Companies fear consumer boycotts

ANDRIJ MELNYK, the Ukrainian ambassador in Berlin, did not hold back. Mocking Ritter Sport’s advertising slogan, he tweeted on March 29th “” (square, practical, blood), replacing (good) in the firm’s slogan. A couple of days later Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, called for a boycott of the maker of chocolate snacks tweeting: “Ritter Sport refuses to pull out of Russia citing possible ‘serious effects’ for the company. However, remaining in Russia brings worse effects, such as a fatal damage to reputation.”Companies often comply with at least some of these type of demands for reasons unrelated to the immediate impact on the bottom line. “Calls for boycotts usually have very little impact on sales, but the media spotlight can do much harm to the brand equity,” says Brayden King at Northwestern University in Illinois. The more media coverage a company gets the bigger the potential future damage.