As a follow-up to our last post, this interesting blog entry from the folks at Foreign Policy may raise some laughs .. or a few hackles. The comments are interesting too. Thanks to Kejia for alerting us to this one...
The world's stupidest Gaza boycotts
Predictably, Israel's continued assault in Gaza has led to renewed calls to boycott Israeli products. Everyone has a right to express their political views any way they see fit, but it's safe to say that some proposed boycotts are less productive than others.
More than 2,000 restaurants in Malaysia have removed coca-cola because of the United States' support of Israel. The Malaysian Muslim Consumers Association has also pushed for boycotts of Starbucks, Colgate, McDonald's and Maybelline in order "to protest Zionist cruelty."
Coca-Cola is a particularly odd target since it's bottled and sold locally by a Malaysian-owned company, so the activists are really just hurting their own country's economy. (I remember from college that students campaigning for a campus boycott against "killer coke's" Latin American business practices faced the same problem.) It's also ironic given that the company was once criticized as anti-Semitic because of its reluctance to break an Arab League boycott by selling coke in Israel.
Post continues ....
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletecome on! somebody do some survey..how true is the boycotting of coca cola in Malaysia?...who are the boycotters and who are the consumers?
ReplyDeletecoca cola is majority drank by the teenagers..do u think they care who u are boycotting and who they are suppose to boycot? they only know how to enjoy life drinking coca cola
True, there's not been much research on the outcomes of the Malaysian coke boycott (or any in fact that we know of), but if you read the reports, the boycott was organized by influential Muslim groups (including the ex-Prme Minister) and was implemented by restaurants rather than just by individual consumers. Retailers tend to call this "choice editing". We're not sure that all teenagers are completely apolitical when it comes to consumption - evidence from Globescan and other polling organizations seems to suggest otherwise.
ReplyDelete