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Article
What motivates consumers to participate in boycotts: Lessons from the ongoing Canadian seafood boycott.
USF St. Petersburg campus Faculty Publications
  • Karin Braunsberger
  • R. Brian Buckler
SelectedWorks Author Profiles:

Karin Braunsberger

Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2011
Disciplines
Abstract

Despite the tremendous growth in consumer boycotts, marketing has paid relatively little attention to consumer boycott motivations. Addressing this deficiency, this study uses netnography to investigate boycott motivations and perceived boycott participation costs by analyzing consumer comments submitted to an online boycott petition. The results show that boycott pledgees explicitly express their desire for the target to abolish its egregious behavior, their anger about the behavior in question, and their desire for punitive actions. Signatories also pledge participation for moral reasons and identify with the cause reflected by the boycott. Boycott motivations also include the belief that consumers have the power to impact the boycott target's bottom line and/or behavior as well as the belief that the boycott will succeed in forcing the target to cease its egregious behavior. Signatories, however, rarely refer to the costs of boycott participation.

Comments
Abstract only. Full-text article is available through licensed access provided by the publisher. Published in Journal of Business Research, 64(1), 96-102. doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2009.12.008 Members of the USF System may access the full-text of the article through the authenticated link provided.
Language
en_US
Publisher
Elsevier
Creative Commons License
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0
Citation Information
Braunsberger, K., & Buckler, B. (2011). What motivates consumers to participate in boycotts: Lessons from the ongoing Canadian seafood boycott. Journal of Business Research, 64(1), 96-102. doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2009.12.008