Buycott Definitions in Academic Literature (2006-2026)
Analysis of 103 academic papers mentioning buycott, tracking how the term is defined across consumer activism research.
| # | NO | Title | Author(s) | Year | Cited by | Buycott Mentions | Buycott Definition | Definition Type | Conceptual Elements | + |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | “Fight for me and I will be with you”: How product deciphering app digital activism influences user loyalty | Huaman-Ramirez, R.; Gaztelumendi, A.; Bhatti, Z.A.; Guzmán, F.; Pfiffelmann, J. | 2026 | 0 | 2 | NA | No definition | ||
| 2 | 2 | “Not Buying Cottage Cheese”: Motivations for Consumer Protest-the Case of the 2011 Protest in Israel | Hershkovitz, S. | 2017 | 7 | 11 | The actual act of a boycott or buycott is sometimes only the tip of the iceberg —aw a yt o Bblow off steam ^ and express discomfort related to broader issues. | Formal definition | Purchase/Buy | |
| 3 | 3 | “ONLY WAILING AND PROTESTING”? EMOTION WORK AND THE YISHUV CONTROVERSY ABOUT THE ANTI-NAZI BOYCOTT | Shoham, H. | 2025 | 0 | 7 | 218) define the carrotmob as a temporary buycott in the form of a purchase flashmob by a group of consumers organised by activists. | Descriptive | Purchase/Buy; Collective | |
| 4 | 4 | A counterinsurgent (COIN) framework to defend against consumer activists | Chen, S. | 2023 | 9 | 7 | They may also develop counternarratives to anti- brand discourses, evangelize the “good” of the brand, or engage in “buycotts” to support the brand in times of crisis (Ilhan et al. | Descriptive | Purchase/Buy; Positive/Reward; Brand/Company | |
| 5 | 5 | A cross-cultural investigation of the relationship between eco-innovation and customers boycott behaviour | Alyahya, M.; Agag, G.; Aliedan, M.; Abdelmoety, Z.H. | 2023 | 58 | 1 | NA | No definition | ||
| 6 | 6 | A reflection on Hong Kong’s yellow economic circle | Pit Hok-Yau, T. | 2024 | 2 | 13 | NA | No definition | ||
| 7 | 7 | A study on the boycott motivations of Malaysian non-Muslims | Abdul-Talib, A.-N.; Abdul-Latif, S.-A.; Abd-Razak, I.-S. | 2016 | 28 | 1 | NA | No definition | ||
| 8 | 8 | A three-country study on consumer responses to political conflicts: Boycott, buycott, or standby | Wang, H.H.; Hao, N.; Wang, X.; Moon, D. | 2025 | 1 | 31 | NA | No definition | ||
| 9 | 9 | Analysing consumers' ‘activism’ in response to rising prices | Barda, C.; Sardianou, E. | 2010 | 27 | 1 | NA | No definition | ||
| 10 | 10 | Antecedents and consequences of the “cancel culture” firestorm journey for brands: is there a possibility for forgiveness? | Costa, C.; Azevedo, A. | 2024 | 22 | 1 | NA | No definition | ||
| 11 | 11 | Are monopolies efficient setters of ethical standards? | Giat, Y.; Manes, E. | 2025 | 0 | 1 | NA | No definition | ||
| 12 | 12 | Boycott and Buycott Intent to Actions: Unpacking the Role of Political Ideology and Advertising Through The Society of the Spectacle | Flecha-Ortiz, J.A.; Rivera-Guevarrez, R.; Santos-Corrada, M.; Fonseca, M. | 2024 | 6 | 124 | Boycotts and buycotts are forms of political consumerism and are social phenomena that are linked to changes in political participation (Echegaray 2015; Friedman 1996; Shah et al. | Buycotts evaluated the inclination to actively support certain brands, indicating their will - ingness to encourage the purchase of products or services that align with political values and ideologies. | Formal definition | Purchase/Buy; Political/Ethical; Positive/Reward; Brand/Company | |
| 13 | 13 | Boycott or Buycott?: Internal Politics and Consumer Choices | Cuadras-Morató, X.; Raya, J.M. | 2016 | 22 | 31 | NA | No definition | ||
| 14 | 14 | Boycotts, buycotts and consumer activism in a global context: An overview | Hawkins, R.A. | 2010 | 39 | 29 | NA | No definition | ||
| 15 | 15 | BRAND ACTIVISM: A Literature Review and Future Research Agenda | Cammarota, A.; D’Arco, M.; Marino, V.; Resciniti, R. | 2023 | 71 | 1 | NA | No definition | ||
| 16 | 16 | Brand hate semiotics: hate as a story theory. Netnographic approach during the war on Gaza | Assoud, M.; Berbou, L.; Vieira, L.S. | 2025 | 0 | 1 | NA | No definition | ||
