If you know me at all, you know my dedication towards equal rights. Recently there’s been a lot of media regarding boycotting Target and Best Buy because of their monetary contributions towards an “anti-gay” politician in Minnesota. Concurrently, there are people still discussing the boycotting of BP companies, due to their neglect and mishandling of the oil spill. It seems that the primal response to things like this is to immediately stop shopping at or give any money to these companies as a way to protest their alleged wrong-doing. It makes sense, after all, at a base level; why would we want to continue to feed the mouths of people whose efforts and actions are against our value system?
But then I got to really thinking (look out!) . . . while there have been arguments out there that boycotts may work, I am not here to argue the effectiveness of boycotts (although they can indeed be effective towards diminishing a business’ stock value, a la Pruitt & Friedman, 1986) . I’m here to present to pro-boycotters/pro-equal rights people a deeper issue: is boycotting really consistent with your efforts towards maintaining equal rights and/or morality? Let me explain. Equal rights means equality for all, correct? Everyone has the fundamental right to, well, fundamental rights–shelter, food, marriage, life, liberty, happiness, etc–that is, unless they get those rights taken away by committing heinous crimes or something. So be careful what your boycotting actions might really be doing, not just essentially saying . . . it’s the “doing” that is probably most important.
So you want to stop shopping at Target forevermore in the name of equal rights. Fine. What if enough people actually did boycott to where it might hurt Target’s revenue? What do you think would happen first? Would the CEO say “Sorry, let me go ahead and donate more of my money to a pro-gay politician?” Highly doubtful (and according to the Human Rights Campaign, Target actually has refused to “right this wrong” monetarily for the moment). First of all, because it’s unlikely, not from a semantic point of view, but from a practical point of view (and isn’t that predominately how successful businesses operate?). How could the higher-ups (or anyone) at Target really know that their diminished revenue is from the boycotting? Are they going to spend tons of money to conduct some kind of correlational study like Pruitt & Friedman? Negative. Realistically, the first practical step would be for them to make some cuts within their company, like, oh, I don’t know, cutting hours or LAYING OFF their employees who never saw it coming? This seems more likely to happen first, followed by a decrease in buying inventory in bulk to save more money. When businesses start to lose money, do you really think they won’t first do this before anything else? I’m no business major, but it never occurred to me that their first step would be to drain their own pockets.
So how are the people who got laid-off any more deserving of this denial of fundamental rights than gay people (or any other group)? We’re for equal rights, then we better not seem like we are “pro-equal rights but just for a specific group of people.” Trust me, I wanted to boycott BP (Arco) and Target immediately, but then I started feeling badly about the middle-aged manager at the local Arco who could get hypothetically get laid-off because hardly anyone buys their gas there anymore; he has a family too. I highly doubt Mr. Arco Gas Attendant had anything to do with the evil oil spill, yet we are quick to scream “disservice” and take away our services when something horrific like the oil spill does happen.
Look, the pro-equality/pro-boycotters’ intentions are TOTALLY NOBLE! I still haven’t shopped at Target, Best Buy or Arco, but I can’t say that I won’t again. The media about boycotting alone should direct enough attention towards the CEOs to do something before revenues are actually down enough for them to start executing lay-offs, and I HOPE that’s what does happen. But it may not.
Anyway, food for thought, but what do I know? Please discuss and debate with me on this, my fellow critical thinkers!
References: Pruitt, S.W. and Monroe Friedman. 1986. Determining the Effectiveness of Consumer Boycotts: A Stock Price Analysis of Their Impact on Corporate Targets.” Journal of Consumer Policy, 9: 375-387.
You make some great points.
One thing most people don’t realize, re boycotting particular gas stations, is that not only does Mr. Arco Gas Attendant not have anything to do with the corporate issues, the gas he is selling probably didn’t come from an Arco refinery, and most assuredly did not come from an Arco oil well.
Production from oil wells are sold to the nearest refinery. Valero, for instance, is the largest US refiner, but has no production of its own. The oil is processed into hundreds of products, gasoline being only one. The gasoline is then sold to local markets. If you buy Chevron gasoline because it has ‘Techtron’ or some other foo-juice, you might be buying Arco oil, processed in a Valero refinery, sold through a third-party marketer who adds the Chevron additives per some recipe, so that it can be sold in Chevron-branded stations. Which may or may not be operated by Chevron, as opposed to an individual who has franchised his station.
