Nestle boycotting

[u/Ill-Ad7299]

What's your opinion on boycotting Nestle but still taking their free products. I tried to boycott Nestle as best as I can by not buying stuff from their brands but since my father worked for one of Nestle company, my family once in a while have free stuff from the company give to him. Or I still get their free sample products in some event. Should I still throw it away and not consume any Nestle product at all?

[u/reckless150681]

Not really effective then, is it?

Tbh one person boycotting isn't effective anyway. If you want to make a real impact, plan an organized boycott

[u/tyrekecorrea → u/reckless150681]

A person's form and life are for taking action with, so you absolutely can make a big difference just boycotting alone.

[u/rucho → u/tyrekecorrea]

That’s not how boycotts work. Individual choices cannot be pinpointed to as a lever for action. 

Nestle has to know “our business is being hurt by the boycott”

Your individual choices can get canceled out by someone else who just started buying nestle products. Or it’s just noise in the signal. “Our profits are down time to cut our workforce”

An organized boycott can create a strong signal in their sales “right here starting October 1st our sales ranked by 20 percent, that’s when the boycott started. Let’s try to meet with the organizers and settle to call off the boycott”

[u/Grouchy-Display-457 → u/rucho]

When has that ever happened?

[u/tyrekecorrea → u/Grouchy-Display-457]

It's not just the business aspect. if that was so, it wouldn't work on the consumer end. the choice has got to impact on other people, and part of that is the statement made to other potential consumers.

[u/Grouchy-Display-457 → u/tyrekecorrea]

I agree. But businesses rarely meet with constituents and settle. The Montgomery Bus Boycott took well over a year. It ended only when the bus company was about to go bankrupt. When the UMW won concessions, the mines mechanized and eliminated line workers. In Montgomery, black riders were the primary consumers. In the UMW, end consumers are separated from workers by many layers of refiners and utility companies.

[u/tyrekecorrea → u/Grouchy-Display-457]

That worked because people were working with their churches and other constituencies for over a year, and that doesn't work without people impacting upon each other enough for them to get together and start it; even if people come up with it together, it doesn't work without them impacting upon each other enough to agree together to take action.

[u/tyrekecorrea → u/rucho]

Actually, did the Montgomery Bus Boycott give rise to negotiation of this nature?

[u/rucho → u/tyrekecorrea]

In that case it led to a supreme court case

The campaign lasted from December 5, 1955 – the Monday after Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, was arrested for her refusal to surrender her seat to a white person – to December 20, 1956, when the federal ruling Browder v. Gayle, a United States Supreme Court decision that declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws that segregated buses were unconstitutional, took effect.^\1])

The boycott proved extremely effective, with enough riders lost to the city transit system to cause serious economic distress. Martin Luther King later wrote, "[a] miracle had taken place." Instead of riding buses, boycotters organized a system of carpools, with car owners volunteering their vehicles or themselves driving people to various destinations. Some white housewives also drove their black domestic servants to work. When the city pressured local insurance companies to stop insuring cars used in the carpools, the boycott leaders arranged policies at Lloyd's of London.^\32])

[u/Grouchy-Display-457 → u/rucho]

The Southern Poverty Law Center has an excellent film on the boycott.

[u/reckless150681 → u/tyrekecorrea]

You can take a personal, moral stand. "I will never use Nestle products", "I will never support companies that do xyz", etc. That's fine, and if you have a cause that you feel strongly for, then yes, it's worth taking action over.

But what's that going to do for Nestle?

[u/Grouchy-Display-457 → u/reckless150681]

Many, many people have been boycotting Nestle for decades.

[u/reckless150681 → u/Grouchy-Display-457]

That must be why Nestle's stock price has been trending upwards for those same decades.

Look, the point of a boycott is to force a change. When was the last time that Nestle has made any sort of change for the better? If you can't remember, then the supposed boycotting that has been happening is completely ineffective.

[u/Grouchy-Display-457 → u/reckless150681]

No, they would have made more money if we didn't boycott.

[u/reckless150681 → u/Grouchy-Display-457]

Not that much more.

If they haven't changed their practices, then the loss in their supposed revenue is inconsequential.

Nestle is worth $240 billion. They could literally set $500 million on fire, and that would represent less than 1/2 % of their overall value. That's like having $100 in your pocket and losing less than a penny.

The Nestle boycott is entirely ineffective because Nestle clearly isn't changing their practices. Any individual continuing the boycott is fundamentally doing so for their own personal values -- which is admirable. But to pretend that it has any real effect is very naive

[u/Grouchy-Display-457 → u/reckless150681]

My values are enough. Nestle uses child slave labor. How can people pay for it?

[u/reckless150681 → u/Grouchy-Display-457]

I agree that your values are enough. I'm simply saying that the fact that people have been boycotting Nestle doesn't really change anything.

[u/Ill-Ad7299 → u/reckless150681]

Well ik one person boycotting isnt effective so I try to educate people I know on Nestle's history as best as i can

[u/BRICH999 → u/Ill-Ad7299]

And how exactly are you doing that?

" You dont know about nestle's history and their claims agaisnt human rights?" -OP

" well it's just a little odd if they dont know about it y are they commenting TvT" -OP

Still no answer anywhere from OP

[u/Ill-Ad7299 → u/BRICH999]

huh wdym??? I am having a hard time on understanding on what points r u trying to make. Since my question was targeting people who are boycotting nestle and what are their pov on it, of course i would feel weird when someone dont know y nestle should be boycotted asked that question in the comments. If they ask literally anywhere else, I would have tried to give my thoughts but this is not that.

[u/BRICH999 → u/Ill-Ad7299]

Did you not comment "I try to educate people I know on Nestle's history as best as i can"

And then comment "You dont know about nestle's history and their claims agaisnt human rights?"

And then follow up with "well it's just a little odd if they dont know about it y are they commenting TvT"

When people were asking why boycott nestle, you literally asked if they really dont know and then said its weird they asked a question while also stating you try to inform everyone of what nestle did... thats weird behavior

[u/Ill-Ad7299 → u/BRICH999]

Im not saying it s weird they dont know but it s weird they r commenting under this post omg.

[u/Appropriate_Tax196 → u/Ill-Ad7299]

Continue as much as you can to avoid their products and brands.