| 17 | 17 | Brand Silence in Protest Movements: Commercial Brands’ Discursive Indifference during a Social Protest in Peru | Yalán-Dongo, E.; Cuevas-Calderón, E.; Guerra, J.M.; Kanashiro, L. | 2024 | 0 | 15 | Figure 4 Photomontage of demand comments Brand Silence in Protest Movements: Commercial Brands’ Discursive Indifference During a Social Protest in Peru 60 Conversely, boycott and buycott are identified as forms of punishment from protesters that may want to penalize the brand (boycott), understood as “I will never buy your products again” or a punishment that benefits another brand ( buycott), seen as “I will punish you by buying products from the competition.” Both are narrative forms that may provide protesters with a sense of control in the commercial interaction, as noted in the comments. | Therefore, boycotts are mentioned as the total ca ncellation of their relationship with the brand (See Figure 5; C16, C17, and C18), whereas buycotts are regarded as preferring competing brands as a sign of disapproval (See Figure 5; C19, C20, and C21). | Unlike offline practices studied in the literature (Minocher, 2018; Rössel & Schenk, 2018; Sittler et al., 2020; Zorell, 2019), our online -focused study found that boycotts and buycotts are predictive scenes (p ractices) of a narrative that only aim to go against the reputation, credibility, trust, and close (human) relationship, rather than affecting the company’s economy (Al-Omar, 2020; Carareto et al., 2019; de Oca et al., 2020). | Formal definition | Purchase/Buy; Political/Ethical; Collective; Brand/Company | |
| 18 | 18 | Can authenticity be built? Looking for factors that influence authentic brand activism | Cammarota, A.; Avallone, F.; Marino, V.; Resciniti, R. | 2024 | 2 | 1 | NA | No definition | ||
| 19 | 19 | Carrotmob and Anti-consumption: Same Motives but Different Willingness to Make Sacrifices? | Hutter, K.; Hoffmann, S. | 2013 | 52 | 7 | 218) define the carrotmob as a temporary buycott in the form of a purchase flashmob by a group of consumers organised by activists. | Descriptive | Purchase/Buy; Collective | |
| 20 | 20 | Carrotmob: A Win–Win–Win Approach to Creating Benefits for Consumers, Business, and Society at Large | Hutter, K.; Hoffmann, S.; Mai, R. | 2016 | 14 | 6 | Buycotters reward companies for desir - able behavior by intentionally buying their products (Friedman, 1999). | A carrotmob is a form of a short-term buycott that aims to reward companies for the commitment to behave socially responsible in future times. | Hoffmann and Hutter (2012) define carrotmobs as “a temporary buycott in the form of a purchase flashmob by a group of consumers organized by activists” (p. | Relational (vs boycott) | Purchase/Buy; Political/Ethical; Positive/Reward; Deliberate; Collective | |
| 21 | 21 | CarrotMobbing: Exploring consumer motivation for ethical shopping in emerging countries a case of mauritius | Annunto, M.; Pudaruth, S. | 2014 | 0 | 0 | NA (Abstract only - full text missing. Uses CarrotMobbing instead of buycott.) | No definition | ||
| 22 | 22 | Civic awareness of social entrepreneurship and consumer boycotts: A collective action approach | Schenkenhofer, J.; Vismara, S. | 2025 | 1 | 3 | NA | No definition | ||
| 23 | 23 | Clarifying the Relationship Between Political Consumerism and Political Persuasion Over Time | Scheffauer, R.; Medina, L.; Gil de Zúñiga, H. | 2024 | 0 | 15 | NA | No definition | ||
| 24 | 24 | Conflict, Radical Imagination, and Strategic Coalition Paradigms of Consumer Movements and Activism | Handelman, J.M.; Weijo, H.A. | 2025 | 1 | 3 | NA | No definition | ||
| 25 | 25 | Conflicting consumer cultures, shopping rituals, and the challenges of measuring consumer-based brand equity | Hajdas, M.; Radomska, J.; Szpulak, A.; Silva, S.C. | 2023 | 3 | 3 | NA | No definition | ||
| 26 | 26 | Consumer Boycotts and Fast-Food Chains: Economic Consequences and Reputational Damage | Elshaer, I.A.; Azzaz, A.M.S.; Fayyad, S.; Kooli, C.; Fouad, A.M.; Hamdy, A.; Fathy, E.A. | 2025 | 4 | 4 | NA | No definition | ||
