Tactics: Consumer Boycotts

Contents

Introduction

Consumer boycotts involve the organised refusal to purchase or use goods and services from a business, organisation or country. By lowering profits and generating negative publicity they can pressure opponents into changing policies, practices and investments.

What is a Consumer Boycott and What can it Achieve?

Although the tactic dates back millennia, the term ‘boycott’ first emerged in 1880. It was named after Captain Charles Boycott, a British Land Agent in County Mayo, Ireland. He had attempted to evict tenant farmers from the property he was managing after they demanded a reduction in rents. In response local people refused to work for him, provide him with goods and services, serve him in shops, deliver his post, or otherwise interact with him. The success of the tactic ensured that it was taken up elsewhere and that subsequent attempts to ban it were overcome.

As this example demonstrates, boycotting can include a range of tactics aimed at isolating an opponent. The term has come to be most commonly associated with ‘consumer boycotts’. The grievances that gave rise to boycotts in the past were often economic and included issues such as fair pricing. Although consumer boycotts continue to be used in support of workers when they go out on strike or undertake other industrial action, they are now used in a wide range of campaigns.

The prime mechanism involved in a consumer boycott is to apply financial pressure to the point where an opponent is persuaded to enact change.

This is more likely to occur when opponents and their products are easily identifiable and have a consumer base that can be easily reached. Success is also more likely when a strong link between issues and the opponent can be established and when complaints and solutions are clearly communicated to key audiences.

While many boycotts are focused on directly forcing opponents to meet specific demands, others are more concerned with educating consumers so that they can direct their spending in ways that are more positive and less harmful. The two goals can be connected but how much one or the other is prioritised will affect the messages used as well as the point at which the boycott is brought to an end, if at all.

Boycotts are both practical and symbolic. They can force consumers to take sides on an issue while providing them with an opportunity to undertake organised, visible and collective action in a market system where power and the law is often stacked against them. They can be combined with other tactics which affect an opponents’ bottom line and image, such as strikes and blockades. Boycotts can also give more weight to protests or letters of complaint.

Boycotts necessarily involve reputational damage. They can serve as a conversation starter with friends or family regarding responsibility for the issues involved. Even where financial costs are not significant, the impact on an opponent’s image may be enough to have an influence, especially when there is already division and disquiet within the company or regime.

Benefits and Challenges

Boycotts, as with other tactics, are more likely to be widely taken up when people believe they are worthy, effective and pose relatively low personal cost. This is accomplished most easily when the products and services involved are not indispensable and/or alternatives are visible and easy to access.

Organizing people to go on rent strike in order to force their landlord to carry out repairs is possible but poses the risk of eviction. Boycotting a soft drink produced by an international conglomerate due to its ties to a racist regime is a much safer situation. At the same time, generating enough publicity and costs to force a large corporation with a popular product and millions of customers to change its policies will be harder to achieve than with a small business reliant on a tight knit customer base, all of whom can be easily reached.

Some boycotts, for instance of a local café for wage theft, may involve a small community which can easily witness effects and encourage one another to take and maintain action. While communities and friendship groups remain important, other boycotts are on a scale where largely individual and unobserved actions contribute towards the collective goal. As a result publicity and a strong communications strategy are particularly critical to the success of larger boycotts, both in launching them and in keeping people informed. The larger the target the longer it will likely to take to shift it, so being patient while maintaining momentum is vital.

A related dilemma is how broad will a boycott will be?

Some campaigns choose to focus on a single company or specific product at a time. This can be more strategic and offer clarity in demonstrating the effects of the boycott. Other campaigns choose to target as many companies and items associated with an issue as possible to allow consumers to more generally avoid complicity.

How To

Typically a boycott includes the following steps:

Research

Research the issue and determine which target or targets are connected to it and have the power to make change. There may be an obvious culprit or there may be multiple opponents involved. Things to take into account when selecting a target include the degree of complicity the opponent has as well as their public profile.
Research information regarding the opponents’ personnel, policies, finances and shareholders.

Power Mapping & Goal Setting

Undertake power mapping about your opponent to identify weak points, structure, connections, supporters and ability to withstand pressure.
Set goals that are well-defined and realistic, and which can be translated into clear demands.

Boycott Primacy, Breadth and Scale

Consider whether the boycott is your primary tactic or if it is mainly being used to create extra leverage and publicity?
Decide how broad the boycott will be. Depending on your goals and mapping, nominating a specific product, service or section of a company may be the best and simplest way to get your message across. If you decide to focus on an entire company, set of companies or other target then you may need to educate the public about connections to the issue and one another. You should also consider whether you will additionally call for consumer boycotts of other companies and bodies that sell your targets’ products, or who supply and invest in them.
Decide what scale the boycott will need to operate at in order to achieve your goals. Will it be local, national or international? Can you achieve this and how long will it take to build momentum at this scale? Which audiences will you initially target and which ones will you need to reach in order to generate enough groundswell to make the boycott a success?

Engage Supporters & Tell the Story

Research and map your community and potential supporters to identify who you wish to reach as well as organisations and groups who may partner with you. Can you get institutions to join the campaign and change their procurement policies?
Craft a succinct and compelling story that connects the opponent and/or its products to the issue you are seeking to publicise. This should put forward your boycott as a simple, logical and effective action that supporters can easily undertake. Take into account the counter-arguments opponents are likely to use to deny or minimise their involvement and the severity of the situation.
Consider whether you will also encourage a ‘buycott’ by outlining alternatives which consumers can patronise.

Develop a Timeline

Draw up timelines which include dates at which plans can be revised and tactics escalated. Consider what the best timing for launching the boycott, and republicizing it, will be. Are there particular points in the year when audiences will be most attuned and when profits can be most affected? When does the opponent hold board meetings, AGMs, etc?

Launch the Boycott

Put demands to your opponents in a letter which also states why you are undertaking a boycott against them and when it will begin. If this doesn’t cause them to shift position then add this response to other evidence that the boycott is just and necessary.
Other than using social media, email lists and other channels under the campaign’s control, the campaign should get off to a solid start via a high profile protest, advertising, an open letter or a public launch (online or offline). Further actions can be used to publicise the boycott and overcome lulls.

Keep it Going

Decide how you will maintain public engagement and demonstrate to those who have joined the boycott that progress is being made and that it is necessary to stay the course. Holding regular protests and events at points of consumption will aid visibility as well as enable direct leafleting and conversations with customers. Depending on your campaign’s structure you may wish to encourage local action groups to undertake autonomous action.
Think about how various tactics can best reinforce each other. For example, could you use banners and flyers publicising the boycott during a blockade or protest at a company branch or outlet?

Online / Offline

Boycotts can be effective either online or offline or a combination of both.

Examples of online uses of this tactic:

An online pledge not to purchase a product until the company changes its practices
Digital advertising so that people who search for a product are served information about why they should boycott it
An app that provides shoppers with information about different products and whether they are on a boycott list

Examples of offline use of this tactic:

Stickers on products, such as the ‘apartheid hummus‘ tactic
Leaflet outside a supermarket to advise shoppers
‘Shop-ins’ or ‘trolley boycotts’ where a group go into a supermarket, load up trolleys with the product, and then abandon them in the shop

Examples and Case Studies

Noncooperation
Strikes: The other kind of Economic Noncooperation tactic

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