Between 1990 and 2007, only 213 boycotts were mentioned in the six largest U.S. newspapers. In the single year of 2017, over 50 companies were boycotted for their connections to Trump, and the UK-based Ethical Consumer Magazine published ethical ratings for a list of over 10,000 companies.

Battle of the Wallets

When consumers boycott a company for political reasons, does a company’s revenue actually go down?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no, and sometimes the revenue actually goes up. To understand why, I’ve analyzed 12 case studies of politically motivated company boycotts from 1955 to 2023. Each case study is summarized in this article, along with details of relevant factors that helped determine the final effect of the boycott on company revenue.

Case 1: Target’s Transgender Bathroom Policy (2016)

On April 19, 2016, Target published a blog post that publicly stated a bathroom policy already common (but unpublicized) among retail businesses: Transgender people could use whichever bathroom (men’s or women’s) that they wanted to.

The next day on April 20th, a conservative Christian nonprofit (the American Family Association) issued a statement saying Target’s policy “is exactly how sexual predators get access to their victims.” The AFA also created a boycott pledge which was signed by over a million people within a couple weeks.

Target’s revenue had already been on the decline when the boycott started, and it continued to decline for almost a year afterwards.

In August 2016, Target said it would spend $20 million to add a private bathroom to each of its stores that didn’t already have one.

At best, Target was forced to accelerate $20 million of spending by several years. At worst, Target may have lost significant additional revenue due to the boycott. There are anecdotes from within the company that some southern stores which had previously been on the border of profitability became unprofitable after the boycotts began.

Additionally, some conservatives protested Target’s bathroom policy by filling shopping carts and then abandoning them in the store — actions that wouldn’t be reflected on Target’s top line revenue but that would be reflected on its bottom line profitability due to the additional cost of spoiled foods and worker labor needed to return items to their shelf spaces.

Financial Takeaway: Target was boycotted by over a million conservatives due to its transgender bathroom choice policy. As a result, the company lost millions of dollars. However, the company had been using the same policy before the boycott. The boycott came as a result of publicizing the policy rather than having the policy.

[1] Peterson. The Target boycott cost more than anyone expected — and the CEO was blindsided. Insider. 2017.

[2] FRED: Monthly retail sales in the U.S.

[3] Safdar. Target adds private bathrooms to quell transgender debate. WSJ. 2016.

Case 2: Nike’s Solidarity with NFL Kneeling (2018)

On September 3, 2018, Nike launched an advertising campaign in partnership with retired NFL player Colin Kaepernick. Kaepernick is controversial for starting a movement of kneeling during the anthem at NFL games as a form of peaceful protest against racial injustice and police brutality.

In the short term, Nike’s stock fell almost 3% the next day (the worst performing stock of the Dow Jones Industrial Average that day) as conservatives angrily criticized Nike for endorsing Kaepernick’s “disrespect” to country and flag. President Trump also criticized Nike, and some conservatives boycotted the company.

However, according to data from Edison Trends, online sales of Nike products jumped 31% between the Sunday before and the Tuesday after Labor Day (that Monday was when the Kaepernick ad was released). That’s nearly double the 17% increase over the same weekend a year earlier. And over the next week, sales continued to outperform relative to the same week in 2017.

So why didn’t the conservative boycott of Nike work?

Customer Base.

A market research study showed that 46% of Nike customers had a positive view of Kaepernick (compared to just 34% of all Americans) and a substantial majority of Nike customers had either a positive or neutral view. Additionally, the percentage of Nike customers who believe that a company should take a stand on social issues was 10 points higher than the percentage of the general public who held that belief.

“[Nike] understands societal trends and its customer demographics better than most… [The ad was] a calculated risk, but one that our data shows has had a positive impact so far in terms of online sales…Nike [is also] focused on younger generations and expanding their market. This ad did that for them… [Nike] has a rich history of positioning itself as a progressive company that connects with its customers through constructive conflict.”

Hetal Pandya (Cofounder of Edison Trends)

In other words, For Nike, bad press (from conservatives) is still good press.

“Controversial endorsements tend to generate a lot of hype… In this case, controversy is a good thing to their target market.”

Marshal Cohen (Chief retail industry analyst for the NPD Group, a market research company)

Financial Takeaway: Nike was boycotted by conservatives for partnering with an NFL star who kneeled as a form of protest against police brutality and racial injustice. Afterwards, Nike sales actually increased rather than decreased because Nike’s customer base is much more progressive than America as a whole.

[4] White. What boycott? Nike sales are up 31% since the Kaepernick campaign. NBC News. 2018.

Case 3: Facebook’s Refusal to Censor Trump (2020)

After George Floyd’s death, Facebook received heavy criticism for refusing to take down two posts by Trump. One said (in reference to the BLM riots) “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” and another criticized CHAZ (the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone) in Seattle.

In response, over 1,000 companies publicly boycotted Facebook and reduced or eliminated their Facebook ad spend during the first three weeks of July 2020.

However, during the first three weeks of July 2020, overall Facebook ad revenue grew by 10% over the previous year — a resounding failure for the Facebook boycotters.

Financial Takeaway: The vast majority of Facebook ad revenue comes from lots and lots of small and medium businesses who don’t have the time, expertise, or money to reinvest into moving their advertising to a different platform. As a result, 1,000 companies couldn’t even dent Facebook’s year-over-year ad revenue growth.

