{"id":1158,"date":"2019-03-27T03:47:58","date_gmt":"2019-03-27T03:47:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sportsnewsforyou.com\/?p=1158"},"modified":"2019-03-27T03:47:58","modified_gmt":"2019-03-27T03:47:58","slug":"why-your-boycott-hashtag-doesnt-actually-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/?p=1158","title":{"rendered":"Why Your Boycott Hashtag Doesn’t Actually Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

We live in an age of boycotts. It seems as if every week a new company or product is the subject of a trending boycott hashtag: #DeleteUber, #BoycottNordstrom, #BoycottPepsi, #NoNetflix. And we don\u2019t just speak out against a company\u2019s actions\u2014we vow to use our power as consumers to hit brands where it hurts the most, their bank account. I know someone who won\u2019t buy Barilla pasta because the company is anti-gay. A friend refuses to buy Apple products because of their proprietary obsession. \u201cIf enough people do it,\u201d he says, \u201cthey\u2019ll have to change their practices.\u201d This is the same mindset millions of people are taking in the <\/span>#GrabYourWallet movement, which organizes boycotts of major retailers selling Trump family products. Many folks think the power they have as consumers is greater than their political voice, so they see these boycotts as the only way to enact change.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true, boycotting makes us feel very powerful, as if we\u2019re actually making a difference\u2014but the question is whether or not we actually are. <\/span><\/p>\n

In most cases, our boycotts do not have much of an impact. In fact, they never have: <\/span>75 percent of boycotts lead to no concession on a company\u2019s part at all. But the reason is not for lack of speaking up\u2014it\u2019s that people can\u2019t keep the promises they make. People like to say they will boycott certain companies to feel as if they\u2019re exerting their power, except they actually don\u2019t have the willpower to stop making those purchases. Last month, #GrabYourWallet had more than two million monthly unique views and more than 950 million shares on social media. But Nordstrom, number one on their boycott list, did extremely well in their first quarter, earning 37 percent more than the previous year\u2019s. Amazon, No. 6\u00a0on the boycott list, exceeded its estimated first quarter earnings by $360 million. Even though people are claiming to boycott, they\u2019re still buying, and the companies aren\u2019t suffering.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Research<\/span> has shown that our consumer habits are simply too powerful for boycotts to work. \u201cIt\u2019s just hard to stop buying a product you\u2019re used to buying,\u201d says Northwestern Professor Brayden King on Freakonomics Radio. \u201cEven consumers who are ideologically supportive of a boycott don\u2019t tend to follow through and support the boycott because they won\u2019t want to change their behavior.\u201d People don\u2019t realize how much they rely on certain products or brands in their everyday lives\u2014like Starbucks coffee or Netflix\u2014so when they have to take them away all of the sudden, especially for a lofty, distant-feeling cause, it\u2019s extremely difficult. So difficult, they just don\u2019t have the willpower to do it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Humans fall victim to what is known in psychology as motivated reasoning: our tendency to decide what we want first, then come up with reasons to support what we\u2019ve already decided we want. For example, I have friends who claim to be opposed to Uber, but when Lyft is more expensive, they are less likely to hold so strongly to their impassioned boycott. In other words, we decide that we want to use Uber because it\u2019s cheaper, and then we defend our reasoning. (\u201cWell, this one $8 ride won\u2019t make a difference.\u201d)\u00a0Georgetown consumer behavior researcher Neeru Paharia has examined why our resolve doesn\u2019t always match our rhetoric.\u00a0She <\/span>found that people will stick to their morals only when they do not actually like the product. The problem is that when we like a product, we will find a way to reconcile our distaste. \u201cWe decide what is moral based on how much we want something,\u201d Paharia told NPR\u2019s \u201cHidden Brain.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The more distance we can put between ourselves and an action that we view as unethical, the easier it is for us to continue to support it, according to Paharia. She uses the example of sweatshops: We may be against sweatshops in practice, but if a company outsources their labor, even if they\u2019re still employing sweatshops, we feel removed enough to defend buying the product. Apple, for example, has come <\/span>under scrutiny for its treatment of their workers. And yet, Apple is the most valuable company on the stock market. The same issue of distance is relevant to Trump products. It\u2019s easy enough to boycott Trump businesses and products\u2014it\u2019s much harder to boycott the many, many companies that have endorsed Trump or stock his products. The additional degree of separation makes it cognitively easier for us to defend to ourselves. After all, we\u2019re not buying from Trump directly, we\u2019re just buying from a store that also happens to sell his products.<\/p>\n

Our country has a rich history of boycotting\u2014from the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 to the boycott of French products\u2014<\/span>\u00e0\u00a0la \u201cfreedom fries\u201d\u2014in 2003 to the New Balance sneaker boycott this past November. Though we might feel as if this makes a difference, it\u2019s just that: a feeling. Speaking up with your wallet can make a splash and generate some news, but it\u2019s not enough to enact real change. True impact comes from protesters camping at Standing Rock for a year or\u00a0<\/span>from the legal case against the Montgomery bus company. Real change requires more than saying you won\u2019t buy something. It requires showing up to your congressman\u2019s office or town hall meetings, marching in protests, picking up the phone to call your representatives, signing petitions, writing letters and emails\u2014making noise whenever and wherever possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We live in an age of boycotts. It seems as if every week a new company or product is the subject of a trending boycott hashtag: #DeleteUber, #BoycottNordstrom, #BoycottPepsi, #NoNetflix. And we don\u2019t just speak out against a company\u2019s actions\u2014we vow to use our power as consumers to hit brands where it hurts the most,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1158\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}