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Do U.S. consumers boycott products in response to international conflict? Two professors at the University of Virginia say that in the case of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the answer is "yes." Remember "freedom fries?" A brief refresher: As the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush was gearing up to wipe out what it called Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction," tensions were rising in the U.N. Security Council. France was deeply opposed to an attack and threatened to use its veto power to stop the action.
In the U.S., sentiment toward Paris plummeted, particularly among conservative Americans. Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly announced on the air he was boycotting French products and Capitol Hill cafeterias famously renamed French fries as "freedom fries," in an edible admonishment of the French government.
So talk of boycotts was in the air. But, as noted in a forthcoming paper in the journal Review of Economics and Statistics, measuring their economic impact has been a slippery affair.
"Most studies infer boycott behavior from indirect measures, such as bilateral trade patterns, abnormal stock market returns or consumer surveys, which are typically inconsistent with actual behavior," write associate professor of politics Sonal Pandya and business professor Rajkumar Venkatesan in their study, "French Roast: Consumer Response to International Conflict; Evidence from Supermarket Scanner Data."
It occurred to Pandya that supermarket scanners might offer some firm data on Americans' buying habits, so she and Venkatesan decided to dig deeper, studying weekly sales in 1,110 U.S. supermarkets in 50 regions across the country. For every week in 2003 they compared each store's sales of French-sounding brands to that same week in 2002. "Consumers' often use supermarket brands as an expression of their identity to others and also themselves," Venkatesan said.
[Paper]: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/REST_a_00526#.VUEShvBOKSp
[Source]: https://news.virginia.edu/content/study-tracks-us-boycott-french-sounding-products-during-2003-iraq-war
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday May 02 2015, @08:01AM
My only consolation is the certainty of which your hope has been and will continue to be dashed against the rocks of Samos.
Funny you should mention this. The first funny thing is that you know I am from Samos, and that there are less than inviting beaches there. But I have to point out, that although my teacher, Pythgoras, may have attained more fame by moving the land of the Latins, ultimately he was wrong about most things. The Theorem, yes, we have to give him that. But have you not heard of recent detections of exoplanets, orbiting distant stars? Now that is what I was talking about. Now you are welcome to question my accuracy as regards the stupidity of the American people, and I definitely look forward to any evidence to the contrary, but your assaults as an Anonymous Coward (emphasis on the second word) fail to hit the mark. Please try harder. And, I do like you. You have a pretty mouth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @03:05PM
Wait, so are you Greek or Turkish?
Because if you're Greek you should probably go get a job you lazy bum.
Because if you're Turkish you should probably go get a sense of humor you humorless cod.