| 27 | 27 | Consumer boycotts of foreign products: A metric model | Altıntaş, M.H.; Isin, B.F.; Kaufmann, H.R.; Kiliç, S.; Harcar, T. | 2013 | 8 | 2 | NA | No definition | ||
| 28 | 28 | Consumer motivation for the decision to boycott: The social dilemma | Shin, S.; Yoon, S.-W. | 2018 | 26 | 1 | NA | No definition | ||
| 29 | 29 | Consumer proactive empowerment: A systematic review and taxonomy development | Arora, S.D. | 2024 | 2 | 6 | Boycotts and buycotts are popular manifesta- tions of activism and are often targeted at individual firms or market subsets (Nonomura, 2017). | Formal definition | Purchase/Buy; Brand/Company; Marketplace | |
| 30 | 30 | Consumer reaction towards corporate social responsibility in United Arab Emirates | Anadol, Y.; Youssef, M.A.; Thiruvattal, E. | 2015 | 29 | 1 | NA | No definition | ||
| 31 | 31 | Consumer rewarding mechanism in global corporate activism: An experiment using the Russia-Ukraine War | Fong, I.W.-Y.; Kim, S. | 2023 | 9 | 48 | The next question then is how information about corporate activism affects public intention to reward the companies through buycott or encourage others to buycott through positive communicative behavior (e.g., encourage buycott participation on social media). | Relational (vs boycott) | Purchase/Buy; Political/Ethical; Positive/Reward | |
| 32 | 32 | Consumption as voting: An exploration of consumer empowerment | Shaw, D.; Newholm, T.; Dickinson, R. | 2006 | 259 | 7 | NA | No definition | ||
| 33 | 33 | Corporate mobilization of political consumerism in developing societies | Echegaray, F. | 2016 | 19 | 28 | Accounts regarding boycotting and buycotting (rewarding companies for political reasons) estimate that, on average, at least one in seven Brazilians (14.3%), and one in five Argentineans (19%) and Mexicans (19.6%), have engaged in these behaviors since 1998 ( Echegaray, 2015). | Hence, we must acknowledge that boycotts and buycotts represent more than mere reflections of a post-materialist value balance or attempts to bypass traditional politics to address ethical or socio-environmental concerns. | Buycott Over the past year, have you considered rewarding a socially or environmentally responsible company by either buying their products or speaking positively about the company to others? | Relational (vs boycott) | Purchase/Buy; Political/Ethical; Positive/Reward; Brand/Company | |
| 34 | 34 | Corporate responses to boycott movements: impact on accounting and financial performance in the Middle East | Alqatan, A. | 2025 | 8 | 3 | NA | No definition | ||
| 35 | 35 | Corporate social irresponsibility and consumer punishment: A systematic review and research agenda | Valor, C.; Antonetti, P.; Zasuwa, G. | 2022 | 74 | 6 | NA | No definition | ||
| 36 | 36 | Decomposing the effects of consumer boycotts: evidence from the anti-Japanese demonstration in China | Luo, Z.; Zhou, Y. | 2020 | 17 | 1 | NA | No definition | ||
| 37 | 37 | Designing and theorizing the adoption of mobile technology-mediated ethical consumption tools | Watts, S.; Wyner, G. | 2011 | 41 | 1 | NA | No definition | ||
| 38 | 38 | Digital activism and citizenship: a case study of “yellow” food influencers and political consumerism in Hong Kong | Mak, V.S.-W.; Poon, A.K.-Y. | 2024 | 6 | 3 | NA | No definition | ||
| 39 | 39 | Dimensions of ethical consumption: A systematic review and future outlook | Rohini, R.; Meppurath, D.P. | 2025 | 3 | 1 | NA | No definition | ||
| 40 | 40 | Dissecting destination boycotts: Unpacking ethical dilemmas in politicized tourism | Seyfi, S.; Siyamiyan Gorji, A.; Kuhzady, S.; Hall, C.M.; Senbeto, D.L. | 2024 | 2 | 1 | NA | No definition | ||
| 41 | 41 | Does Changing a Light Bulb Lead to Changing the World? Political Action and the Conscious Consumer | Willis, M.M.; Schor, J.B. | 2012 | 201 | 16 | NA | No definition | ||
