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Politics March 10, 2017
Donald Trump supporters skipping their morning macchiato to boycott Starbucks has seriously impacted the coffee giant’s business.
After Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz pledged to hire 10,000 refugees to challenge Trump’s first immigrant ban in Jan. 2017, the president’s supporters took to social media to unleash a tweetstorm.
Although many critics didn’t take #BoycottStarbucks seriously, Trump supporters are currently sitting on their high horse.
When Shultz’s letter to hire 10,000 refugees went public, consumer perception levels – which, in marketing, is everything to a business – immediately plummeted. Starbucks’ YouGov BrandIndex‘s Buzz score fell two-thirds from 12 to four between Jan. 29 and Feb. 13 and hasn’t recovered since.
This score tracks consumers’ feelings towards a company and their willingness to purchase from those brands.
And according to YouGov, two days before Starbucks’ announcement, 30 percent of consumers said they’d consider buying from the company next time they wanted coffee, which was the highest it had been since March 2016. But immediately after the plan to hire refugees was announced, the figure dropped to 24 percent.
Currently, that number remains low at 26 percent.
“Consumer perception dropped almost immediately,” YouGov BrandIndex CEO Ted Marzilli told the Daily Mail. “That would indicate the announcement has had a negative impact on Starbucks, and might indicate a negative impact on the sales in the near term.”
Many boycott proponents are even urging their friends to support Dunkin’ Donuts, Starbucks’ rival.
Neither Starbucks nor Dunkin’ Donuts have issued statements about how the protests are affecting their bottom lines, but Starbucks did report a two percent decline in transactions, which is an important measure of customer traffic, back in January.
The company credited the drop to the problems caused by their mobile ordering service. According to them, bottlenecks created by a large wave of mobile orders at already busy stores created long lines and crowds that turned customers away.
#BoycottStarbucks supporters, however, seem pretty proud of their impact so far.