So, boycotting a particular station just means the gasoline will be delivered to some other stations, and Mr. Arco Station Attendant loses business.
And yet, extremely organized boycotts really do work, but they have to be methodical in their approach and have clear goals. They are a truly legal way to protest–you aren’t going to be arrested and thrown in jail if you boycott, say, Coors Beer due to anti-choice policies.
To be successful, there has to be a clear goal in mind. Look at the boycotts of Nestlé over their pushing baby formulas over breastfeeding in third world countries, the United Farm Workers boycott against lettuce and grape growers due to their mistreatment of the pickers, the Montgomery bus system who discriminated against African Americans, Taco Bell who refused to stop buying tomatoes picked by slave labor in Florida, world businesses refusing to have anything to do with South Africa because of apartheid, Gandhi’s Indian boycott of British goods to end British occupation.
I agree with you about boycotting gas stations. In the case of BP, those stations are all individually owned. And really, what would be the goal of the boycott except to protest your anger? I’m sure BP knows already and it isn’t going to solve anything.
Yup, it pretty much summarizes my thoughts on boycotts. The threat and implementation of boycotts can only really be effective against singular entities (individuals or small organizations). Boycotts against larger institutions end up hurting those who had nothing to do with the offending action.
There is a realistic and an effective tactic that one can undertake instead of boycotting, but unfortunately the realistic tactic is not very effective – and the effective tactic is not realistic.
Realistic action is publicize and ridicule. Sure it’s not as effective, but with constant ridicule, one can hope that it gains more usage and reference in society – to the point where the association of Target and bigotry eventually becomes part of Letterman’s monologue, or it’s used in dialogue on TV shows, and the degradation of Target’s credibility becomes a PR issue. And PR issues are not the $10-$15/hr workers’ problem to deal with – but rather, it’s the executives’ problem.
Effective action is to channel the “boycott” effort into political support for the other candidate. Ultimately the issue isn’t with Target, but rather with the candidate that it supports. If he or she fails to get elected, then it’s a win-win.
I think I see something at least akin to what Brian Dunning called the dead puppies fallacy. He gave an example of the guy who knocks on your door and wants to sell you a magazine subscription. When you balk, he says, “But if you don’t buy a subscription, I may have to turn to theft and selling drugs to get by.”
My reasoning is that if we simply change suppliers, rather than do without, there should be the same number of employees required to fulfill our needs, but they will have more responsible employers.
Richard Murray If you stop buying something from a place, or stop buying a certain product from a country, etc, I think that you should tell them directly. Too many protests happen in a vacuum.
Stop buying anything from Target? Make sure that they know; especially if you’re a relatively small-time customer. Let them know it’s their anti-gay stance, or their sponsorship of Tea Partiers, or their kicking of puppies, or anything else. Hell, include copies of receipts showing things that you’re now buying elsewhere.
It’s possible you underestimate the problems that come with changing jobs. Justifying a boycott that could cause hourly employees to be laid off, on the belief that they can find jobs at other stores (because the demand stays constant) is not taking into considerations to why a lateral move could be problematic for the employees. There may be advantages to working at that Target as opposed to a Walmart, K-Mart, or Meijer. (advantages of seniority, proximity of location, positive relationships, existing benefits, etc.).
I’m still boycotting Coors beer. And there are probably few people who even remember that we boycotted Coors in the first place. Or why…
http://www.bamn.com/boycott-coors/coors-myths-facts.asp
It may do no good, but I’ll be damned if I will buy a product from a company that puts on a happy face and says “we’ve changed.” They shouldn’t have gone there in the first place.
I’m stubborn that way. As long as I have choices, I’ll go with my conscience.
I understand that my personal choice not to buy a product from a company that has offended my sensibilities will probably not change anything, unless it’s part of a well organized boycott that attracts media attention. But my decision to boycott isn’t always driven by how effective my participation in boycott will be. As I said, sometimes it’s just a matter of conscience.
