Strategic Reactions: Corporate Responses to Social Media Consumer Movements

In the late 1990s and through 2001, consumer activists protested Nike’s alleged “sweatshops” around the globe. This was a new sort of protest that went beyond the picket lines and boycotts of the past – this protest extensively used email and listservs to spread messages and mobilize action at an unprecedented pace and for a very low cost (Peretti and Micheletti 2011). Nike responded to the consumer movements using the full spectrum of tactics – including everything from attempts to squash the movement and stifle the protests, to changing corporate policy, to coopting ideas from the protests in marketing campaigns (Carty 2002).