ZHUOYA MA, HOST:
You may have seen posts on social media calling for an economic boycott tomorrow. If you haven’t, activists are targeting large brands, such as Walmart, Amazon, and Wholefoods asking consumers not to spend money for 24 hours because they’re not happy with growing financial inequality. They say if you do have to shop, support a local business. People’s Union USA is the group behind the action. According to its website, it’s not a political party but a movement of people. Maurice Schweitzer is a professor at Wharton who researched the effectiveness of economic boycotts. I asked him, do they work?
SCHWEITZER: Economic boycotts rarely work in general, and a one-day boycott is particularly unlikely to work. For a boycott to really work, it has to be a sustained action, and this isn't what this boycott call is, and they're very hard to sustain in general.
MA: Since it's a one-day boycott, they're claiming they're having follow-up boycotts. Do you think if it's becoming multiple boycotts together and this action will spread all over the country?
SCHWEITZER: I doubt it. What typically happens is people's attention gets pulled in many different directions, which is part of what makes boycotts difficult to succeed because people keep getting distracted by something else.
MA: How can we make these boycotts become effective?
SCHWEITZER: It's almost impossible because you're calling for boycotts of very popular companies where there aren't easy substitutes, and what, for example, Target and Walmart provide are things that are very accessible and very inexpensive.You're basically asking people to undergo some real inconvenience for a sustained period of time, and most consumers aren't going to do that.
MA: What motives consumers to take part in boycotts like this? Does it still send a message to big businesses?
SCHWEITZER: It can. Many consumers feel like they want to take some stand, take some action, and use their wallet to reflect their preferences. What they're really trying to do is get companies to change the course of action, and no company wants bad publicity. Companies do want consumers to feel great about coming into their stores, so they care. In this case, where there are some consumers on both sides, there are some consumers that are maybe more likely to go to Target because of rolling back DEI, and many customers are less likely to come. Overall, for a boycott to succeed, it really has to have a sustained, long-term motivation, and that's difficult to enact.
MA: On social media, the celebrities are promoting this boycott. The question is, does it really help?
SCHWEITZER: Yeah. Celebrities help. You want more attention, more motivation. That does help.
MA: If the boycotts aren't that effective, what is? What is?
SCHWEITZER: Well, I think community organizing. I think when people contribute to PACs, I think the media, I think media coverage, just as you're doing, is an important piece for people to understand and become more aware of core issues.
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