Battling Brand Boycotts, and The Heat Be Rising on Beijing Olympics
May 3rd, 2007
As a follow-up to today’s session with Mark Wesley, you really must check out the recent Wall Street Journal article, Battling Boycotts: When A Company is Targeted Simply Because of It’s Nationality, What Can It Do? It contains some great “best practice” tips that relate to a number of the firms we will visit in China (e.g., think of the Starbucks and the Forbidden City controversy as Exhibit A that I previously post on).
What were some of your helpful take-aways from today’s session with Mark re: Starbucks?
And here’s another article I want to bring to your attention …
A good article in last Thursday’s Wall Street Journal re: activists turning up the heat on the Beijing Olympics. Check it out. This article ties nicely into the The China Fantasy book and post I made some time ago and James Mann’s chapter on how he thinks the PRC will use the Olympics to support his thesis. Who do you think will win this PR battle in China, and why?
t seems to me that success or failure of the 2008 Olympics will not be determined so much by how many groups protest or try to hijack the Olympics to further their own goals, but rather by how China elects to respond or not respond to such attacks. I.e., the outcome, really, is up to China.
3 Comments Add your own
1. Kerry Huang | May 8th, 2007 at 10:59 am
I think that Mark’s take on Starbucks transitioning into a mulit-national company would be beneficial to protect itself against boycotts based on nationality. From what I gathered in articles and China Rises, the Chinese are very nationalistic. A company in China will need to walk a fine line to not upset the Chinese. For example. P&G Japan experienced a boycott/backlash against its SK-II beauty products. P&G handled the PR poorly (in the Chinese consumers’ view), which resulted in a mob attacking the P&G office in China. Starbuck’s move to position itself as a mulit-national company is smart and will provide some insulation from nationality boycotts.
As for the PR battle in China, I think that China will lose. There are too many countries and organizations that have spoken out on various issues. China will not be able to fix a majority of them in time for the Olympics. Also, even though Beijing will look very nice for the Olympics travelers will undoubtedly travel outside of Beijing and visit other cities that have not been cosmetically changed for the world audience. As stated in the WSJ article, Eric Reeves believes that China is “counting on the international community having forgiven and forgotten.” The problem is that everyone still remembers and refuses to forget.
2. Erik | May 16th, 2007 at 11:19 am
I did a google search to try to determine if any studies have been done to determine if boycotts even make a difference. I got the clear answer from this search that the evidence is inconclusive.
Therefore, should a company as large and successful as Starbucks or McDonalds or Microsoft even care about boycotts? Would a nationality-based boycott make any difference at all?
We (Americans) have reportedly been boycotting French products for the last few years? Is it sending the French economy into a tailspin? I don’t think so - and the numbers don’t support that it’s having any impact.
There is nothing wrong with Starbucks or any other firm to transition into being a global brand, but I do not think boycotts have anything to do with it.
3. Chris Carr | May 16th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
Interesting … this data/these studies seem to then suggest that it may be best for firms to just ride out the storm.
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