| 42 | 42 | Effects of empathy and egoism on CSR perceptions and consumer buycotts: Lessons learned during global crisis in support of equitable business practices | Rynarzewska, A.I.; LeMay, S.A.; Helms, M.M.; Hetrick, E. | 2024 | 8 | 73 | Consumers are willing to act on polarization by either engaging in a buycott, supporting and purchasing from businesses that align with their values, or boycott, avoiding and not purchasing from businesses that do not align with their values (McCullough et al., 2022 ; Neilson, 2010 ). | Buycott is operationalized as the intentional purchase of a product from a company whose policies align with the buyer’s values. | Buycott is more specific but contains elements of prosocial behavior (Hoffmann et al., 2018 ). | With the recent substantive increase in political consumerism, understanding what induces the negative boycott and positive buycott is likely to be critical to brands’ well-being. | Formal definition | Purchase/Buy; Political/Ethical; Positive/Reward; Deliberate; Brand/Company | |
| 43 | 43 | Embracing ethical fields: Constructing consumption in the margins | Shaw, D.; Riach, K. | 2011 | 41 | 2 | NA | No definition | ||
| 44 | 44 | Ethical Consumerism in Global Perspective: A Multilevel Analysis of the Interactions between Individual-Level Predictors and Country-Level Affluence | Summers, N. | 2016 | 23 | 26 | Ethical con- sumerism, as these examples show, covers a range of behavior including the deliberate purchase of consumer products to reward companies for positive behavior (buycotting) and the deliberate rejec- tion of products to punish companies for objectionable behavior (boycotting). | Relational (vs boycott) | Purchase/Buy; Political/Ethical; Positive/Reward; Deliberate | |
| 45 | 45 | Ethical Consumption and New Business Models in the Food Industry. Evidence from the Eataly Case | Sebastiani, R.; Montagnini, F.; Dalli, D. | 2013 | 94 | 3 | NA | No definition | ||
| 46 | 46 | Expanding boycott repertoire: politically motivated consumer boycotts as a reaction to brands’ political alignment | Ateş, S. | 2025 | 0 | 17 | Buycotts involve supporting companies perceived to uphold desirable values – such as environmental sustainability, labor fairness or gender equality ( Stolle et al., 2005 ; Micheletti, 2004 ). | Descriptive | Purchase/Buy; Positive/Reward | |
| 47 | 47 | Explaining support for and resistance to brand activism through the Theory of Planned Behavior | Bennett, A.R.; Pricer, L.; Peters, C.B. | 2025 | 0 | 1 | NA | No definition | ||
| 48 | 48 | Exploring ethical consumption in different geographical places | Delistavrou, A.; Katrandjiev, H.; Sadeh, H.; Tilikidou, I. | 2019 | 21 | 8 | NA | No definition | ||
| 49 | 49 | Factors Influencing the Boycott Intentions of Turkish Consumers amid the Israel-Palestine Conflict | Avci, I. | 2024 | 5 | 3 | NA | No definition | ||
| 50 | 50 | From motivation to outcome: a structured narrative review of the literature on corporate activism | Saracevic, S.; Schlegelmilch, B.B. | 2026 | 1 | 1 | NA | No definition | ||
| 51 | 51 | From Stimulus to Response: Understanding the Causes and Outcomes of Consumer Activism | Narayanan, S.; Singh, G.A. | 2025 | 7 | 31 | These buycotts are strategically organized through platforms like social media to maximize visibility and impact, often involving larger purchases during specific campaigns to make a notable economic impact, significantly supporting the company, and encouraging others to reflect on their purchasing decisions (Hong and Li 2020). | Buycott Buycott is the polar opposite of a boycott. | One form of buycott is Carrotmob where consumers collectively flock to a specific store and buy from it to reward its socially responsible behavior (Hoffmann and Hutter 2012 ). | Formal definition | Purchase/Buy; Political/Ethical; Positive/Reward; Collective; Brand/Company | |
| 52 | 52 | Frontiers: Spilling the Beans on Political Consumerism: Do Social Media Boycotts and Buycotts Translate to Real Sales Impact? | Liaukonytė, J.; Tuchman, A.; Zhu, X. | 2023 | 49 | 33 | NA | No definition | ||
| 53 | 53 | Gender difference in the perception of guilt in consumer boycott; Diferença de gênero na percepção de culpa no boicote de consumidores | de Paula Andrade Cruz, B.P.A.; Pires, R.J.M.; Dutt-Ross, S.D. | 2013 | 13 | 5 | Both boycott and buycott are used to define a form of political consumption. | Descriptive | Purchase/Buy; Political/Ethical | |