[5] Hsu and Lutz. More than 1,000 companies boycotted Facebook. Did it work? NY Times. 2021.

Case 4: Goya CEO Complimented Trump (2020)

In July 2020, the CEO of Goya (a large Latin food brand) praised then-president Donald Trump, triggering a boycott of Goya by Democrats like AOC. In response, Republicans started a counter “buycott” movement to support the brand. Boycott-related social media posts and media coverage dominated buycott-related media. However, the financial results were the opposite: Goya sales briefly surged by 22% before fully dissipating back to normal levels within 3 weeks.

Financial Takeaway: A conservative buycott movement overpowered a progressive boycott movement, resulting in a temporary surge in Goya revenue after the company’s CEO publicly praised Trump.

[6] Liaukonyte, Tuchman, and Zhu. Frontiers: Spilling the beans on political consumerism: Do social media boycotts and buycotts translate to real sales impact? Marketing Science. 2022.

Case 5: Disney’s Opposition to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” Bill (2022)

In spring 2022, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into state law the “Parental Rights in Education” bill which has been referred to by critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. The bill prohibits elementary school teachers from including gender or sexual identity topics in their classroom instruction, but does not prohibit kids from discussing such topics amongst themselves.

In response, Disney’s then-CEO Bob Chapek issued the following statement:

“Florida’s HB 1557, also known as the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill, should never have passed and should never have been signed into law. Our goal as a company is for this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts, and we remain committed to supporting the national and state organizations working to achieve that. We are dedicated to standing up for the rights and safety of LGBTQ+ members of the Disney family, as well as the LGBTQ+ community in Florida and across the country.”

In response to Disney’s statement, Christian worship leader Sean Feucht’s “Hold the Line” movement held a series of protests outside the entrance to Disneyland, and in an April 12, 2022 tweet, Feucht said his Disney boycott pledge had been signed by more than 50,000 people.

The American Family Association also called for a more specific Disney boycott on the Pixar movie “Lightyear” that was released on June 17, 2022.

None of the conservative boycotts appear to have had any effect on Disney’s revenue, however. The company’s Q2 2022 revenue was up significantly over both Q1 2022 as well as Q2 2021.

Financial Takeaway: Conservative boycotts of Disney’s public antagonism towards Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill did not prevent Disney’s revenue from growing on both a quarterly and yearly basis.

[7] Mackey. Woke Disney: 10 families who are swearing off Disney due to its left-leaning politics. Fox News. 2022.

[8] Caldwell. Boycotting Disney isn’t new. But does it work? Disney Food Blog. 2022.

[9] Disney Revenue. Macrotrends.

Case 6: Bud Light’s Partnership with a Transgender Influencer (2023)

On April 1, 2023, transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney posted a video of herself with a Bud Light can that had her face on it on Instragram. Two days later, Kid Rock posted a video of himself shooting cases of Bud Light, and a conservative boycott of Bud Light’s parent company Anheuser-Busch quickly followed.

The week ending April 15, Bud Light’s sales reportedly dropped 17% compared to the same week a year ago. In contrast, rival brands Miller Lite and Coors Lite both saw their sales jump by more than 17%.

On April 14, the CEO of Anheuser-Busch responded to the controversy with a statement that neither apologized for nor reaffirmed a commitment to the LGBTQ+ community. In essence, he decided to alienate everyone instead of just conservatives.

Plot Twist: Bud Light has been openly gay for decades

You might understandably wonder how Bud Light could have been so ignorant to the risk of political backlash that it would not only partner with an influencer who is disliked by many of its customers, but also double down on the mistake with an ambiguous response to the controversy.

A big piece of the answer may be that Bud Light has been openly LGBTQ-friendly for decades without financial consequence.

In 1995, Bud Light issued an LGBT-inclusive print ad. The same year, Anheuser-Busch also pledged to donate a portion of all Bud Light sales to support AIDS-related non-profit organizations in local communities.

In 1996, the company began running a campaign with the slogan “Labels belong on beer, not people” in national gay magazines and has had a presence in such magazines ever since.

Starting in 1998 and continuing for a number of years, Bud Light used the “Be Yourself” marketing slogan. This campaign was accompanied by a Bud Light bottle decked out in rainbow beads, sunglasses, and a stovepipe hat.

Similar pride marketing campaigns continued for decades.

In 2016, Bud Light released an ad with two men getting married and Seth Rogen saying “Gay weddings — they’re just like any wedding”.

Also in 2016, Bud Light released an ad that featured transgender actor Ian Harvie and the slogan “Gender identity, it’s really a spectrum, and we don’t need these labels!”

In June 2019, Bud Light released limited edition rainbow aluminum bottles in bars across the U.S.

So if Bud Light ran LGBTQ marketing campaigns for decades without incurring conservative boycotts, what made the Dylan Mulvaney controversy different?

Why was the Dylan Mulvaney campaign different?

Explanation 1: Bud Light’s previous LGBTQ campaigns focused on surgically unmodified gay & lesbian people, and trans-men (i.e. biological women).

