How much do you think consumer activism actually helps? By consumer activism, I mean making personal purchasing decisions based on their ethical or political beliefs. For example, not buying products from companies whose labour practices you dislike, choosing products based on their environmental impact, or avoiding products because you disagree with the company's political leanings. Buying organic, or local, or patronizing small businesses to support them, or seeking out companies whose business practices you approve of.

There's something about it that rubs me the wrong way, like it too easily becomes a way for people to show off their sophistication in order to acquire a badge of status. I'm also not convinced of how much personal purchasing decisions really matter. I feel like it allows people to reduce huge and complicated economic, social and political problems down to a question of what brand of coffee they buy. Am I wrong?

I have often discussed boycotts with my boyfriend, and the general consensus we get is that boycotts are generally only effective against local businesses, or very specifically defined businesses. Huge multinational, multibrand companies typically have enough business access points that you cannot spread the boycott amongst the entire customer base. Especially with companies like Nestle and Unilever, there is simply no way to effectively manage a boycott against all their brands across every market. Boycotts are only effective in changing policy once the boycott starts to bite - which generally requires a sizable proportion of paying customers to participate. On a global scale? Getting that message across is near impossible.

Unfortunately, boycotts fail to attract supporters even more when the mainstream media ignores or whitewashes why people are protesting like what happened with Chick-Fil-A. The corporation was (and still is, they lied about quitting) funding anti-gay groups but most of the news coverage made it seem like oversensitive liberals were just upset about Dan Cathy's personal views. It really is hard to fight the big guys.

There are a couple of places that I do not frequent because of their business practices and/or bad customer service. They are personal boycotts, but I know that it really doesn't hurt their bottom line. I don't really talk about it because, like I said it is because of personal experiences. But since this thread is here I will list them

I refuse to shop at Best Buy. I have never had a good experience in their stores. I will not give them my money.
I refuse to use Home Depot.
I refuse to use Mobil Gas.
I refuse to use Marathon Gas.
I do not eat at Applebees. Crappy Menu and service in every one I have been to is lousy.

That's it for me.

Not shopping somewhere because their customer service sucks, is not a political statement. It's just a crappy business.

But if you do refuse to shop at certain places because of political or moral concerns, and you know it doesn't really hurt their bottom line, why do you still do it?

It requires a lot of research, to find out if the outrage to protest against, is business practice of one company, business practice of the whole industrial sector, or has been a decision of some junior manager somewhere.

The companies PR departments will spin it one way, activists, who might be tin foil hat wearers, or in the employ of the competition, spin it the other way. Both will know their PR.

How many consumers will actually do any research?

An interesting philosophical question that - Is it worth not contributing to an evil, even if your contribution is so infinitesimally small that altering your action will make no material difference to the world?

In a purely utlitarian sense, I guess your answer would have to be no - altering your action reduces your utlity (even if only minimally), and no clear additional utility is gained. The answer is obvious.

But you know, I'm not a utilitarian, so it's a little less clear for myself. My intuition is that the individual act of choosing not to support an evil act is a good act, and I believe that people who choose to shop with a clear conscience are doing a good thing. I just don't believe that the tactic of doing it en masse scales up past a local protest.

I know people do it, but not many. As far as consumer activism, one of the best ideas I've seen is going to a store that you disagree with and buying something then immediately return it. They lose money on the product because they can no longer sell it as new. In the case of A&F (or so I've heard), they don't resell. They are out that money. Period.

Isn't that just following your own moral code? There's a bunch of little things I'm sure everyone does every day that doesn't effect the world at large one way or the other but still gives each person the sense that they're staying within the perameters of their morality; don't throw your cigarette butt out on the highway, even though the highway is, and will continue to be, littered in butts; don't purchase pure-bred dogs even though the demand for pure-bred won't be going away any time soon; don't eat meat even though the chicken you're not eating will either be eaten by someone else or thrown out, and another chicken will be slaughtered in its place.

Here's a weird one - I don't give to the Salvation Army anymore. I don't mind giving to organizations that are religious, but some branches of the SA push their message to what I think is damaging levels. There's more than one story floating around the internets of gay couples being refused at the SA shelters - my favorite being two moms who were told that only one mom could bring the kids into the shelter or no one could come into the shelter (the other mom slept in the car during their time in shelter). And I hear tell of certain books and toys being tossed because they're considered "evil" (Harry Potter stuff in particular). Even though they help a lot of people, I can't support an organization that is that hard-lined. Now, I don't make tons of cash, so I don't think that they're missing my paltry donation. Still, I send my clothes to Goodwill and my moneys to other foodbanks/charities when it comes time to parcel out my profits towards helping my community. It makes me feel better to know that I'm helping organizations help people without making them feel like they need a "message" to be fed and clothed.