| 54 | 54 | Gender ideology: The last barrier to women’s participation in political consumerism? | Lorenzini, J.; Bassoli, M. | 2015 | 11 | 2 | NA | No definition | ||
| 55 | 55 | Halal activism: Networking between islam, the state and market | Fischer, J. | 2016 | 5 | 1 | NA | No definition | ||
| 56 | 56 | How Do Consumers Respond to Brand Activism Campaigns? Exploring the Relationship Between Authenticity, Brand Value Congruence, Brand Identification, and Political Ideology | D’Arco, M.; Cammarota, A.; Marino, V.; Resciniti, R. | 2024 | 8 | 1 | NA | No definition | ||
| 57 | 57 | How political ideology drives anti-consumption manifestations | Pecot, F.; Vasilopoulou, S.; Cavallaro, M. | 2021 | 26 | 4 | NA | No definition | ||
| 58 | 58 | Human Trafficking and Heroic Consumerism | O’Brien, E. | 2018 | 4 | 15 | NA | No definition | ||
| 59 | 59 | Hybrid consumer activism in Fairtrade Towns: exploring digital consumer activism through spatiality | Discetti, R.; Anderson, M. | 2023 | 8 | 2 | NA | No definition | ||
| 60 | 60 | Information, choice and political consumption: Human rights in the checkout lane | Scruggs, L.; Hertel, S.; Best, S.J.; Jeffords, C. | 2011 | 7 | 1 | NA | No definition | ||
| 61 | 61 | Intersectional political consumerism: Re-examining consumer strategies of The Woodlawn Organization and Jobs or Income Now during the Chicago Welfare Rights Era | Brown, N.M. | 2021 | 2 | 1 | NA | No definition | ||
| 62 | 62 | Living production-engaged alternatives: An examination of new consumption communities | Moraes, C.; Szmigin, I.; Carrigan, M. | 2010 | 62 | 2 | NA | No definition | ||
| 63 | 63 | Marketing morals, moralizing markets: Assessing the effectiveness of fair trade as a form of boycott | Schmelzer, M. | 2010 | 22 | 44 | First, buycotts are more exclusive than boycotts, since participation requires the ability to spend rather than to abstain from spending money and since buycotted goods tend to be more expensive – a dimension, that, as the dis - cussion of the cultural practices of fair trade consumption has shown, might have important implications. | Friedman defines a buycott as an ‘attempt to induce shoppers to buy the products or services of selected companies in order to reward them for behaviour consistent with the goals of the activists.’ Friedman (1999, 201). | Formal definition | Purchase/Buy; Positive/Reward | |
| 64 | 64 | Mobile activism, material imaginings, and the ethics of the edible: Framing political engagement through the Buycott app | Eli, K.; Dolan, C.; Schneider, T.; Ulijaszek, S. | 2016 | 32 | 207 | Although Buycott is not a dedicated food acti- vism app, food features centrally in its campaigns, and the app seems to provide a mobile means of extending, and perhaps expanding, alternative food network (AFN) action across geographies and con- stituencies. | Thus, we suggest, the activist habitus constructed through Buycott is a neoliberal, consumer habitus. | Although Buycott is not a dedicated food app (any item that has a barcode can, in principle, be incorporated into the app’s data- base), food is central to its user-generated campaigns. | As described on the app’s official website, A buycott is the opposite of a boycott. | While Buycott is designed to enable ethical con- sumption (or non-consumption) at the level of the individual consumer, the app is also marketed as fostering ‘impact’ and a ‘thriving community’ of users ( Buycott, 2015b), such that the app’s focus on campaigns reveals a framing of ethical consumption at the individual level as mediated through the collective definition and endorsement of a cause. | The birth of Buycott Buycott was first released on 11 January 2013. | Buycott is one of the hottest items on the market as shoppers are using it in their droves to avoid purchasing Israeli products’ (Russia Today, 2014, August 7 ). | [Buycott Facebook page, user post, 7 August 2014] Later user reviews, however, also expressed similar logic; for exam- ple, this 19 November UK iTunes review stated that Buycott is a Great app which lets you know which products/companies donate money to Israel so you can avoid them and save inno- cent lives! | Yet, as it emerges in user discourses, the ‘voting’ that occurs through Buycott is not confined to acts of purchasing or boycotting particular consumer products. | Formal definition | Purchase/Buy; Political/Ethical; Collective; Marketplace | |