However, many social conservatives have a stronger antagonism towards trans-women (i.e. biological men) than towards either trans-men (i.e. biological women) or gay people of either gender who do not undergo surgery. There are three big reasons why this is the case:

1. Trans-women have the physical capabilities of biological men which means:
   • They can outperform the best biological female athletes in many sports, which conservatives view as unfair, and
   • They can use unquestioned access to women’s bathrooms and locker rooms to sexually assault women and young girls more easily.
2. Trans-women haven’t necessarily had to go through the same issues as biological women, so it frustrates some biological women when trans-women promote agendas on such issues.
   • If a trans-woman like Dylan Mulvaney doesn’t have boobs, then why is she promoting a Nike sports bra that she hasn’t even experienced the need for?
   • If a trans-woman hasn’t experienced the social pressure to conform to a “less powerful” societal gender role, then why are they speaking out on that issue as if they know that struggle?
   • *Trans-men who grew up as biological women do not typically face such criticisms since women are not perceived as having physical or social advantages over men.
3. Conservatives worry that biologically male sexual predators can use transgenderism as a mask in order to get access to young girls (who are perceived as more vulnerable than boys).

Explanation 2: Studies have shown that the United States is becoming more politically polarized and that the political camps have higher animosity for each other than they used to. That may mean that both conservatives and liberals are more ready to boycott a brand that they perceive as supporting the “enemy” political camp than was the case just 5 or 10 years ago.

Financial Takeaway: Bud Light has run LGBTQ-inclusive marketing campaigns for decades without financial or political consequence, but in 2023, its partnership with trans-female influencer Dylan Mulvaney incurred a massive conservative boycott that depressed sales by 17% within 2 weeks. Bud Light was trying to add younger (more liberal) people to its customer base, but it failed to realize how much antagonism its conservative customers and wholesalers had towards trans-women in particular.

[10] Bud Light fumbles, but inclusive advertising is here to stay. CBS News. 2023.

[11] Case study: Budweiser. Marketing The Rainbow. 2023.

Case 7: Chick-fil-A Donations to Anti-LGBTQ Groups (2012-2019)

In July 2012, an LGTBQ advocacy group published an article detailing how Chick-fil-A had (for years) donated millions of dollars to organizations that opposed gay marriage. In response, Chick-fil-A’s CEO made the following statement on the radio:

“We’re inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say we know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage… And I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude that thinks we have the audacity to redefine what marriage is all about.”

Progressives boycotted the restaurant chain immediately, even staging a national “kiss-in” by gay and lesbian couples in the restaurant’s then 1600 locations across the county. In response, conservative politicians like Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum rallied their social media followers to go eat at Chick-fil-A. This mobilized so many conservatives that Chick-fil-A lines extended around the block at many locations.

After that, the progressive Chicago mayor said he wouldn’t approve land permits for Chick-fil-A. A month later, Chick-fil-A agreed to stop donating to organizations that opposed same-sex marriage in order to get unblocked in Chicago. Importantly though, this policy change was made in order to appease a politician and allow the company to grow, not because the consumer protest had caused a decrease in the company’s revenue (it hadn’t).

However, even after that, many progressives were not satisfied as the company continued to donate to many conservative groups, including groups that were seen as “anti-LGBTQ”. This led to a years-long boycott by some progressives.

In 2015, Democrat NYC mayor Bill de Blasio restoked the boycott when he told reporters he was boycotting the restaurant chain and encouraged other New Yorkers to do the same. However, the restaurant chain continued to rapidly expand both into NYC and across the country. Over the 10 year period from 2011 to 2021, the company’s total sales quadrupled.

Eventually in 2019, the company did alter its donation policy to focus on different issues which were less contentious, but it did not explicitly promise to stop giving to anti-LGBTQ groups. It did however pledge to start also giving to black-led nonprofits or groups serving the black community.

Financial Takeaway: Chick-fil-A was boycotted by progressives for almost a decade due to its practice of donating to anti-LGBTQ groups. However, the boycott appears to have had no long-term effect on sales (and may have even helped sales due to a conservative “buycott” response to the progressive boycott).

[12] Sugar. Boycotts haven’t stopped the growth of Chick-fil-A. Vox. 2018.

[13] Dunn. Fact check: Chick-fil-A has not resumed donations to groups that oppose LGBTQ rights. USA Today. 2020.

Case 8: Nike Sweatshops (1998)

In 1992, Harper’s magazine published “Nike: The New Free-Trade Heel” by Jeff Ballinger, criticizing Nike’s sub-par pay and working conditions in subcontractor manufacturing facilities in Indonesia. More media coverage and a U.S. State Department report accused Nike’s conractors of paying less than local minimum wage, using child labor, and having workers operate under hazardous conditions. Indonesian and Korean worker protests occurred.

In 1993, CBS-TV broadcast a U.S. report on Nike contractors’ labor practices in Indonesia.

In 1994, media criticism of Nike increased. The New York Times, ABC-TV, and the Economist all ran stories. Major investigative reports also ran in the Boston Globe and Los Angeles Times.

In 1996, a labor activist broke the story that celebrity Kathie Lee Gifford’s clothing line was manufactured in sweatshops made up of 13- and 14-year old Honduran girls. Kathie’s reaction was a knee jerk. She waged a war on sweatshops, and a previously unprecedented level of attention came to be focused on Nike’s manufacturing practices. In the same year, Life magazine published an expose with photos of Pakistani children stitching soccer balls for Nike and other brands. The fact that other brands were involved in the photo probably diluted the popular backlash against Nike.

