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Exploring Motivations for Participation in a Consumer Boycott
Summary
Consumer boycotts are defined as “one or more parties achieve objectives by preventing consumers from buying one kind of products in the market.” This paper reports a study of factors affecting an individual motivation to participate in a boycott because little attention was paid on this study.
Reduction in the sale of boycotted product shows the successful boycott. Consumer participation is necessary for boycott effectiveness. Why do consumers want to participate in boycott? In this study, self-enhancement and need for consistency are possible explanations for participating boycott by theories of the self. Consumer behavior is motivated by the maintenance or enhancement of self-esteem. These theories and examples illustrated this point. What are main purposes for boycotts? Three main purposes for boycotts: instrumental and expressive, clean hands motivate consumers. Expressive boycotts mean that consumers boycott products because of their displeasure. “Clean hands”: consumers boycott for feeling good about themselves instead of feeling guilty. An instrumental boycott means that goal to change a disputed policy was forced to achieve by boycotting. Theories and examples and equation are used to examine whether three main purposes affect the motive in consumers’ behavior.


Respond:
With western culture entering into our country, imported products also are occupying the market. Imported products are good, but why do domestic people want to boycott?
Esteem plays an important role in the activity. The study says: consumer behaviors are influenced by esteem maintenance or enhancement. On website in China, it is common to see words that call on boycotting products imported from some countries and supermarket. They boycott fast food, Carrefour, and Japanese products and so on because of diplomatic reasons and so on. In earlier time, Carrefour considered Taiwan as a country so that it is boycotted.
The article says that consumer anger was unrelated to consumers’ judgments of product quality. Take Japan for example. Some people think they shouldn’t buy Japanese products because Japanese occupied our countries at old time. Products represent countries’ culture. In some people’s view, Japanese products represent Japanese culture and advanced technology. If Japanese products are occupying the market, it means that Japanese culture occupy the people’s mind. It is very easily remind people of this country and its culture occupying our country at war time. If Japanese culture occupies this market again, their esteem will lose. For old people and some patriotic people, it is not endurable. But everyone could acknowledge the high quality of Japanese products. These examples show that esteem occupies the important status on customer’s behavior.
But, not all people boycott imported products. When some people boycott imported products, another people buy imported products. For them, high-quality and new design for imported products are attractive. It doesn’t mean that they do not want to have esteem. It means that they might be don’t like to communicate their angers with the actions. It means that domestic products should improve their quality and design.