boycott-nation-how-americans-are-boycotting-companies-now-2022-06-29/. Accessed 22 Aug. 2022.
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Yaffe-Bellany, David. "Chick-fil-A Stops Giving to 2 Groups Criticized by L.G.B.T.Q. Advocates." The New York Times, 18 Nov. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/11/18/business/chick-fil-a-donations-lgbtq.html. Accessed 15 July 2021.