In 1997, an EY audit leak revealed that workers in a Vietnam subcontractor of Nike were being exposed to toxic fumes at 177 times the Vietnamese legal limit. Nike CEO Phil Knight also became the sixth richest person in the U.S., bringing more attention to Nike. The first serious U.S. boycotts against Nike were organized. Protests were conducted by boycotters at Nike store openings in Seattle, San Francisco, and Boston. Student boycotts and protests against Nike partnerships with universities erupted at multiple schools including the University of Illinois, Penn State, University of North Carolina, University of Colorado, Florida State, Michigan State, and others. And an international trade report was released which claimed racist pay scales in Nike contractor facilities: Bangladeshi “migrant” workers were supposedly paid less than their Malaysian coworkers.

“Sales were dropping and Nike was being portrayed in the media as a company that was willing to exploit workers and deprive them of the basic wage needed to sustain themselves in an effort to expand profits.”

Stanford University research study

In 1998, student boycotts and protests intensified. Students pressured many universities into cancelling deals to make university-Nike-cobranded products. Michael Jordan promised to visit Nike’s Asian production facilities. And a story circulated about a Nike contractor worker being beaten and fired for taking a day off to take care of her sick child.

“In fiscal 1998… [Nike’s] Revenues in the United States declined for the first time in four years, as demand for Nike product slowed… U.S. footwear and apparel revenues decreased 2% compared to the prior year.”

Nike 1998 Annual Report to Shareholders

In 1999, students and activists traveled to meet with Indonesian workers. Nike blocked NGO groups from touring their facilities. Nike increased its advertising spending by 53% for the next year. The company also got negative publicity for a large scale food poisoning incident at its Vietnam factory.

Also in 1999, Nike established its Fair Labor Association to protect workers’ rights and monitor the company’s Code of Conduct in Nike contractor factories. This was the start of a turn-around in Nike’s public relations.

In 2000, miscellaneous stories ran about Nike sweatshops, but most consumers were no longer thinking about the issue. Instead, they were worried about their retirement funds, investments, and jobs as the dot com bubble burst.

Fiscal year 1998 was the start of Nike’s revenue problems resulting from boycotts:

• U.S. footwear and apparel revenues decreased 2% compared to 1997.
• U.S. footwear revenue decreased 7% (with a 3% decrease in pairs sold and a 4% drop in average selling price).
• Team sports apparel sales were down 8% from the prior year due to university students pressuring schools into dropping Nike partnerships. In Nike’s 1998 annual report, management referred to this as a “significant decrease”.

Financial Takeaway: Nike received bad publicity about its connection to human rights abuses occurring in Asian sweatshops throughout the 1990s. However, it wasn’t until around 1998 when a combination of factors led to revenue-harming boycotts. Those factors included (1) the rapid growth of the internet, (2) the viral spread of more photos of Nike workers in poor conditions, and (3) a higher level of general awareness that had been built up in the public (and especially in college students) over years.

[14] Sweatshops almost killed Nike in the 1990s. TFL. 2019.

[15] Nike sweatshops: Inside the scandal. New Idea. 2019.

[16] Nike: Managing ethical missteps. Auburn University.

[17] Nike 1998 Annual Report

[18] Nike 2000 Annual Report

[19] FRED: U.S. clothing & clothing accessory retail store sales

[20] Nike accused of tolerating sweatshops. The Guardian. 2001.

[21] Nike Chronology. Center for Communication & Civic Engagement at the University of Washington.

[22] Byerly. The sweatshop scandal that Kathie Lee Gifford was involved in. 2021.

Case 9: National City Lines Bus Segregation (1955-1956)

National City Lines was a national bus & transportation conglomerate that was founded in 1936. In 1955, one of the company’s subsidiaries, Montgomery City Lines, was boycotted for enforcing unconstitutional local laws that required segregation of black and white bus riders.

At the time of the boycott, it’s estimated that roughly 75% of Montgomery bus riders were African American. Once the boycott started, the bus system lost roughly 30,000 to 40,000 daily riders (the majority of its riders).

On November 17th of 1956, a local newspaper (the Montgomery Advertiser) reported that the boycott had cost roughly $750,000 in lost revenue. If we extrapolate that revenue loss rate until the boycott ended on December 20th, then the boycott cost the bus system roughly $816,000 (equivalent to $9.2 million in 2023 dollars).

In total, the boycott lasted 381 days and was only resolved when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation on public buses was unconstitutional.

Financial Takeaway: Montgomery City Lines was boycotted by the majority of its customers for over a year due to their compliance with racist government policies. As a result, the company lost a massive amount of revenue.

Case 10: Woolworth’s segregated lunch counters (1960)

On February 1, 1960, four African American college students sat down at the lunch counter of a Woolworth department store in Greensboro, NC. When employees refused to serve them, the students initiated a boycott that spread across the U.S. Some Woolworth stores were forced to close or reduce their hours of operation due to the protests. Boycotted store locations typically saw their sales drop by roughly 33%.

