Boycotting and Buycotting

Economic choice has long functioned as political expression. The Swadeshi movement of 1905 mobilised consumers to reject British goods and promote indigenous production, transforming everyday consumption into an instrument of national resistance. Boycotting, in this case, was not symbolic theatre. Rather, it shaped domestic industry and embedded economic nationalism into political strategy.

In today’s digital economy, political consumerism has re-emerged in a new guise. Brands are routinely drawn into geopolitical conflicts, domestic ideological debates and ethical controversies. Social media accelerates mobilisation. Outrage cycles form quickly. Calls to boycott or, conversely, ‘buycott’ brands trend globally within hours.

But has digital coordination fundamentally shifted bargaining power from firms to consumers, particularly in emerging markets such as India, or are the economic consequences of expressive consumption getting overstated? While political consumerism has strengthened expressive consumer behaviour, in India, its business impact remains segmented and conditional. Digital platforms amplify consumer voices, but structural realities constrain their ability to ‘punish’ firms. Consumer power has increased, but it has not uniformly repriced markets.

Ethics-Driven vs Identity-Driven: Two Models of Consumer Activism

Consumer activism looks very different depending on where it happens. Understanding the ‘why’ matters for any business operating across markets. Michele Micheletti's work on political consumerism explains Western boycotts well: consumers there increasingly treat purchasing as a form of political expression, with ethical identity forming around the brands they support or reject. Naomi Klein's No Logo captures this further: consumers boycott corporations as a stand-in for systemic grievances.

In India, these dynamics are reversed. Boycotts tend to begin with identity (national, religious, cultural) and the ethical justifications simply follow. Benedict Anderson's concept of ‘imagined communities’ and Arjun Appadurai's work on postcolonial consumption both point to the same conclusion: Indian consumer activism is a collective assertion of ‘who we are’, not an individual ethical stance on corporate behaviour.

The practical implications are striking: in the West, a brand's actions can create or destroy its ethical identity in consumers' eyes. In India, a brand becomes a target when it is perceived as threatening a collective identity that already exists.

The Mechanics of Political Consumerism

Political consumerism operates through one of two mechanisms:

• Boycotting involves refusing to purchase from firms perceived to violate norms.

• Buycotting involves deliberately supporting firms perceived to embody desirable values.

Participation in boycotts increases when moral outrage is high and when consumers believe their actions will prove effective. Social media strengthens this by increasing perceived efficacy and lowering the cost of coordination. What historically required formal networks and sustained organising effort can today be triggered by a single viral post reaching millions.

Several structural shifts have amplified this dynamic. Supply chains, executive affiliations and political positions are more visible than ever, with ESG disclosures and investigative journalism making corporate practices harder to conceal. In digital categories, switching costs have collapsed and alternatives are often just one download away. This makes consumer threats more credible and the consequences more immediate. Institutional investors now integrate reputational factors into valuation models, meaning narrative shocks can transmit rapidly into financial consequences.

The cumulative effect is that consumers possess greater coordinating and expressive capacity than ever. Whether that capacity translates into sustained economic leverage, however, varies sharply across markets.

Consumer Activism in the West: Illustrative Cases

In February 2026, over 2.5 million people joined the QuitGPT campaign, an organised boycott of OpenAI following the company's decision to sign a deal with the US Department of War. Participants cited concerns over military surveillance and autonomous weapons. In a corresponding buycott, Anthropic saw free active users surge 60% and daily sign-ups quadruple, with Claude becoming the top free app on Apple's US App Store.

The best documented Western boycott movement remains the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign targeting companies perceived as supporting Israel's military operations in Gaza. McDonalds’ global sales declined in 2024 for the first time in 4 years, with the company acknowledging that the conflict had meaningfully impacted several overseas markets. Starbucks posted 3 consecutive quarters of declining sales and a 2% drop in global revenue in 2024, while its Malaysian operator reported a 36% year-on-year decline. The Americana Group, operating KFC, Pizza Hut and Krispy Kreme across the Middle East, saw net profit fall 38.8%.

The Western world has seen a surge of organised boycott movements, spanning ethics, politics and corporate values. Bud Light lost over $1 bn in sales following a culture war backlash. Pan-European and Canadian anti-Trump sentiment drove Tesla sales down 45% in early 2025. The Greenpeace-led palm oil campaign forced Nestlé and PepsiCo to adopt zero-deforestation pledges. The Rana Plaza collapse of 2013 triggered global calls to boycott fast fashion brands over supply chain exploitation. The release of the Epstein files in 2026 prompted reputational boycotts that forced resignations across Hollywood, Wall Street and academia. Together, these cases illustrate that Western consumer activism is neither niche nor occasional but a recurring and consequential force.

