Sure. But for a successful boycott you need hundreds of thousands to millions of participants over weeks to months. Can you organize that? You’re taking for granted the type of publicity campaign needed to organize a boycott like this and then you’d need to actually find enough people who care enough and have the willpower to participate. No one’s going to care if 100M people boycott a place that were already not going there. You need to convince those who regularly patronize that business.
You argue that boycott only is effective when it is organized, and when the public realizes that the company is doing something bad, beacuse of the organized boycott. I argue that boycott will happen naturally without organisation when customers realise that a company does something that they don’t like.
The key in both is, that people know, that the company is doing something bad. This can be something bad to environmet, something bad to its employees, something bad to animals etc. From what i have noticed, this is enough for people to stop shopping in one place and find somewhere else to do their shopping. No orgonized boycott or legislations involved. The latest example I have noticed, was a pretty large local boycott of fast growing chicken meat in supermarkets. These are chicken who grow from 50 grams to 2Kg within 6 weeks.
There were no legislations, no organised boycott. Many people just refused not only to buy them, but even to shop at the stores that had them. They have now gradually been removed because people didn’t like them being sold.
Sure. But for a successful boycott you need hundreds of thousands to millions of participants over weeks to months. Can you organize that? You’re taking for granted the type of publicity campaign needed to organize a boycott like this and then you’d need to actually find enough people who care enough and have the willpower to participate. No one’s going to care if 100M people boycott a place that were already not going there. You need to convince those who regularly patronize that business.
The conondrum you describe in interesting.
You argue that boycott only is effective when it is organized, and when the public realizes that the company is doing something bad, beacuse of the organized boycott. I argue that boycott will happen naturally without organisation when customers realise that a company does something that they don’t like.
The key in both is, that people know, that the company is doing something bad. This can be something bad to environmet, something bad to its employees, something bad to animals etc. From what i have noticed, this is enough for people to stop shopping in one place and find somewhere else to do their shopping. No orgonized boycott or legislations involved. The latest example I have noticed, was a pretty large local boycott of fast growing chicken meat in supermarkets. These are chicken who grow from 50 grams to 2Kg within 6 weeks. There were no legislations, no organised boycott. Many people just refused not only to buy them, but even to shop at the stores that had them. They have now gradually been removed because people didn’t like them being sold.