Eventually, on July 25, the company acquiesced to boycotters’ demands and announced it would desegregate its lunch counters. However, the single Woolworth store in Greensboro lost $200,000 in revenue due to the boycotts (equivalent to $2 million in 2023 dollars). Across all its stores, Woolworth as a company had lost substantially more.

Financial Takeaway: Woolworth was subject to a national boycott for almost 6 months in 1960 due to its racial segregation policy. The company suffered millions of dollars in lost revenue as a result of the intense boycotts and eventually agreed to desegregate its stores.

Case 11: Coor’s labor practices (1966-1987)

In 1966, the civil rights movement motivated two Hispanic groups to initiate a boycott against the Coors Brewing Company for discriminatory hiring practices. That boycott continued for years, gradually expanding to include women’s rights groups, labor unions, and LGBT activists. The list of grievances also expanded to include:

1. Coor’s policy of subjecting prospective employees to polygraph tests with questions about political beliefs, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, and any personally embarrassing stories that could embarrass the company. The policy was motivated by the abduction and murder of a Coor’s family member, but some employees claimed the practice had also become an invasion of their privacy.
2. Coor’s workplace policy of raiding (forced searches and seizures of) employee lockers and cars on any rumor of marijuana possession.
3. Accusations of racism & sexism in Coor’s hiring & firing processes.
4. Coor’s “21 grounds for dismissal” policy.

In the mid 1970s, Joe Coors started getting more involved in conservative politics. This led progressives to intensify their boycotts of the Coors brand.

In 1977, the AFL-CIO (the largest federation of labor unions in the U.S.) initiated a nationwide boycott of Coors. Sales dropped measurable the same year.

By 1982, Coors had dropped from the 4th largest brewer to the 6th largest brewer in the U.S., and Joe Coors took an even more public position as adviser to Ronald Reagan on conservative policies.

By the mid 80s, the company had decided to be more conciliatory in an effort to reduce the revenue bleed. Coors began hiring more diverse employees and donating to black and Hispanic community groups.

In 1986, Coors discontinued their policy of polygraph testing.

In 1987, the AFL-CIO agreed to end the Coors boycott after Coors agreed to make several concessions including using union labor to build a new facility in Virginia and to expedite a union vote in Coors’ main facility in Colorado.

However, even decades later, Coors has not regained the same share of the Hispanic or LGBT markets that they once had. Even as of 2023, many gay bars in San Francisco do not serve Coors.

“If we had to do it over [again], we would have been polishing the image apple way back when. I think it would have made the path easier for us. But then again, if the path was easier, maybe we wouldn’t have traveled it. You see sometimes it’s the tougher the path, the better you go.”

Bill Coors

Financial Takeaway: Coors was boycotted by progressives for decades and suffered significant revenue loss as a result. The company’s executives and owners eventually concluded that it would have been advantageous to be conciliatory with the boycotters from the beginning in order to maintain a better brand image.

[23] Coors strike and boycott. Wikipedia.

[24] Coors: A family legacy (full documentary). Biography.

Case 12: BP’s Deep Horizon Oil Spill (2010)

On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon Macondo offshore oil drilling platform exploded, killing 11 workers. Multiple industry and government efforts to cap the resulting oil spill failed, and the oil continued to gush into the Gulf of Mexico for roughly 3 months. In total, an estimated 134-206 million gallons of oil were released in the spill. Tarballs washed ashore in all 5 gulf states, disrupting tourist beaches and the commercial fishing industry.

By early June (45 days after the spill), roughly 350,000 people had joined a “boycott BP” Facebook group. A webcam of the broken pipe (which had yet to be capped at this point) with oil gushing into the ocean had become a compelling rally for people to organize against BP. Photos of oil-covered birds and sea animals were also going viral.

By mid summer, the boycott had amassed 723,000 followers and had had a meaningful impact, just not on BP. The brunt of the boycott has been targeted towards BP-branded gas stations, most of which are independently operated and not owned by BP. Some owners of BP-branded gas stations had seen their sales slump as much as 40%, but BP’s revenue barely dipped at all.

Financial Takeaway: A live webcam of the ongoing (for months) BP oil spill and graphic photos of dead and dying animals covered in oil helped drive enough anger towards BP to give the BP boycott enough economic power to have an impact. However, the boycott mostly hurt independent owner-operators of BP-branded gas stations and only slightly decreased BP’s actual revenue. Only 200 of the more than 11,000 BP, Arco, and Amoco branded gas stations were actually owned by BP at that time.

[25] The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Timeline. NOAA. 2020.

[26] Neuman. As BP Backlash grows, so do calls for boycott. NPR. 2010.

[27] Rohrer. Just how angry are people at BP? BBC News. 2020.

[28] Korosec. BP Gulf Spill: Why the boycott isn’t working (update). CBS News. 2010.

Summary

Coors was successfully boycotted by progressives. Bud Light was successfully boycotted by conservatives. Goya was not successfully boycotted by progressives. What’s the pattern?

