When do boycotts work?

Hello. Hello, Waylon. Like me, I know you love a weekend trip to a big box store.

But one big box retailer has been having a rough go of it lately. Target. The chain has been the subject of a boycott over its decision to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion policies. You know, dei, it's been in the news a lot recently. Whalen.

Well, Atlanta pastor Jamal Bryant organized a 40 day boycott against the store beginning in March to coincide with lint. And after meeting with Target CEO earlier this month, he shared this update with his congregation on Easter.

Political boycotts are nothing new, but they are getting more attention. So we wanted to know, when does a boycott actually make a difference? Today on the show, we talk to a researcher about how to measure the impact of a brand boycott and how one company is caught in the crosshairs.

While Target is bearing the brunt of the backlash, it's not the first brand to face a consumer boycott for seeming to roll over for the Trump administration. Trump's first term was notorious for these kinds of stories, stories that Yura Loconida began studying. She's a professor of marketing at Cornell University. And the first consumer boycott she studied was the Hispanic food company Goya.

I know. Please jog my feeble memory.

Jura says the headlines were divided between boycott versus boycott, which means like go buy more of this brand. She and her co authors crunched the numbers to find out which side came

So the boycott won temporarily.

Jura also noticed that among Latino households, beyond maybe like a slight dip, there was not much of a difference in the baseline.

Factor two, can you swap this brand easily for something else? Jura calls this factor substitutability.

And this factor played a big role in another boycott she studied on Bud Light.

Who could forget Kid Rock shooting up a pyramid of Bud Light cans in his backyard?

Sorry. Bud Light sales did take a steep and prolonged hit in the months that followed. Nearly 30% from Euro's research. And Yura says it's probably because it was easier for consumers to substitute another domestic beer like Coors or Miller Lite or Michelob Ultra.

Ah, I'm a Tecate drinker personally. But the two brands that benefited most from the Bud Light backlash were Coors Light and Miller Lite for the Target boycott.

Target already faces competition from Walmart and Costco, not to mention the growth of online retailers like Amazon.

These policy rollbacks aren't just a consideration for a politically engaged customer base. It also affects Target's vendors. That includes minority owned businesses that the boycott aims to support. Take Rucker Roots. It's a black owned business from Lancaster County, South Carolina. They sell natural hair care products like shampoos, growth serums and scalp oil. Ellen Rucker Sellers and her sister Ione Rucker Jamison run the company.

Rucker Roots launched in Sally beauty supply in 2018. Target was their second big retail contract. They're a successful company that now has seven retail chains nationwide. Ellen says when she first heard about the DEI rollbacks, it was unsettling for me.

You know, the Atlanta pastor leading these boycotts, he says he wants to see Target increase its commitments to the black community. That includes investing in black owned banks, partnering with historically Black colleges and universities, and to reimagine what a more effective DEI could look like in the Trump era. This episode was produced by Cooper Katz McKim with engineering by Sina Lofredo and Robert Rodriguez. It was fact checked by Tyler Jones, Kate Concannon is the show's editor and the Indicator is a production of npr.