because boycotts take a monumental amount of effort to organize
It really doesn’t. If you don’t like something about a company, tell them and don’t spend your money there. It does not need to be organised. The greater issue is not that it requires monumental effort but that people are not even willing of minimal effort if it affects their every day life. “Sure Amazon is bad… But I can’t live without prime….”
boycotting is never going to be as effective as legislative change because boycotts take a monumental amount of effort to organize and it’s very easy for people to lose interest/move on as time passes.
sure, you can simply decide to do a one-person boycott of a company, and that wouldn’t take much effort at all to organize. but when it comes to actually changing the behavior of a company, the actions of one consumer are not going to be nearly as effective as a piece of legislation. so, you’ll probably need to get many people to band together and collectively decide to stop buying a company’s products. this leads back to the “monumental effort” part of the sentence.
also, in order for people to decide that they don’t like what a company is doing, they need to first be told that the company is doing those things. who’s going to tell them?
I’d argue that if people do not like something a company does, and simply stop buying from it, it’s the same as an organised boycott. I assume that I won’t be the only one disliking the companys actions and that there will be more who do the same.
People simply need to realise that as consumers, we have the power to change things. It’s not too different to voting. Your actions count, even though they may seem small. If we all react instead of maindleslt consuming, companies will listen. They may not react but they will listen.
They already know everything about their consumers and adjust their products accordingly to maximize sales. If people start writing to them that they have stopped buying their products or services because of this or that, they will definetelly notice
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.
It really doesn’t. If you don’t like something about a company, tell them and don’t spend your money there. It does not need to be organised. The greater issue is not that it requires monumental effort but that people are not even willing of minimal effort if it affects their every day life. “Sure Amazon is bad… But I can’t live without prime….”
That’s not a boycott, it’s an individual change of spending habits
It’s not a boycott if you’re alone
I belive that it is. As far as I know there are no size requirements to qualify for a boycott
here’s the full sentence you’re quoting:
sure, you can simply decide to do a one-person boycott of a company, and that wouldn’t take much effort at all to organize. but when it comes to actually changing the behavior of a company, the actions of one consumer are not going to be nearly as effective as a piece of legislation. so, you’ll probably need to get many people to band together and collectively decide to stop buying a company’s products. this leads back to the “monumental effort” part of the sentence.
also, in order for people to decide that they don’t like what a company is doing, they need to first be told that the company is doing those things. who’s going to tell them?
I’d argue that if people do not like something a company does, and simply stop buying from it, it’s the same as an organised boycott. I assume that I won’t be the only one disliking the companys actions and that there will be more who do the same.
People simply need to realise that as consumers, we have the power to change things. It’s not too different to voting. Your actions count, even though they may seem small. If we all react instead of maindleslt consuming, companies will listen. They may not react but they will listen.
They already know everything about their consumers and adjust their products accordingly to maximize sales. If people start writing to them that they have stopped buying their products or services because of this or that, they will definetelly notice
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.