The controversy over Target’s donation to a conservative Minnesota political candidate, and the backlash by people willing to boycott the nationwide chain, did not go unnoticed by the stores’ stockholders. In this article in the Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-target-shareholders-20100820,0,5211901.story
the explanation is that “Target should have carefully considered the implications that direct political contributions can have toward shareholder value,” said Ola Fadahunsi, spokesman for New York Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, the pension fund’s sole trustee. “It’s troubling to think that they can fund controversial candidates without properly assessing the risks and rewards involved.”
A spokesperson from Best Buy in the article said the corporation had “learned from this…” experience.
Boycotts don’t have to bring down a company’s bottom line — all that is necessary is for the company name to be tarnished. Stockholders of family-oriented companies like chez Target want a friendly image; not one of gay bashing and whatever other unpleasantness was associated with the conservative candidate to which the donation was made.
Excellent piece. These issues are much, much, much more complicated than most people think.
That said, we have to live with ourselves. I tend not to participate in organized boycotts, but there are things I choose to refrain from buying. I have no delusions about whether it makes a difference, but I feel I would be hypocritical if I chose to put money into the pockets of people I find despicable if it is easy to avoid it.
I remember my grandmother talking about boycotts with the Civil Rights movement. Sometimes, blacks lost jobs because they were employed in a capacity by a white owned company that was supporting racism. There was a “greater good” and sense of the morality of dealing with a group that promoted racism that went beyond the employee that might lose his job.
I enjoyed Temple Grandin and her basic blackmailing of meat packing plants. She got McDonalds and other big buyers of meat to only buy from packing plants that met her criteria for safety and a humane environment for animals (yes a meat processing facility can be humane). Instead of the US government enforcing regulations that the packing plants would complain about “oh we can’t afford to make these changes…give us at least a few years and make the changes more affordable and give us some money to do it…” she just want “if you dont meet MY standards NOW, McDonalds will not buy your meat.” Oddly most plants managed to do so with impressive quickness. Now some people complained, “why what about the poor processing plant that couldn’t afford to make those changes? Because McDonalds didn’t buy their meat, they probably went out of business!” Well, yeah. But the greater good to society in improved safety measures, to say nothing of the better treatment of animals, outstripped the bad of the plants that might or might not have gone under. Your battles should be well chosen, but also know no change comes without sacrifice.
People hate Wal Mart. But when there is a disaster they have learned to step up, for instance a few years ago there was a horrible flood nearby. The morning after, the local Wal Mart called the Salvation ARmy which was setting up shelter and a resting place for the rescue workers. Wal Mart said “we have a truck, tell us what you need and where you want it. We’ll put it off our shelves.” I mean it wasn’t just for that day. They refilled that truck over and over. They didn’t even publicize it. Word just got around. Now, they may be the new Satan, but the good publicity was not lost. Target needs to hire a new PR guy.
If Target had donated money to a group that believed that blacks should be denied equal rights, or perhaps Canadians, or even the handicapped…would we shop there? I always say the tipping point for me is if I can say “well yeah even if they were supporting someone that wanted segregation again, I’d shop there”…which hasn’t happened yet. Maybe just the point isn’t to get Target to change thier mind, maybe it’s just to make me feel better because I have too many good gay friends that have fought too hard for me to just shrug over this. It may not make a difference, but in my heart it will.
And yeah I’ve been laid off and it sucks. But in my case, I was able to blame the bad management practices of my bosses. I didn’t blame the people that bought our product. Poor sales isn’t because people aren’t shopping, it’s because someone has made a mistake up the line. In this case, Target management.
I think this is one of those case by case problems. We do need to know the consequences of our boycott, but we also have to decide which outcome is best. Is the unemployed person from the Target boycott worth the possibility of one politician making it into office and the added possibility that his anti-gay sentiments might affect his decisions and, since this is our current concern, the possibility of his sentiments preventing gays from marrying?
