By ARTHUR VIDRO
On Consumerism
One seldom-used weapon in a consumer’s arsenal is the boycott.
A boycott is the abstaining from buying or using a particular product, or from conducting business with a particular merchant.
A grassroots group called the People’s Union USA organized a nationwide boycott of Walmart from April 7 to April 14.
The boycott, which ended yesterday, is the group’s attempt to protest the retailer’s rollback of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
The same group was behind a more widespread national boycott of large retailers on Feb. 28. Yes, that was a one-day boycott.
Regardless of the motivation for those boycotts, I struggle to understand how they could be effective.
Some of the people taking part will merely move their purchases up a day or two to precede the advertised boycott. That doesn’t harm the retailer at all.
Some people taking part will delay their purchases a couple days until after the boycott has expired. That, too, doesn’t harm the retailer at all.
In either case, you are making the same purchases at the same store but merely altering the days you make the purchases.
That does not affect the merchant’s bottom line. It still receives the same amount of money from you and still sells you the same goods.
Also, some consumers might buy from the merchant’s website instead of showing up in person, mistakenly thinking that patronizing a store remotely, without traveling to it, constitutes participation in a boycott.
What would make for an effective boycott?
Suppose the target of a boycott was a car manufacturer. The masses could boycott, say, all Ford vehicles and instead purchase their cars from General Motors. Or vice versa.
That could be an effective boycott. For the buyers would still be buying, but not from the targeted company. They would be giving their business to a competitor.
Or if shoppers were to boycott, say, all stores that by default put your purchases into a plastic bag, that could be effective too. It might get the stores to switch to paper bags or it might get the shoppers to bring their own cloth bags.
In cities with more than one daily newspaper, a boycott could be very effective, for the public would have the option of buying the competing newspaper to stay informed, and there would be no purchase of back issues after the boycott had ended. This would be a loss of revenue to the publishers. And if circulation declined enough, could cause their advertisers to look elsewhere, further harming the publication.
But to urge people not to shop at a certain place for a single day or a single week? Makes no sense to me.
The Walmart boycott will be repeated from May 20 to May 26.
Other companies with upcoming boycotts aimed at them are General Mills, Target, McDonald’s and Amazon.
The most effective — though reprehensible — boycott I know of was in Germany in the 1930s. Before World War II began, before the nation’s leadership started slaughtering the continent’s Jews, it began less violently, by coaxing its population to boycott all Jewish merchants. Sometimes the affected merchants packed up and moved to other nations, which made Germany’s elected leaders very happy.
On the other hand, a boycott is not always meant to inflict financial harm. Sometimes it is merely an expression of moral outrage.
Such was the case in 1980 when the United States boycotted the Summer Olympics held in Moscow. The purpose was to protest Russia’s (ill-fated) intervention in Afghanistan. (The United States would repeat Russia’s mistake and make its own ill-fated intervention in Afghanistan in the 21st century.)
Moral outrage was also the case in 1984 when Russia boycotted the Summer Olympics held in Los Angeles. What was Russia upset about? About our 1980 boycott of its own Olympics.
All the retail boycotts scheduled for this year are likely to fall into the “expression of protest” category. The retailers are not being harmed.
If you really want to harm them, show up peacefully in person with signs of protest, perhaps discouraging other consumers from entering.
But the best way to harm a retailer, peacefully and non-violently, is to take your business elsewhere, permanently.
Until that happens, none of this year’s boycotts will be the least bit effective.
They’ll just be hollow protests.