There's several reasons. For a start, yes, I'm just one person; but all of their customers are each 'one person'. If a business (any business) ever gets to the point that a sufficient majority of people refuses to buy from them, that will hurt their bottom line. If some people refuse to buy from the business for moral concerns, then the business has a reason to pay more attention to moral concerns (or possibly to PR, but that can backfire). If people in general continue to buy from the shop despite moral concerns, then there's no penalty to acting immorally, and there will be fewer moral businesses.

Secondly, if a business is doing Nasty Things, then I certainly don't want them using my money to do further Nasty Things.

I, for one, am perfectly fine with consumer activism - boycotting certain businesses, certain products, due to your own personal views is perfectly fine by me.

What is NOT fine, however, is when you attempt to inflict your own personal views and biases on me. For instance, if you're boycotting eating chocolate from a company because you heard that places overseas are using child labor in the manufacturing, that's perfectly fine. But don't expect me to not eat chocolate. More particularly, don't complain when you see me eating chocolate in front of you. Just because you care does not mean that I care.

The problem that I have with activists - of all sorts - is that often enough, if they feel strongly enough to actively boycott something, they also more often than not feel strongly enough to try to get you to do the same. When I'm sitting there enjoying a hamburger, the absolute last thing I care about is a vegan ranting about the horrors of the meat industry.

I've met a few activists who were perfectly fine - they made clear their views to me, I made my views clear to them, we let bygones be bygones. The worst, however, annoy the absolute hell out of me due to sheer zealotry. When I eat something, when I purchase something, or obtain a given service from a company - more often than not I could not care one whit less about the political stance or work practices. All I care about is what they can do for me. Is the food good? Is the product good? Is their service good? That's it. I really don't care about anything else.

Places where I have worked would often do United Way drives donation drives. They had a list of places that you could donate by putting in the number code of whatever charity you wanted your money to go to. The problem was there were some charities in the list that I would not give money to. I would not donate because I was afraid that even though I coded the donation for my chosen charity, that the money would go to one of the other charities that I chose not to support. So if I were to boycott a place based on political or moral concerns it would be from that same sort of stand point. Wouldn't want my money to go to their coffers. Even though it wouldn't have a major impact it would make me feel better knowing I was not contributing to that which I did not believe in. I do not currently boycott any place based on that, but that would be my only reason if I were to do it.

I could really go on a rant about Vegans/Vegetarians based on what Ruan posted, but I will spare you all that. I'll just say, I like cow meat. If you don't, that's fine. Don't try to force your veganism on me. I really understand where he is coming from on that.

Well, sometimes it doesn't follow that not buying certain things will actually make thing better in reality. Say for example, a person who is concerned about the excessive use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers chooses to buy only organically-grown food. This is all well and good for making herself feel better about not contributing to corporate agriculture. However, it is actually impossible for everyone else to do the same thing. Organic farming is not efficient enough to feed the whole world.

So what happens when consumers go organic and demand for organically farmed food goes up? Some land previously used for mass agriculture is converted to organic farming, producing less crops than previously, but for a niche market. Since the crops are being produced less efficiently, means that more mass agriculture needs to be done elsewhere to make up the gap. But where? Does some wild land somewhere get cleared and turned into more farmland?

It's my feeling that if I attempted to boycott any company whose upper management or corporate policies disagreed with my views in any way, I would be homeless, naked and starving. So apart from bad service to me personally, I generally won't boycott a company unless they do something really despicable. Simply disagreeing with me politically isn't enough all by itself for me to boycott.

There's a bizarre bit of illogic in this sort of argument. You seem to be saying that if you consider it moral to take action against a particular practice you should do so, but only up until you bother somebody else. Or perhaps just up until it bothers you personally?

If I made a habit of grabbing old women on the street, throwing them to the floor and stamping on their heads, it would probably be the moral thing for others to intervene. But, using the line of reasoning you just advocated, they shouldn't - really. After all, simply because the bystanders have a problem with stamping on old women's heads, I don't - I couldn't care less. All I care about is how the experience makes me feel. Was it a satisfying crunch? Did she squeal in the right way? I really don't care about anything else.

I'm sure you're thinking that this is completely different, and of course I've taken it to a silly extreme, but the point is that the boycotter generally believes that whatever it is they're boycotting is doing actual harm to real people (or to real animals they consider worthy of moral respect) - harm that you're participating in causing through whatever it is they're moaning to you about. That you don't care about the moral consequences isn't less of a reaosn to intervene than in the case of the face-stomping psycopath who doesn't care either.