I think the big difference between the Target example and some of the other examples mentioned in the comments section is the distance from the problem that we’re discussing. There’s a big difference between a direct boycott that will immediately affect a problem, like the McDonald’s influence on the meat packing industry or even the famous bus boycott starting with Rosa Parks (which as far more planned out than what most history books tell us). In those cases, the problem was immediate and the impact a boycott could have was also immediate. There was a direct line of choice and consequences that people were dealing with and so the impact *could* have a desired effect and the boycott, while it may cost a few jobs, resulted in change that was good overall.
With Target and any gas station chain, we’re not dealing with a direct line. The consequences of our actions gets diluted with each layer that goes between us and the people who we want to change. With Target, we’re affecting individual stores, first. The individual stores then alter their staffing before the problem gets higher up the chain. By the time our individual choices affect someone like a CEO, they’re only dealing with pennies from their perspective. And as we know by those charity collection jars at store counters, most people are willing to drop and forget about pennies.
In case that’s not a good enough explanation, here’s a handy representation:
McDonald’s =action=> Change to the meat distributors
Target customers =action=> Store income reduced => Store reduces staff => income still reduced => store gets evaluated => if store isn’t making enough it is changed or eliminated => (and the process continues)
I should add some information here. With stores like Target, there is a chain of authority that needs to be considered who’s function is not just a transfer of money. At least, it isn’t directly. Instead, there’s the clerk and then the person who oversees the clerk and then the person who oversees the whole store and then the person who oversees a group of stores in a few regions and then the person who oversees all of them and then there’s the company leadership. (I skipped some detail to keep this simple). With each person, though, a series of steps has to be taken to accomplish company goals before the problem gets moved up another step in authority. So, before the store gets word from the guy overseeing a bunch of stores, that store looks at its staff and asks the supervisors which employees are failing, because they’re not being efficient enough. The store might also look at their products and see if they need to alter what they’re keeping in stock. Then, after the store has tried to adjust, the problem gets brought to another layer, then that person gets to try to solve problems.
To further complicate the matter with Target, unlike other boycotts where something has already happened to protest, the protest is against something potentially happening. Emmer, the guy that Target tried to support was already starting to lead as he campaigned for the position of Governor, you can see his political stances here:
Also, it is worth noting that Emmer plays dirty (not a surprise):
That doesn’t help us with the question at hand, but it is good to know if we’re actually seeking a solution to the real problem, and that is the possibility that someone might be in office that is (again) opposed to gay marriage.
Minnesota’s gay marriage battle just isn’t as advanced as many other states and Emmer is echoing that of the rest of the state (that happens all the time in politics). Their biggest action was to officially make Marriage illegal after the debut of DOM in 1997. After that, there have been several efforts to restrict marriage more, but two lawsuits and one bill that attempted to legalize marriage have been stopped early. The two sides of the debate haven’t even reached a point of tit for tat that we’re seeing in a large portion of the rest of the nation.
Now, bear in mind that I’m not trying to say we shouldn’t make an effort to legalize gay marriage in Minnesota. I think we should fight them tooth and nail until every adult has the freedom to choose what sex they want to marry. I firmly believe that we should focus on doing that in all of the states, but this point does come into play with the question of if we should or should not boycott Target. Target is not a tremendous force in preventing gays from marrying. They played a role in an attempt that *might* continue to prevent gays from marrying, but their role was hardly a primary force.
With politics, the same problem applies with the layers through which the effect of your boycott has to be felt as there is with Target. That is to say, there’s a lot of places that your boycott has to go before it can accomplish anything at all. Bear in mind, the money has already been given away. Boycotting Target isn’t going to take money from this guy’s campaign and it is too early to know how much that money has helped him, anyway. This means the only ‘fix’ that people can see Target making is donating money elsewhere. But where are they going to donate? They could donate to someone who is unlikely to win, but supports a different viewpoint, which could help their candidate in the long run. Or they could donate to the person who opposes their candidate and has the next-highest rank in the polls. Then, though, we have the problem of telling Target who they should support and if it isn’t right for us to pressure our neighbor into supporting someone they don’t want, why would it be right to pressure Target into supporting someone they don’t want?
This means that our best action, if we’re going to focus on doing something about issues with gay rights in Minnesota, is that we need to focus on what we can do. We need to figure out how to make a real impact. If our goal is to fight Emmer, why aren’t we encouraging people to spend money on the other side?