| 65 | 65 | Modern slavery legislation and the limits of ethical fashion | Lusty, N.; Richards, H. | 2024 | 5 | 2 | NA | No definition | ||
| 66 | 66 | My anger is your gain, my contempt your loss: Explaining consumer responses to corporate wrongdoing | Romani, S.; Grappi, S.; Bagozzi, R.P. | 2013 | 131 | 2 | NA | No definition | ||
| 67 | 67 | Out of site: Empowering a new approach to online boycotts | Li, H.; Alarcon, B.; Milkes Espinosa, S.M.; Hecht, B. | 2018 | 15 | 13 | While boycott participants avoid purchasing goods, buycotts involve consumers purposefully purchasing goods from desired businesses, e.g. | While boycotting adopts a conflict-oriented strategy to punish bad companies, buycotting is centered around a cooperation-oriented strategy to reward good companies [27]. | Buycott is a mobile app that uses bar codes to query targeted product and company databases. | However, Buycott is “read-only”; it does not attempt to automate any boycotting actions as in the key features of Out of Site. | Formal definition | Purchase/Buy; Positive/Reward; Deliberate; Brand/Company | |
| 68 | 68 | Political consumerism and the participation gap: are boycotting and ‘buycotting’ youth-based activities? | Nonomura, R. | 2017 | 23 | 14 | NA | No definition | ||
| 69 | 69 | Political Resistance in the Marketplace: Consumer Activism in the Milk Tea Alliance | Chan, D.S.W. | 2024 | 13 | 41 | Paradoxically, the demand for political buycotts is in fluenced by the availability of other political participation avenues. | Descriptive | Purchase/Buy; Political/Ethical | |
| 70 | 70 | Predicting the determinants of consumer’s intention to boycott surrogate Israeli products – evidence on nonlinear relationships from Morocco | Zejjari, I.; Benhayoun, I. | 2025 | 5 | 3 | NA | No definition | ||
| 71 | 71 | Purchase power: An examination of consumption as voting | Moraes, C.; Shaw, D.; Carrigan, M. | 2011 | 27 | 7 | NA | No definition | ||
| 72 | 72 | Radical boycotts and moderate buycotts: feminist consumer activism on social media in China | Wei, M.; Fang, K. | 2025 | 0 | 72 | NA | No definition | ||
| 73 | 73 | Redefining consumer nationalism: The ambiguities of shopping yellow during the 2019 Hong Kong Anti-ELAB movement | Li, Y.-T.; Whitworth, K. | 2023 | 13 | 14 | NA | No definition | ||
| 74 | 74 | Responsible citizens, political consumers and the state | O’Brien, E.; Macoun, A. | 2022 | 3 | 14 | The targets of boycotts and buycotts are not government actors, nor are campaigns aimed at pushing the government to act. | Formal definition | Purchase/Buy; Collective | |
| 75 | 75 | Role of negative public religious sentiments on brand management in Pakistan – from the marketers’ perspective | Shaikh, A.L.; Soomro, K.A. | 2025 | 0 | 1 | NA | No definition | ||
| 76 | 76 | Selling and consuming the nation: Understanding consumer nationalism | Castelló, E.; Mihelj, S. | 2018 | 107 | 7 | NA | No definition | ||
| 77 | 77 | Should businesses take a stand? Effects of perceived psychological distance on consumers’ expectation and evaluation of corporate social advocacy | Xu, H.; Lee, E.; Rim, H. | 2022 | 32 | 36 | Companies’ stances on controversial issues can impact the consumers’ general attitudes toward the company and the CSA engagement, as well as their consumption intention (Dodd and JOURNAL OF MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS 845 Supa 2014 ), which includes ‘boycotting (punishing businesses for unfavorable behavior)’ and ‘buycotting (supporting businesses that exhibit desirable behavior)’ (Neilson 2010 , 214). | Descriptive | Purchase/Buy; Positive/Reward; Brand/Company; Marketplace | |