At a high level, there are 5 key variables which determine the effect of a boycott on a company’s revenue:

1. Political views of the company’s customer base. If the majority a company’s customer base is Republican, the company will not be susceptible to boycotts by Democrats, and vice versa. This means it is important for large companies to know the political composition of their target and existing customer bases.
2. The level of emotions attached to the boycott calls. This is a function of (1) the particular issue (e.g. transgender issues are more emotionally charged for social conservatives than are “standard” gay or lesbian issues) and (2) the quantity and severity of pictures and images that show individual people being harmed by the issue. Also, in general, issues related to people (or the environment) in other countries are not as emotional for people as issues related to people (or the environment) in their own country.
3. The size & wealth of the company and its executives. The larger the company and the more well-known a brand, the more antagonism it will evoke if some politically contentious issue comes to light. Additionally, the wealthier a company or its executives are, the more scrutiny and antagonism it will evoke if the company or executive draws the wrath of social progressives.
4. Availability of alternatives. Beer is a commodity. If a beer brand does something you don’t like, it’s extremely easy to just buy a different brand of beer. However, if you’re a small business owner reliant on Facebook ads to get customers, it’s much harder for you to make the decision to boycott Facebook if the company does something you disagree with politically.
5. Supply chain insulation (or risk). When BP was boycotted after the BP oil spill, BP gas stations across the U.S. took serious revenue hits. However, BP as a company was insulated from almost all of this since the vast majority of BP gas stations are independently owned and operated with long-term contractual commitments to buy gas from BP. Additionally, BP sells gas to many other brands of gas stations. These other gas stations mixed fuel from multiple sources, so a combination of diminishing returns and a need for available alternatives prevented consumers from boycotting those stations. On the other hand, Coors was boycotted by its own distributors during the 1970s. Liberal bar owners made the decision to stop carrying Coors products even if the bars’ customers would have purchased them. That means supply chain partners can either insulate a company or put it at risk, depending on whether long-term contractual agreements are in place and on what the political values of those partners are.

From the case studies I covered in this article, it’s also clear that there are short-term boycotts and long-term boycotts. Short-term boycotts flare and die in the course of a month or so. Long-term boycotts grow more gradually, making their effects more difficult for a company to isolate and measure, but these boycotts can last for years or decades and have significant consequences on a company’s revenue and brand reputation.

Specific Factors That Have Contributed to Boycott Success:

Within the five general factors described above, there are a few specific factors worth mentioning that can influence how much impact a boycott has a company’s revenue:

• A visual is worth 1,000 reports. Nike’s child labor, work environments filled with 177 times the acceptable level of toxic chemicals, racist pay scales, and sexual exploitation of workers during the 1990s arguably constitute a much worse crime than BP’s oil spill in 2010. Yet the buying power that was withdrawn from BP products in the aftermath of the oil spill was WAY more than the buying power that was withdrawn from Nike products even during the peak of Nike’s 90’s scandals. However, the BP oil spill was accompanied by (1) a live webcam that streamed the ongoing disaster for months and (2) graphic photos of dead animals covered in oil, washing up on human-occupied beaches. In contrast, the Nike scandal had a few poor-quality photos but was mostly driven by written reports. What images and videos covered the topic were mostly showing images similar to what many people already expect a third world country to look like.
• Specificity is king. Boycotts that target single companies are more effective than boycotts that target industries. One reason for this is that a boycott that targets an entire industry leaves consumers with few alternatives (key variable #4 from before). Another reason is that a boycott that targets a single company provides consumers with a clearer vision of the “enemy” which is more emotionally compelling (key variable #2 from before).

Should companies acquiesce to the demands of boycotters?

If a company is boycotted (or at risk of being boycotted) for a specific, emotionally salient cause that resonates with the majority of a company’s customer base, then that company may want to comply with the demands of the boycotters. However, if that means rebranding (e.g. because the company’s name or logo is perceived as racist), then the company should take into consideration the cost of rebranding. It may actually be worthwhile to simply keep operating the brand until it dies, and return all profits to shareholders rather than reinvesting them.

The Cost of Rebranding is High. Case Study: Aunt Jemima’s Racist Name & Logo (2020)

Following the death of George Floyd in 2020, many brands were called out for racist names and/or logos. That led many companies to reactively or proactively rebrand. One such brand was Aunt Jemima (pancake mix & syrup). Aunt Jemima’s name was seen as racist (because “Aunt” and “Uncle” used to be used in place of “Mrs.” and “Mr.” for slaves), and the brand’s logo featured a black ex-slave woman. As such, the woman was first removed from the brand’s logo, and later the brand name was also changed to “Pearl Milling Company”.

A marketing study later found that removing the image but keeping the Aunt Jemima name was associated with an 8% decrease in likelihood of purchase, and informing people that the image was removed to address racism in the brand and packaging did not help.

The study also found that when the name & logo were both changed, the likelihood of purchase dropped by 32%. In this situation, informing people that the change was made to address racism in the brand and packaging slightly reduced the drop to 22%. Providing further information that the brand had donated $5 million to support the black community did not offer any additional reduction in lost sales.

The study also determined that consumers believed the product itself had changed after both changes to the brand. This was based on consumers stating lower expectations of taste after the brand changed.

Brand liking and brand trust were not affected by the image removal, but both were reduced when the brand name changed.

Informing consumers that the brand change was to address racism did not affect consumers’ lowered expectations of product taste or their reductions in brand trust and liking.

