It’s impossible to keep up with all consumer boycotts in this environment.
Who are you “supposed” to stop doing business with because of their politics? Who can even remember?
But for the past two years especially, since Bud Light drew the ire of the right for paying a transgender influencer to endorse its product, calls for boycotts have been a persistent topic on talk radio and cable TV opinion shows.
Now, we have a peek into consumer behavior amid political division. Thanks to a new survey published by Axios (Which you can read here), we have a sense of who is taking part in these actions and how close they are to what we see on social media. If you’d rather not read about this, you can take a few minutes and listen to a conversation I had on live radio recently with WJR-AM’s Kevin Dietz here.
The takeaways:
-Despite all of the bluster about Bud Light (which came with some erosion of market share) self-identified Democrats, say they are much more likely to participate in politically-driven boycotts than self-identified Republicans or independents
-You have to be a little rich to afford to boycott. For most consumers, they choose the brand that cheapest or most convenient. But if you make more than $100,000 per year, you can be more choosy.
-Far more consumers make decisions based on politics than go after a company on social media. As usual, what you see on social media is so often not a reflection of actual public opinion. In this case, consumer sentiment is greater than what you see online.
Should companies take a public stand on political issues? That really does depend on who you ask. But this line from the reporting should be a big takeaway for anyone in business: “6 in 10 say companies have a responsibility to speak out on issues that may affect their employees, and roughly half say they should speak out on issues that affect customers.”
That’s because we’ve all been employees and for the past 20 or so years, we’ve heard the common language from employers that their workforce is their “most important asset.” So consumers expect companies to act accordingly.
And while big business-to-consumer brands always can’t get to know their audience well enough to cater to their politics – which could be wide and varied – they should know their employees. The majority of the public gets it. Companies should too.