| 78 | 78 | Spiral of Silence or Social Loafing? A Parallel Mechanism to Explain Why People Defend Their Stances on Controversial Sociopolitical Issues | Hong, C.; Li, C. | 2022 | 1 | 108 | Such rewarding (i.e., “buycott” behavior that people purposely purchase a company’s product or service to show support) and punishing (i.e., “boycott” behavior that people purposely avoid purchasing a company’s product or service to show resistance) activities are often labeled as political consumption behavior, driven by social, political, or ethical considerations (Baek, 2010). | Literature Review Boycott and Buycott: Being Expressive and Instrumental As political consumption behaviors, boycott and buycott are both instrumental and expressive in nature (Kam & Deichert, 2017; Klein et al., 2004; Makarem & Jae, 2016). | Consumption decisions of boycott/buycott are not only contingent upon consumers’ own sociopolitical stances compared with the target company’s stance but also dependent on others’ influences. | Before answering this behavioral intention question, participants were provided with definitions of boycotting (i.e., Boycotting is defined as a consumer’s purposive avoidance of the product/service from a company because the consumer does not agree with the company’s social, ethical, or political values) and buycotting (i.e., buycotting is defined as a consumer’s purposive purchase of the product/service from a company because the consumer wants to show his or her support toward the company’s social, ethical, or political stance). | The experimental results suggest that individuals’ decisions of boycott/buycott are not only affected by the consistency between their own sociopolitical stances and the target company’s stance, but also by how others express similar or dissimilar stances. | Formal definition | Purchase/Buy; Political/Ethical; Positive/Reward; Brand/Company | |
| 79 | 79 | Synthesizing advocacy and social license seeking strategies in stakeholder management: A content analysis of corporate responses to Russia-Ukraine war | Fong, I.W.-Y. | 2026 | 0 | 3 | NA | No definition | ||
| 80 | 80 | The consumption power of the politically powerless: The Yellow Economy in Hong Kong | Chan, D.S.W. | 2022 | 25 | 20 | Buycotting to reward like-minded companies in political move- ments deserves more scholarly attention. | Relational (vs boycott) | Purchase/Buy; Political/Ethical; Positive/Reward | |
| 81 | 81 | The Effect of Online Protests and Firm Responses on Shareholder and Consumer Evaluation | van den Broek, T.; Langley, D.; Hornig, T. | 2017 | 45 | 1 | NA | No definition | ||
| 82 | 82 | The Evolution and Power of Online Consumer Activism: Illustrating the Hybrid Dynamics of “Consumer Video Activism” in China through Two Case Studies | Treré, E.; Yu, Z. | 2021 | 13 | 4 | NA | No definition | ||
| 83 | 83 | The impact of smokers' group-membership and activist gender on tolerance for smoking, receptiveness and perceived susceptibility to anti-smoking messages, and likelihood of anti-smoking activism | Bhatnagar, N.; Samu, S. | 2009 | 1 | 2 | NA | No definition | ||
| 84 | 84 | THE INTERSECTION OF DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP AND POLITICAL ACTIVISM: EXAMINING GEN Z'S ROLE IN ONLINE BOYCOTTS | Fakhri, M.; Hartadi, T.; Kurnianingrum, D. | 2025 | 0 | 2 | NA | No definition | ||
| 85 | 85 | The power of social pressure in steering society toward intentional boycotts of Israeli-related products | Anwar, M.M.; Rusanti, E.; Napitupulu, R.M. | 2025 | 0 | 2 | NA | No definition | ||
| 86 | 86 | The relationship between misinformation belief and political consumerism: evidence from Hong Kong | Shi, W.; Ye, Q.; Shen, F. | 2025 | 1 | 14 | NA | No definition | ||
| 87 | 87 | The Role of Individual-and Contextual-Level Social Capital in Product Boycotting: A Multilevel Analysis | Zasuwa, G. | 2019 | 9 | 7 | NA | No definition | ||
| 88 | 88 | The times they are a-changing: examining the effects of luxury brand activism on political consumerism and eWOM | Tan, C.S.L. | 2025 | 9 | 79 | Buycotts are multitarget, while boycotts are usually focused on single businesses (Neilson, 2010 ). | However, the success of the buycott is dependent on whether the stance taken is indeed congruent with most consumers (Neureiter & Bhattacharya, 2021 ). | Formal definition | Purchase/Buy; Brand/Company | |