Appendix A: List of Other Politically Motivated Boycotts Against Companies

• From 1984 to 1993, General Electric was boycotted by INFACT for its complicity in the production of nuclear weapons.
• From 2005 to 2013, Firestone Tire and Rubber Company was boycotted based on accusations by the International Labor Rights Fund (and others) that Firestone contractors used forced and child labor on rubber plantations in Liberia.
• In 2008, Heinz was boycotted after the company decided to pull a commercial that featured two men kissing.
• In 2011, GoDaddy was boycotted by its customers after the company publicly supported a proposed piece of anti-privacy legislation that was intended to reduce online crime.

Appendix B: Annotated Bibliography

[1] Brown. Olympian Sharron Davies calls for Nike boycott over Dylan Mulvaney campaign that is ‘kick in the teeth’ to women. NY Post. 2023.

Nike partnered with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney to have her promote a sports bra. In response, retired UK Olympian swimmer Sharron Davies is calling for a boycott of Nike:

“We can protest… It’s what’s left for us at the moment because nobody really seems to be listening to the general public [so] the only way we can actually make these companies and make governments listen is to boycott with our wallet…[Mulvaney’s sponsored video parading a tight-fitting sports bra] feels like a parody of what women are. In the past, it was always seen as an insult to say, ‘run like a girl’ — and here we’ve got someone behaving in a way that’s very un-sportslike… And it’s so frustrating [that Nike would do this] when only 1% of USA sponsorship dollars go to actual females in sports… It just seems like literally a kick in the teeth, constantly… It’s not about the sport not being for everybody — it absolutely is. It just has to be the right place [for trans athletes]. Let’s debate it and add categories if we need to. If we can’t talk about it, then we can’t resolve the problem.”

[2] M&M Twitter statement: retiring the candy mascots. 2023.

“In the last year, we’ve made some changes to our beloved spokescandies. We weren’t sure if anyone would even notice. And we definitely didn’t think it would break the internet. But now we get it — even a candy’s shoes can be polarizing. Which was the last thing M&M’s wanted since we’re all about bringing people together. Therefore, we have decided to take an indefinite pause from the spokescandies. In their place, we are proud to introduce a spokesperson America can agree on: the beloved Maya Rudolph.”

[3] Cooper. M&M candy mascot retirement was a publicity stunt. CNET. 2023.

In January 2023, Mars announced that their M&M candy brand would retire the candy mascots due to the polarizing nature of their spokes-candies’ shoes. However, this was just a ruse — the start of a Superbowl PR campaign. To anyone paying attention, this was obvious from the initial Tweet announcement because Maya Rudolph, the supposed replacement brand representative, is hardly someone “America can agree on” since she is a self-proclaimed feminist.

[4] Tassin. Brand boycotts are declining as inflation pressures shoppers. Morning Consult. 2023.

Consumers’ willingness to boycott for political reasons is price-sensitive.

[5] Safdar. Target adds private bathrooms to quell transgender debate. WSJ. 2016.

After customer protests of Target’s transgender bathroom policy starting in April 2016, Target announced in August 2016 that it would spend $20 million to add a private bathroom to its 297 stores that didn’t yet have one (most of the company’s 1,797 locations at the time already had such bathrooms). Target’s CFO said this was in response to the bathroom policy criticism, but also said that the customer discontent hadn’t had a material impact on sales.

[6] Vyacheslav Fos et al. The political polarization of corporate America. Harvard Business School Working Paper. 2022.

By using voter registration records for top executives of S&P 1500 companies between 2008 and 2020, this study establishes that executive teams at U.S. companies are becoming more politically homogeneous. This aligns with prior research which showed that many types of social groups (such as families and neighborhoods) are becoming increasingly politically homogeneous.

In more precise terms, this study defines partisanship as the probability that two randomly selected executives from the same company are affiliated with the same political party. Over the 12 year sample period, the study found a 7.7% increase in partisanship. Part of that can be explained by an overall increase in the percentage of executives who are Republican over that time. However, a larger part of the explanation is an increased tendency of executives of both parties to match up with other executives who are politically like-minded. The result is statistically robust.

[7] Ranking the most polarizing brands in America with a survey of over 300,000 people. Morning Consult. 2018.

This survey found that 16 out of the top 20 most polarizing brands were media companies. The 4 exceptions were Trump Hotels, the NFL, Chick-fil-A, and the NBA. However, many of those top 20 brands had net positive favorability with both Republicans and Democrats even though the level of net favorability differed substantially.

Brands from the top 30 most polarized list which had significant net negative favorability with one party and significant net positive favorability with the other include:

• Trump Hotels
• CNN
• NFL
• Fox Business
• Breitbart
• Koch Industries
• Halliburton

Notably, this ranking is based on a survey from 2017-2018 though, so it is over 5 years out of data as of 2023.

[8] Gentzkow, Shapiro, and Taddy. Measuring group differences in high-dimensional choices. Econometrica. 2019.

This study statistically analyzed the partisanship of Congressional speech patterns from 1873 to 2016. Partisanship is defined as the divergence of two probability distributions, but intuitively, the definition is essentially the Bayesian relative likelihood that a given 1-minute section of Congressional speech was provided by a Republican rather than a Democrat.

The chart below (Figure 2, Panel B from the paper) shows how partisanship has varied over time.