Consumer Activism in India

Following the 2020 Galwan border clash, India banned 58 other Chinese apps, with analysts estimating that China lost Rs 25 mn daily from the TikTok ban alone. The trigger was a perceived threat to national identity rather than corporate misconduct, with economic justifications constructed around a pre-existing collective grievance.

The corresponding shift towards domestic consumption played out alongside policy-led initiatives such as Make in India and Atmanirbhar Bharat, with the PLI scheme generating massive domestic production and sales. Patanjali’s turnover grew from Rs 20 bn in 2015 to Rs 450 bn by FY24, suggesting that while policy and supply-side incentives were central, consumer preference for Swadeshi-aligned brands acted as a reinforcing force rather than the primary driver of demand.

The Bollywood boycott wave of 2022 reinforces the pattern. The movie Laal Singh Chaddha earned just Rs 725 mn, against a Rs 1.8 bn budget amid a campaign rooted in religious and nationalist sentiment. In India, then, it is the defence of collective identity that moves consumers to act, not the critique of corporate behaviour. The 2024 Maldives boycott saw Indian departures to the archipelago drop 28% after Maldivian ministers insulted PM Modi, with Indians slipping from the top tourist group to 6th position within weeks. The boycott required no formal organisation: national identity did the coordinating.

The cases above demonstrate that Indian consumer activism can produce measurable economic consequences when national identity is threatened. Yet these moments of mobilisation are episodic rather than structural. Several factors explain why sustained revenue displacement remains the exception rather than the rule.

The Indian Paradox: Episodic Outrage, Limited Structural Shift

India presents a distinctive case. It has both, one of the world's largest digital populations, and a highly politicised public sphere. Boycott calls frequently trend online yet sustained revenue displacement remains inconsistent.

Price Sensitivity and Income Constraints India remains price-elastic and income-constrained. Ethical positioning rarely commands sustained premiums outside affluent urban segments. When activism imposes costs, elasticity reasserts itself and political expression persists symbolically without translating into durable purchasing shifts.

Habit Formation and Network Effects Digital ecosystems generate strong network externalities. During controversies, temporary migration may occur, but behavioural patterns stabilise once network friction reappears. Symbolic dissent coexists with functional dependence.

Aspirational Consumption Hierarchies Foreign brands function as signals of status and upward mobility. Rhetoric around boycotts frequently coexists with continued consumption of high-status brands, a tension less prevalent in Western markets where domestic and foreign brands compete more equally on perceived quality.

Selective Nationalism Mobilisation tends to be identity- rather than ethics-driven. Campaigns targeting adversarial nations gain rapid traction while mobilisation around ESG concerns such as labour standards or climate practices remains limited in mass segments.

Fragmented Institutional Pressure India lacks the institutionalised consumer advocacy infrastructure of Western Europe. Outrage cycles are intense but short-lived, and without organisational capacity to maintain momentum, most campaigns exhaust themselves before producing durable commercial consequences.

The cumulative effect is heightened segmentation. Mass-market segments remain anchored in affordability and access. Buycotts prove more durable than boycotts in India: where identity alignment intersects with price competitiveness, affirmative consumer action can generate sustained enterprise value in a way that punitive boycotts rarely achieve.

The Rise of Buycotting

While boycotts attract attention, buycotting may be the more strategically significant force for brands to understand. Where boycotts punish, buycotts reward and the commercial outcomes can be equally consequential.

In the West, consumers tend to reward brands that align with their values, as seen in the Anthropic case and in the sustained market share growth of brands like Patagonia and Tony's Chocolonely. In India, it is mainly identity-driven but no less powerful for it, as the Make in India movement demonstrates. The gap between stated intention and actual purchasing behaviour remains a moderating factor, particularly in price-sensitive segments. But the direction of travel is clear: consumers across markets are increasingly willing to vote with their wallets in favour of brands that reflect who they are or who they want to be.

Still Swadeshi…

India began this story in 1905 with a boycott rooted in collective identity. Over a century later the mechanism is the same, only the speed has changed. Nationalist sentiment has not faded; it has found new infrastructure.

But reducing the Indian consumer to a nationalist reflex would be a misreading. Price, aspiration and habit are powerful moderating forces and the gap between online outrage and durable purchasing shifts remains wide. Indian consumers are not easily moved; they are selectively moved and the conditions that trigger sustained action are specific and well-defined.

The firms that understand this distinction are not just managing reputational risk. They are reading India correctly.