Consumer Boycotts
Companies are sensitive to boycotts because they can have serious financial implications. Supermakets are particularly sensitive to this. Once boycotted few consumers return to a brand - so companies can lose a customer for life.
According to the Co-operative Bank's latest research the value of boycotts in 2007 was up by 15% in the food and drink sector and 20% in the clothing sector. Money talks, they say. So listen to these figures - food and drink boycotts in 2007 in the UK were valued at £1,144m, travel boycotts £817m, and clothing boycotts £338m.
At Ethical Consumer, we report on all the boycotts we receive which have a registered headquarters and let our readers know. We don't necessarily endorse all of the boycotts which we report.
Boycott Targets
Sometimes a company can become a boycott target simply because it's big (and there is a questionable industry-wide practice) or just because it is vulnerable to consumer pressure.
French wine producers were targeted in this way by groups opposing the French government's nuclear tests in the Pacific.
However, companies can usually avoid becoming a formal boycott target by anticipating social trends and/or by not being left behind by competitors. A responsible company should be able to achieve this by being aware of the consequences of its decisions, not just financially, but for people, the environment and animals.
Problems with Boycotts
Some campaign group have problems with boycotts. For example, development charities, such as CAFOD and Oxfam, argue that boycotts of companies involved in workers' rights abuses could put workers' livelihoods at risk. Some organisations also stress that a boycott over such issues must be supported by the workers themselves in order to be genuinely democratic.
Beyond Boycotts
Greenpeace's 2008 palm oil campaign focusing on Unilever's Dove brand achieved spectacular results within a fortnight of launching, whilst stating “Unilever is more sensitive to public exposure and debate than a consumer boycott”. The Burma Campaign UK stresses that it is more important to write to companies on their 'Dirty List' of companies involved in Burma, than to boycott them. The British Union of Anti-Vivesectionists (BUAV) no longer publishes a boycott list, intead they publish a list of companies that don't test on animals.
But behind each of these examples lies the threat to a comapny's bottom line. Individuals make their own minds up whether a company deserves the reward of their hard earned cash.
Our Position
For Ethical Consumer, boycotts offer campaign groups and/or individuals the chance to exert economic pressure for change and can be particularly appropriate when governments are unwilling or unable to introduce reforms.
They are therefore a vitally important extension of our formal 'democracy'. They can also be especially empowering for consumers through the process of actively rejecting something produced or sold in an unethical way.
We see them as one of the four types of ethical buying.
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