The latest issue of Ethical Consumer magazine focuses on the effect of boycotts of products and services over the last 20 years and offers a list of all the on-going ones.
Companies targeted, for a variety of reasons include Adidas, Air France-KLM, Bacardi, British Heart Foundation, Burberry, Caterpillar, Chevron-Texaco, Coca-Cola, Estee Lauder, Johnson and Johnson, Kellog’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Kurt Geiger, L’Oreal, Mars, Motorola, Nestle, Proctor and Gamble, and Unilever. Retailers targeted are Boots, Harrods and Tesco, and countries boycotted are Canada, China, Israel and Mauritius.
The word boycott derives from a Captain Boycott, a deeply unpopular English Land Agent in Ireland who suffered, in the late 1800’s a campaign of ostracism in which workers refused to harvest his corn and the postman refused to deliver his mail, resulting in him fleeing Ireland in 1880 in an Army ambulance as no local driver would take him to the station.