| 89 | 89 | The Value-Translation Model of Consumer Activism: How Consumer Watchdog Organizations Change Markets | Nøjgaard, M. | 2023 | 22 | 1 | NA | No definition | ||
| 90 | 90 | To support or to boycott: a public segmentation model in corporate social advocacy | Hong, C.; Li, C. | 2020 | 91 | 6 | NA | No definition | ||
| 91 | 91 | Transmodernizing Management Historiographies of Consumerism for the Majority | Faria, A.; Hemais, M. | 2021 | 13 | 19 | NA | No definition | ||
| 92 | 92 | Trump’s wall and gourmet coffee sales: The effect of a consumer boycott in Mexico | Peña, P.A.; Salazar, S.; Serrano, C. | 2022 | 1 | 2 | NA | No definition | ||
| 93 | 93 | Understanding consumerism within Western and Muslim based societies: Twitter usage of Saudi and American consumers | Althawadi, O.; Fraedrich, J.; Abu Farha, A.A. | 2021 | 5 | 28 | Accounts regarding boycotting and buycotting (rewarding companies for political reasons) estimate that, on average, at least one in seven Brazilians (14.3%), and one in five Argentineans (19%) and Mexicans (19.6%), have engaged in these behaviors since 1998 ( Echegaray, 2015). | Hence, we must acknowledge that boycotts and buycotts represent more than mere reflections of a post-materialist value balance or attempts to bypass traditional politics to address ethical or socio-environmental concerns. | Buycott Over the past year, have you considered rewarding a socially or environmentally responsible company by either buying their products or speaking positively about the company to others? | Relational (vs boycott) | Purchase/Buy; Political/Ethical; Positive/Reward; Brand/Company | |
| 94 | 94 | Understanding the psychology behind the boycott of Israeli-affiliated brands: A TPB-based study in Bangladesh | Babu, M.A.; Alam, M.T.U.; Jaman, S.M.S.; Islam, M.R. | 2025 | 0 | 2 | NA | No definition | ||
| 95 | 95 | Voices behind destination boycotts–an ecofeminist perspective | Shaheer, I.; Carr, N.; Insch, A. | 2024 | 9 | 1 | NA | No definition | ||
| 96 | 96 | When brand activism meets adversity: consumer reactions to performance- and value-related crises of varying severity | Francioni, B.; de Cicco, R.; Curina, I.; Cioppi, M. | 2025 | 0 | 1 | NA | No definition | ||
| 97 | 97 | When Corporate Social Advocacy Meets Controversial Celebrity: The Role of Consumer–Brand Congruence and Consumer-Celebrity Congruence | Alharbi, K.; Kim, J.K.; Noland, C.; Carter, J. | 2022 | 19 | 1 | NA | No definition | ||
| 98 | 98 | Whose justice? Social (in)justice in tourism boycotts | Seyfi, S.; Rastegar, R.; Kuhzady, S.; Hall, C.M.; Saarinen, J. | 2023 | 19 | 3 | NA | No definition | ||
| 99 | 99 | Why Consumers Boycott More Than Buycott: The Role of Perceived Instrumentality and Self-Enhancement | Li, A.; Kirmani, A.; Ferraro, R. | 2024 | 3 | 31 | NA | No definition | ||
| 100 | 100 | Why do boycotts sometimes increase sales? Consumer activism in the age of political polarization | Neureiter, M.; Bhattacharya, C.B. | 2021 | 52 | 33 | NA | No definition |
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Buycott Definitions in Academic Literature (2006-2026) — AI Analysis
Key Findings
- 77 of 103 papers (75%) use the term "buycott" without providing any definition
- Only 13 papers (12.6%) offer a formal definition; 7 give descriptive definitions and 6 define it relationally vs. boycott
- "Purchase/Buy" appears in 26 definitions — the most common conceptual element, followed by "Positive/Reward" (16) and "Political/Ethical" (15)
- Research exploded after 2020: 58 of 103 papers (56%) were published 2021-2026
- The 5 most-cited papers (107-259 citations each) all lack a buycott definition, suggesting the field's most influential works treat the concept as self-evident
Visualizations
Conceptual Elements in Buycott Definitions
Publication Trend by Year
Definition Types Across Papers
The Definitional Paradox
The five most-cited papers in this corpus (107-259 citations) all categorize as "No definition" — the most influential works in buycott research never formally define the concept they study.