I think it's very, very rare for boycotts in the US to achieve their goals through strictly financial mechanisms--which is the stated intent of the boycott. The Nestle boycott was one of the few vast, really effective consumer boycotts in recent US economic history: it actually /hurt/ Nestle financially - and it failed due to (as far as I understand it) unscrupulous dishonesty, against which we have no defense. But I, personally, think there are two other things to consider.
1. Whether your choices in how, where, and for what you spend your money will have a perceptible impact on a company or not, every time you buy you're still making choices, you're still participating in the politics as well as the economics. Every purchase is a statement. Yes, it's in a microscopic way, but that's how individuals operate in the system, and that's the scale we have that we can use. I don't buy Nestle products, I don't shop at Walmart or Home Depot, I don't go to Starbucks, and I don't buy from Barnes&Noble, Borders, or Amazon, and no, I don't think that the lack of my business has a noticeable effect on any of them. But I'm responsible for where my money goes, however small my contribution may be. Keeping that responsibility in mind is important--to me, anyhow. And I studied chaos theory enough when I was minoring in physics to know that in complex matters, small variables have unpredictable impacts on the system. You never know when something small will matter greatly.
2. "Making a huge fuss" is in fact the way in which boycotts /do/ achieve things, in the States. When people were boycotting Coke and badmouthing the company for its enablement of/involvement in Apartheid, I don't think there was any real economic damage to the company at all. But the /fuss/ was big enough that the company made some very well-publicized changes in its policies. Fuss is probably the most significant tool the individual American consumer has at her or his disposal. When we are not polite, when we are bitchyor strident, when we are loud, when we make a scene, then we stand a chance of making changes. And a boycott - even a completely unsuccesful one from a financial standpoint - is sometimes the best vehicle for organizing an effective and penetrating fuss.
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1. Whether your choices in how, where, and for what you spend your money will have a perceptible impact on a company or not, every time you buy you're still making choices, you're still participating in the politics as well as the economics. Every purchase is a statement. Yes, it's in a microscopic way, but that's how individuals operate in the system, and that's the scale we have that we can use. I don't buy Nestle products, I don't shop at Walmart or Home Depot, I don't go to Starbucks, and I don't buy from Barnes&Noble, Borders, or Amazon, and no, I don't think that the lack of my business has a noticeable effect on any of them. But I'm responsible for where my money goes, however small my contribution may be. Keeping that responsibility in mind is important--to me, anyhow. And I studied chaos theory enough when I was minoring in physics to know that in complex matters, small variables have unpredictable impacts on the system. You never know when something small will matter greatly.
2. "Making a huge fuss" is in fact the way in which boycotts /do/ achieve things, in the States. When people were boycotting Coke and badmouthing the company for its enablement of/involvement in Apartheid, I don't think there was any real economic damage to the company at all. But the /fuss/ was big enough that the company made some very well-publicized changes in its policies. Fuss is probably the most significant tool the individual American consumer has at her or his disposal. When we are not polite, when we are bitchyor strident, when we are loud, when we make a scene, then we stand a chance of making changes. And a boycott - even a completely unsuccesful one from a financial standpoint - is sometimes the best vehicle for organizing an effective and penetrating fuss.