Comment on "Frontiers: Spilling the Beans on Political Consumerism: Do Social Media Boycotts and Buycotts Translate to Real Sales Impact?".

We discuss the findings and empirical strategy in "Spilling the Beans on Political Consumerism: Do Social Media Boycotts and Buycotts Translate to Real Sales Impact?" We discuss a fascinating new case study of the boycott and buycott of Goya products in 2020. The authors use detailed consumer-level shopping panel data to document two surprising and striking findings. First, social media calls to boycott had almost no effects, especially among the core Goya consumer group: democratic-leaning Latinos. Second, the authors document an unintended consequence: Goya's supporters reacted by initiating a call for a "buycott." The boycott and buycott combination ultimately increased Goya sales, especially among nontraditional Republican-leaning buyers, albeit only for a few weeks. We hope this paper will stimulate more work to determine which aspects of these findings generalizes to other instances of political consumerism. In our discussion, we offer thoughts on some of the potentially exceptional circumstances of the Goya case study and some directions for deeper testing of the underlying mechanisms driving the consumer responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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