Consumer boycotts target DEI divestment, but are they working? What we know.
Consumer boycotts have targeted companies like Amazon and Target that have scaled back their DEI efforts, but are they having any effect? Here’s what we know:
A group of grassroots organizations is calling on shoppers to boycott big retailers like Amazon, Target and Home Depot, accusing them of bowing to President Donald Trump and breaking their pledges to support diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Black Voters Matter, Indivisible, and Freedom said in a statement that they are launching the “We Won’t Buy It” national economic pressure campaign ahead of the holiday season “to show businesses the consequences of not standing up loudly for core democratic principles of freedom, equity, justice, and freedom.”
The aim is to get shoppers to boycott stores during the important holiday season. Shoppers surveyed by PricewaterhouseCoopers said they expected their holiday spending to be 5% lower on average this year compared to last year, the first significant decline since 2020. Retailers are trying to lure shoppers by starting Black Friday early with doorbusters and other sales.
Boycott organizers are asking shoppers to support retailers who stand up to Trump, as well as black, minority and immigrant-owned businesses and local small businesses, rather than patronizing retailers that have supported Trump.
“Instead of fighting back and supporting the very people who are putting money in their pockets, businesses and retailers are falling at President Trump’s feet. But we will not stand for that,” LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, said in a statement. “We don’t agree that the world’s richest country punishes poor people by withholding SNAP benefits during the holiday season. We don’t agree that families can be torn apart and people can be kidnapped from the streets by masked ICE agents. We don’t agree that DEI and racial justice efforts can be tossed aside at the whim of political expediency. And we don’t agree that corporations are powerless in all of this.”
Recent consumer boycotts illustrate the dangers companies face when they become embroiled in controversial culture war issues in a volatile and polarized political environment.
In the 1990 election for U.S. Senate in his home state of North Carolina, Michael Jordan refused to publicly support Harvey Gantt, a black American Democrat who was running against Republican Jesse Helms on repeated charges of racism, saying, “Republicans buy sneakers, too.”
Jordan later said the off-the-cuff comment was a joke, but more than 30 years later, it’s still being repeated, especially at a time when shoppers of all political stripes are brandishing their wallets at the register to make their feelings and beliefs clear.
Most recently, a pressure campaign from activists like Robbie Starbuck and Matt Walsh, who accused Cracker Barrel of bowing to “wokeness” and distancing itself from its rural roots and conservative values, forced Cracker Barrel to scrap its plans to sport a vintage logo featuring a veteran wearing overalls and leaning on a barrel. Starbucks supporters also pressured Walmart, Ford, Harley-Davidson, Tractor Supply and others to curb their DEI efforts.
Bud Light, owned by beer giant Anheuser-Busch, has struggled following conservative backlash over a social media campaign featuring transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
Target moved the pride display from the entrance to the back of the store after shoppers confronted employees and destroyed the display. Last year, Target scaled back its Pride collection and no longer carried the collection in all of its stores. Then, a nationwide boycott over the company’s DEI retraction hit the company from across the aisle, and sales at Target, which recently announced it would cut about 1,800 positions, fell.
A new study on the Tesla boycott suggests that Elon Musk’s “polarizing and partisan” political activities alienated the electric car maker’s base and cost U.S. car sales by more than $1 million from October 2022 to April 2025.
“We find that by the first quarter of 2025, without Mr. Musk’s partisan effect, Tesla’s monthly sales would have increased by approximately 150%,” Yale researchers said in a research report.
Boycotts that ask shoppers to stay away from stores during power outages may not be as economically effective as sustained boycotts, Brayden King, a professor of management and organizations at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, previously told USA TODAY.
He said shoppers will buy before and after the power outage. King said that during a prolonged boycott, it may also be difficult to “convince enough consumers to make changes to their purchases to improve profitability even slightly.”