Even if we were to keep the boycott, why isn’t it being coupled with a message to send what money you *don’t* spend on Target to someone else’s campaign. To be honest, I don’t think the boycott makes a difference. I think in this case, with this boycott of Target, it doesn’t make an impact. This doesn’t mean that other boycotts aren’t more effective. This one just doesn’t seem to be and it doesn’t seem likely that it will be.
So, I think the solution to Target’s bad behavior is more people supporting those who can make a difference. As it turns out, we have that option:
Marry Me Minnesota is an organization working towards obtaining gay rights in Minnesota. They are currently in the process of suing the state of Minnesota. If you cannot donate money, maybe you can convince someone you know who can build websites to fix theirs. I’m sure they’d be more than happy for someone to help them any way possible.
As you may have noticed, I haven’t mentioned BP, much. I think that was well covered by Naomi and she’s certainly much better informed on the matter than I am. I do think that there is a solution, though. BP may not directly rely on us, but it does rely on Wall Street. So how does one affect Wall Street? Well, you have to make investors lose confidence in the stock. BP has already messed up badly enough that this has happened, some, but it wouldn’t hurt to help it along. So, for BP, it seems our best option is to make a lot of noise. We have to influence investors to invest elsewhere. I tried to find a thorough list of investors, but my google-fu only got me here:
So how do we make noise? Well, there are two things to do. One is to encourage the media (including bloggers) to keep talking about BP’s bad behavior. The news tends to give each big story a half-life and when things become less novel for their readers, news reporters move on. This means that big stories tend to fade away into the ether and are often forgotten before the audience gets to find out what happened at the end of the story. As the media starts turning away from BP, that’s when we need to start writing more and more Letters to the Editor about BP. We have to show the news stations that we want them to keep on it. Investors often pay attention to the news related to their stocks so they can better predict what is best for their money.
The next thing that we have to do is contact investors and let them know how unhappy we are with BP. If you know something about stocks, perhaps giving them some suggestions for alternate investments may be a good idea. (I don’t consider myself well enough informed on stocks to do that). The important thing is, let them know that this is a problem. Make them feel as uncomfortable about BP’s big problem as you are.
I think Laura is right, a boycott must have a goal and a specific action – ‘if you do this, we will shop with you again.’ Otherwise why should the company pay attention? If you threaten to never shop with them again, then you are already lost to them as a customer and no longer have any power with them. Years ago companies stopped using drift nets (I think) because of boycotts and started marketing ‘dolphin-safe tuna.’ Cadbury has introduced slave-free chocolate just this year. So clear, specific goals are achievable.
On BP, I haven’t heard anything here about boycotting. I personally wouldn’t agree with it because BP didn’t cause the oil spill – they had bad luck in the sense that it could have happened with any deep water well by any oil company. In a sense a boycott of them would be hanging them out to dry, when they didn’t own the rig, they weren’t responsible for its maintenance and various government officials signed off. Targeting them isn’t going to solve a systemic problem. But all of us can look at our transport and energy needs and reduce our dependence on oil which would have multiple benefits.
Ugh, I managed to mess up my links. Here they are:
http://www.emmerforgovernor.com/
http://minnesotaindependent.com/58342/emmer-racks-up-complaints-against-opponents
http://www.marrymeminnesota.org/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/7802978/BP-its-10-biggest-shareholders.html
I do agree with you on the BP boycott idea Deb. There are several companies involved in the disaster, as well as individuals, both in the private and government sector who’s decisions led to the tragedy. Then there is of course, us the consumer, who continue to use the products these companies produce.
There is also the fact that deep well drilling is so new with a lot of unknown factors. It is really hard to plan and protect against the unknown, until it happens. Then one learns from the foobar and works to see it never happens again. Yes its a horrible way to learn innovation, but we’ve been doing innovation that way for so long. It can be a hard habit to break.
I hope we learn from the event, and work even harder to turn away from the “need” for deep water drilling, and towards much safer, and much cleaner energy sources.
I sincerely hope that Minnesota has a good governor in place come November who cares for the well being and rights of all citizens there, and that this individual is elected on those merits. I would like that for my state as well. But considering some of my choices….