Americus Reed is the Whitney M. Young Jr. professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business. He is on Twitter (@amreed2).

Judith Samuelson is the founder and executive director of the Aspen Institute's business and society program . She is on Twitter (@JudySamuelson).

Social Media Boycotts Succeed When They Reflect a Movement

Boy, oh boycotts! Do they work?

Trick question. It all depends on what you mean by "work."

If the aim is to hurt company sales, boycotts rarely succeed. But if the aim is to undermine companies that stand in the way of a movement, there is a greater chance that a boycott may tarnish a brand.

To get a boycott off the ground, awareness and consideration of the issue must spread. Intent to boycott must be followed up by action. Finally, once a boycott is underway, the leaders of it must find ways to sustain the effort.

That can be hard, considering the number of people involved in a boycott inevitably decreases over time.

Mostly, that's because people have busy lives and plenty of their own personal problems. News of a boycott has to cut through the personal. It has to withstand the constantly changing streams of information on the internet to truly gain traction. And memory fades fast. The accelerated 24-hour news cycle has become a sort of Catch-22 for boycotts: Social media can be very useful for spreading awareness of a boycott — but the hourly nature of the news cycle can bury it within the next day or week.

Social media can be very useful for spreading awareness of a boycott — but the hourly nature of the news cycle can bury it within the next day or week.

Even if a boycott stays in the news, strong opinions are not the same as action. It’s always easier for someone to express outrage than inconvenience him or herself. In a world where everyone is a one man/one woman P.R. department on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, “moral peacocking” — outrage on social media that is not combined with action — becomes convenient and costless.

Outrage comes and goes, and so do boycotts. Companies may suffer short sales dips, but social media boycotts seldom hurt the business bottom line of organizations in the long run.

However, there is a very strong exception. If the ultimate source of a boycott is constantly featured in the 24-hour news cycle — say, because he is president of the United States — and continues to engage in controversial and outrageous behavior, the boycott has an increased chance of living beyond its usual few days.

If the boycott reflects a movement — rather than a moment — it can change the world around it.



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