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Grab Your Wallet: 25 Stores Hit by the Trump Boycott
By The Cheat Sheet
2017-01-17 12:29:07
 
Source: cheatsheet.com

Since November 8, thousands of anti-Trump protestors have taken to the streets to voice their opposition to the President-Elect’s policies. Some of those activists aren’t stopping at waving signs or chanting slogans. Instead, they’re trying to hit the Trump family where they think it will hurt the most: their bottom line.

The #GrabYourWallet protest kicked off in October, when marketing professional Shannon Coulter began circulating a spreadsheet of companies owned by the Trumps or that are actively supporting or doing business with the Trump family. In addition to obvious targets, like the Trump chain of hotels and golf courses, the list includes dozens of stores stocking Trump-branded merchandise, primarily Ivanka Trump’s line of clothing and shoes.

 

“What this boycott means to me is that companies that I love, like Nordstrom and Amazon, are making money from the Donald Trump campaign, which to me is synonymous with hate and divisiveness so I can’t, in good faith, shop there anymore,” Coulter told Racked after the election.

The Trump boycott has only gained steam since his victory, and there’s evidence it might be working. (A separate group has created an app to help people identify Trump-supporting businesses.) Shoes.com has dropped Ivanka Trump’s footwear line, and consumer interest in her brand has fallen 54% since the boycott began, Fast Company reported. Still, interest in the Ivanka Trump Collection is higher now than it was before Donald Trump locked in the Republican presidential nomination,according to ShopRunner.

Meanwhile, people in the pro-Trump camp are also getting in on the boycott action, though they’re focused on entities seen as critical of the President-Elect. Pepsi has come under fire because its CEO Indra Nooyi supposedly said she “loathed” Trump and “hated” his supporters, thoughthere’s no evidence she made such comments. Some Trump backers have said they’d boycott the musical Hamilton after incoming Vice President Mike Pence was booed at a recent performance, and even received a direct message from the cast. Others are avoiding Penzeys Spices, whose owner published a Facebook post calling Trump an “openly racist candidate.”

Do boycotts even work?

Boycotts like these tend to grab a lot of attention, but whether they lead to meaningful change is up for debate. Sometimes, consumers fail to follow through on their promises to avoid a particular company. Will an anti-Trump shopper really give up the convenience of Amazon Prime just because the retailer sells Ivanka Trump’s shoes? In other cases, people are boycotting things they wouldn’t buy anyway. Refusing to buy tickets to Hamilton is a painless form of protest, since the Broadway show is sold out well into 2017.

Still, a boycott can be effective if it manages to “create some sort of reputational crisis for the firm that they have to deal with,” Brayden King, a management professor at Northwestern University, told Freakonomics. Only time will tell if an association with Donald Trump will do any lasting damage to the following 25 stores, all of which have been targeted by the #GrabYourWallet Trump boycott.

Boycott List

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