The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Consumption and Consumer Studies

Boycotts

KATHLEEN KUEHN

Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

DOI: 10.1002/9781118989463.wbeccs028

Boycotts are the strategic avoidance of a person, country, organization, product, or service, usually to express dissatisfaction with a particular set of practices. They are a form of protest, the goal typically being to effect some change nonviolently through the application of economic pressure. Designed to punish offending or unfavorable behavior, boycotts are a popular form of consumer and political activism. The converse, “buycotting,” is the purposeful consumption of certain companies, products, or services. As a positive form of endorsement, buycotts direct spending at a particular firm or service not only to incentivize favorable behaviors by rewarding them, but to punish competing firms that do not meet the same values or standards.

The term's etymology derives from Captain Charles Boycott, an Irish land agent who evicted tenant farmers unable to pay high rents after a poor harvest year in 1878. As news of the evictions spread, Boycott's own workers formed the Irish Land League and, as a union, collectively refused to harvest his fields. Local service providers – including traders and the postal service – supported the strike by refusing to do business with Boycott, as well. The term “boycott” earned widespread use for organized isolation, appearing in several newspapers by 1880 – the same year the socially ostracized Boycott resettled in England.

As one of the earliest ...