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Weeklong Amazon boycott starts Friday. Here's what to know and why people are boycotting


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A week-long Amazon boycott was expected to start on Friday, March 7, and continue through Friday, March 14.

The boycott, organized by the same activists who planned the 24-hour economic spending blackout on Feb. 28, seeks to significantly drive down Amazon sales in response to the online retailer's decision to end diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at the company.

There are even more boycotts in the works, including several more weeklong boycotts, economic spending blackouts and a 40-day Target fast.

Here's what to know about the Amazon boycott, including why people are boycotting, how boycotts work and the whether or not recent boycotts were successful.

Why are people boycotting Amazon?

The Feb. 28 blackout and subsequent boycotts on Amazon, Target and more were planned to make a statement as many businesses roll back DEI, or diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

In one of several videos about the Feb. 28 blackout, the Instagram handle "TheOneCalledJai" said the day of economic resistance is to show that "we the people are the system."

"We are going to remind them who has the power. For one day, we turn it off for one day. We shut it down for one day. We remind them that this country does not belong to the elite, it belongs to the people and this will work," the Instagram video said.

Amazon made news in January after Bloomberg reported the online retailer was halting its DEI policies, a move that was announced in an internal note to employees.

“Rather than have individual groups build programs, we are focusing on programs with proven outcomes — and we also aim to foster a more truly inclusive culture,” said the note written by Candi Castleberry, Amazon’s VP of inclusive experiences and technology.

Then in February, the company removed all mentions of diversity and inclusion from its annual report in February.

Do boycotts work?

Spending blackouts and boycotts can have mixed results.

Conservative activists have successfully rallied in recent years to force retailers and companies to rein in their DEI efforts by staging boycotts to hurt sales.

Professors have told Paste BN that boycotts can be successful in shaming a company into reversing decisions or taking action, but they don't always work. There needs to be clear demands outlined, they say. But consumers do like being able to take action against something they feel strongly about.

Bjorn Markeson, an economist for Implan, a company that works with companies on economic analysis, said one-day boycotts are not impactful.

"While a one-day economic boycott can be a powerful symbolic gesture, its measurable economic impact is typically minimal. Short-term disruptions in consumer spending often lead to delayed purchases rather than actual losses, as businesses and households adjust their behavior before and after the event," Markeson said. "Additionally, the scale of impact depends on widespread participation, which is difficult to sustain for a single-day action."

Was Feb. 28 economic spending blackout successful?

It is difficult to gauge the economic impact of a one-day action with data. But information from several different firms shows both some potential impact from the one-day action in affecting in-person and e-commerce traffic at some retailers, as well as Amazon sales staying roughly the same.

Momentum Commerce, a digital retail consultancy company, said its analysis of Amazon sales on Friday did not show a measurable difference from previous Fridays.

Another company, Similarweb, a digital marketing intelligence company, compared e-commerce traffic on several major retailers' sites, including Amazon, Walmart, Target, Costco, Kroger and Home Depot. Analysts looked at both online traffic on Feb. 28 compared to previous weeks and also compared to the similar Friday a year ago.

Here's some more data from Similarweb:

  • Target web traffic was down 1.0% to 4.7 million on Feb. 28 compared to the previous Friday's 4.8 million and traffic on the Target app was down 10.9% to 3.5 million users compared to 3.9 million the previous Friday.
  • Walmart web traffic was down 6.5% to 11.2 million on Feb. 28 compared to the previous Friday's 11.9 million. Walmart app users were also down 2.5% to 13.6 million compared to 13.9 million the previous Friday.
  • Amazon's web traffic was down 4.6% to 65.9 million on Feb. 28 compared to 69.1 million the previous Friday. The Amazon app traffic was also down 1.7% on Feb. 28 to 51.4 million compared to 52.2 million the previous Friday.
  • Costco, which has seen some extra support from some consumers after its board of directors voted down an effort to drop diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, saw an 8.3% increase on its website traffic on Feb. 28 at 2.9 million compared to 2.7 million the previous Friday. It's app traffic, however, dropped 6.9% to 1.3 million on Feb. 28 compared to 1.4 million.

Another firm, Placer.ai, uses a panel of tens of millions of devices and utilizes machine learning to make estimations for in-store visits to locations across the country. The data showed that Target's foot traffic was down 9.5% compared with the same Friday the previous year. Walmart foot traffic fell 6.3% and Satr

Here's what Placer.ai found:

  • Target in-store foot traffic was down 9.5% on Feb. 28 compared to March 1, 2024 (the same Friday a year ago). Traffic was also down 10.7% on Feb. 28 compared to the average of the previous five Fridays and down 4.1% on Feb. 28 compared to the year to date daily average from Jan. 1 through Feb. 27.
  • Walmart foot traffic was down 6.3% on Feb. 28 compared to the same Friday a year ago, down 2.5% compared to the average of the previous five Fridays and up 7.2% when compared to the year to date daily average.
  • Starbucks foot traffic was down 3.2% on Feb. 28 compared to the same Friday a year ago, up 1.8% compared to the average of the previous five Fridays and up 15.5% compared to the year to date daily average.