"The Finnish Boycott"

Megan goes all out on the research for this one, to the point of pasting a map w/ cute little pointy things on it in her item. Much more amusing than graphs.

19 Aug 2009 03:36 pm

Should Whole Foods Run For the Hills?

Well, the Whole Foods boycott has certainly taken off! At least, on Facebook, where the "Boycott Whole Foods" group has gathered 16,000 members. Does this mean that Whole Foods is headed for the ash-heap of history?

Need we note that the research is to bolster her "counter-boycott" of Whole Foods, rather than a seriou issue? And no, Mlle., no one really believes that boycotts are very effective, certainly not against national retailers.

Some of her reasons (following intensive demographic research, based on the Facebook WF Boycott page):

Looking over the Facebook list, I see, broadly, three groups of people:

• Students
• People who live in a handful of very liberal urban areas
• People who live in hippy towns and/or college towns
  

There are exceptions, but this is the overwhelming effect of the list. There is also an amusing minority who live in places that don't have a Whole Foods anywhere near them, like Waterloo, Iowa, or Finland.

The students don't have any money, so their boycott will probably be mostly indistinguishable from the Finnish boycott. As for the rest . . .

Dirty fucking hippies, bleeding-heart limousine liberals, & college students who live on Ramen & catsup. (Or ketchup.) She could have stopped right there, but she pulled some more facts & statistics from somewhere (Guess where!).

And of course, some, maybe many, of the people "boycotting" Whole Foods spend less than $50 a month there, the way I do. Or don't shop there at all, making the boycott cost free.

Meanwhile, Whole Foods has 70,000 fans on Facebook. And the boycott is publicizing to a bunch of folks who probably would not otherwise have noticed that by shopping at Whole Foods, they can give money to someone who agrees with them on health care!

I could be wrong here. But I will be very surprised if the boycott is even detectable in next quarter's numbers.

Well, let's see if those Facebookers have an impact on next quarter's numbers.