During the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Israeli government’s actions prompted outrage among social media users. Videos that depict inappropriate or malicious behavior from Israeli soldiers went viral. Some of these actions include rummaging through private homes in Gaza and burning supplies.
Many social media users have expressed condemnation of these actions and advocated for boycotts against companies supportive of Israel such as Starbucks. Tags such as “#standwithpalestine” and “#boycottstarbucks” went viral on Instagram with 304,000 and 36,900 posts respectively.
Outrage against the company started at the very beginning of the Israel-Palestine conflict when Starbucks sued Starbucks Workers United, a union of Starbucks workers after it made a post on X saying “Solidarity with Palestine” after the Hamas attack on Oct. 7. Following the filing of the lawsuit, Starbucks ordered the union to stop using the Starbucks name and logo. The repeated anti-union actions of Starbucks along with a seemingly anti-Palestinian stance sparked outrage on social media.
According to NBC news article “Social media fuels boycotts against McDonald’s and Starbucks over Israel-Hamas war,” data made public by Tiktok shows that the use of the hashtag “#boycottstarbucks” peaked in early November, but remains in high use. It has been used on 7,000 TikTok videos in the United States during the past 30 days before Dec. 1.
Following the calls for boycotts, Starbucks has taken a large financial hit. Data available from Google Finance reveals that since Nov. 16, Starbucks has gone on a 20-day losing
streak in the stock market that finally ended on Dec. 6. Over the 20 days, RetailWire, an economic news outlet, reported that Starbucks lost over $11 billion in market value.
After financial troubles, Starbucks started to offer deals on its app in an attempt to regain customers by offering challenges such as “order three lattes” or “order any bakery item two times” and offer a 70-star
reward. The stars on the Starbucks app can be redeemed for free drinks or modifiers. Whether these attempts will be successful is unclear at this time, but it’s the first step Starbucks has made to recover from the boycotts.