In the 43rd session of Congress (1873-1875), the probability of correctly guessing a speaker’s party based on a one-minute speech was 54%. By the 101st session (1989-1990), the probability was 57%. In the 110th session (2007-2009), the probability was 73%. Overall, the paper shows relatively consistent levels of partisanship until around 1990, at which point it explodes.

One possible explanation is that Congressional sessions started getting more media coverage around this time which could have led politicians to use sessions more as a national stage than just as a place for productive dialogue. For example, the House of Representatives started televising live gavel-to-gavel coverage of its proceedings in 1979, and in 1994, the first internet news organization was granted admission into the Congressional Radio-TV Galleries.

The authors suggest evidence points to innovation in political persuasion techniques as the proximate cause of the large increase in politically polarizing speech in 1994. The 1994 inflection point precisely coincides with the Republican takeover of Congress led by Newt Gingrich. This election is widely considered to be a watershed moment in political marketing with consultants such as Frank Luntz applying novel techniques to identify effective language and disseminate it to candidates. Expansion of TV coverage and the introduction of the internet around the same time may have further motivated such linguistic innovation.

[9] How do consumers feel when companies get political? Harvard Business Review. 2020.

The authors of this paper conducted a survey of 168 managers and MBA students. The study determined that political activism decreased perception of brands, but with a much stronger negative bias associated with conservative activism than with liberal activism. However, this study should be taken with a handful of salt because (1) it was based on a survey rather than actual observations of consumers and (2) managers and MBA students are hardly representative of the overall population of consumers.

[10] Sprout Social Survey: Do consumers want brands to take a stand? 2019.

This 2019 survey of 1,500 people determined that 70% of consumers believe it’s important for brands to take a public stand on social and political issues (up from 66% in the 2017 survey). That seems a little contradictory given that 46% of Americans who use social media say they feel worn out by political posts and discussions, but humans have never been accused of being consistent.

Here is a summary of all key takeaways from the study:

• In 2019, 70% of consumers say it’s important for brands to take a stand on social and political issues (up from 66% in 2017). By generation, that breaks down to:
  • 68% of Baby Boomers.
  • 58% of Gen X.
  • 80% of Millennials.
  • 75% of Gen Z.
• 47% of consumers say they want brands to take a stand on social media.
• 66% of consumers who want brands to take a stand on social media say it’s because they believe brands can create real change.
• 67% of consumers say brands are effective at raising awareness around important public issues when they speak out on social media.
• 53% of consumers believe brands only take a stand for public relations or marketing purposes.
• 37% of consumers say brands are more credible when the issue they take a stand on directly impacts their customers.
• 36% of consumers say brands are more credible when the issue they take a stand on directly impacts their business operations.
• 55% of consumers say they would boycott or discontinue shopping with brands that support public issues that don’t align with their own views. 34% of consumers say they would decrease their spending with a brand that takes a stance they don’t agree with.
• 36% of consumers say they’ll purchase more from a company when a brand takes a stand that the consumer aligns with.
• 23% of consumers say it’s never appropriate for brands to take a stand on social media.
• 40% of consumers say the best way for brands to express their public stance on social media is to collaborate with a nonprofit devoted to that issue.
• 39% of consumers feel brands are not credible when taking a stand (up from 18% in 2017).

[11] Boxell, Gentzkow, and Shapiro. Cross-country trends in affective polarization. National Bureau of Economic Research. 2020.

In 1978, the average partisan in the U.S. rated in-party members 27.4% higher than out-party members on a “feeling thermometer”. In 2020, the difference was 56.3%.

[12] Draca and Schwarz. How polarized are citizens? Measuring ideology from the ground-up. 2018 (revised 2021).

The authors applied Latent Dirichlet Allocation (a machine learning algorithm) to political survey data. The analysis indicated that in addition to questions associated with the traditional left-right scale, confidence in institutions plays a leading role in defining citizen ideologies.

The analysis also revealed evidence of a “disappearing center” in a subgroup of countries with citizens shifting away from centrist ideologies and into anti-establishment ‘anarchist’ ideologies. That trend is especially pronounced in the U.S.

[13] Fiorina, Abrams, and Pope. Polarization in the American public: Misconceptions and misreadings. The Journal of Politics. 2008.

Since before 1990, political scientists have studied increasing polarization amongst political elites in the U.S., but the study of mass polarization had not receive as much attention until the mid 2000s.

[14] Partisan professionals: Evidence from credit rating analysts. The Journal of Finance. 2021.

This study shows that credit analysts who are not affiliated with the U.S. president’s party downward-adjust corporate credit ratings more frequently. In other words, even professional credit analysts have their internal economic outlook skewed by non-fundamental political factors.

[15] Vranica. The risks brands take on when touching on social issues. WSJ. 2023.

[16] Haidt. The moral psychology of political polarization: Many causes and a few possible responses. NYU School of Law. 2014.

[17] Swant. Silence is not an option: research shows consumers expect CEOs to take a stand on political issues. Forbes. 2021.

[18] Doing business in an activist world (6th annual business & politics study). Global Strategy Group. 2019.

[19] Drutman. Democrats are replacing Republicans as the preferred party of the very wealthy. Vox. 2016.

[20] Nichols. Consumers’ Research (a conservative organization) launches a text service to alert grocery shopper’s of which brands are “woke”. Axios. 2023.