I get that it shows that people are upset. If you can cause a zero-sale day, that’s huge. But the business likely only cares about profit. Doesn’t that lost profit show up a day or two before or after the boycott? It’s not like people suddenly no longer need that stuff.
In: Economics
In general it doesn’t matter from a financial point of view. People have run gas strikes and single day things many times and the impact isn’t really there. It only matters if the people that would have used that business skip a “round” of service.
Monthly, quarterly, and annual profits are going to be the reported numbers and unless those change it doesn’t really have an impact. A national/multinational company can secure short term (under 270 days) loans called commercial paper at virtually no cost. They’re extremely safe and so they have really low interest rates. Even if they had to sell a little more commercial paper, if they’re balanced a week later they don’t care.
Small companies (most are private), as well as large private companies won’t have those same obligations and typically would have more wiggle room because of that. Investors see that you’re being boycotted, they might care about the image but financially Mark Cuban doesn’t care if his Shark Tank chicken shop sells 125% Monday, 50% Tuesday, and 125% Wednesday. He cares that year over year they’re growing.
So again, unless the 1 day boycott actually drives lower overall revenue meaning lower profits, no one cares.
Now, the bigger impact would be the perception and media attention. A single day boycott gets picked up by national media and 0.001% of the customer base start to question that company and bring their business elsewhere? For a business that does 50 billion in annual revenue, that’s a loss of 50 million a year. So, the goal of one of these is to get attention so some people will reject that company moving forward.
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