Red Brand, Blue Brand? Evidence from Big Data on Partisan Political Consumerism

• In Event: Economic Policy Preferences

Abstract

"Red Brand, Blue Brand? Evidence from Big Data on Partisan Political Consumerism"
Business has long been viewed as a uniquely powerful interest group in American politics. Historically, this influence was largely seen as a conservative force favoring business-friendly policies on issues such as taxation, regulation, and foreign trade. More recently, companies are increasingly weighing in on political and social controversies, and often in support of liberal positions. Stakeholder groups such as employees, customers, investors, and governments may influence firms’ willingness to speak out on these issues (Zhao and DiSalvo 2023). Companies must balance stakeholder demands against one another and potential trade-offs, as stances may result in customer boycotts from members of one party (Hou and Poliquin 2023) or make the firm less appealing to employees (Burbano 2021). This paper provides new evidence to better understand customers’ role in shaping companies’ willingness to engage in activism in support of (progressive) political causes. Using big data from retail scanner data and cell phone location tracking, I gather new evidence on (a) the extent to which high-profile customer boycotts are concentrated within members of a certain party, (b) whether these boycotts are offset by “buycotts” by the opposing party, and (c) generate broadly-applicable novel measures of the aggregate ideology of brands’ customers’ ideology using administrative and cell phone location data.

Author

• Max Kagan, Columbia Business School