In the prior blog post in this series, we explored how Gartner sought to overcome flawed research on corporate social justice with its own proprietary study. We started not by asking whether people would or wouldn't purchase from brands that took a stand on social or political issues. Instead, asked consumers to name brands they had already buycotted or boycotted due to their corporate social stands.

We found very little difference between the percentage of U.S. consumers who said they bought, or "buycotted," (18.7%) and those that said they stopped buying, or boycotted (19.2%). This data may, at first, seem surprising given the number of studies that have suggested consumers have a strong preference for brands that take action. But because we studied these divisive issues from a balanced perspective, asking about stands on both sides of the issue, it is perhaps not surprising that we’d find equal numbers of buycotters and boycotters.

To find how corporate justice stands drive consumer purchases, we need to examine each stand individually. Our study allows us to compare the number of U.S. consumers who made buycott purchases as a result of a brand’s social or political actions versus the number who stopped buying and boycotted the brand for the same reason. I can't convey all of the data from this study since we must reserve it for Gartner clients, but I can share the two corporate social justice stands that drove the most net-positive and net-negative purchase behavior: