Indianapolis, IN, April 3, 2015 (AcuteMania.Net) — After the governor of Indiana, Mike Pence, signed the recent religious freedom bill into law (Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA for short), gay activists and their sympathizers threatened the state with boycotts and a few companies threatened to pull their business out of the state.
Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple who recently announced that he is gay, attacked the law furiously; this is not surprising considering that Apple has removed Christian Apps from its App Store in the past. Angie’s List, a local business review website, also threatened to cancel a new expansion in Indiana.
In response, the FRC and the AFA have called for conservatives to boycott Angie’s List and many conservative media outlets have picked up the story. Some people will claim that boycotts do not work, but this one could be particularly devastating.
Angie’s List relies on reviews to create content. This could make the situation for Angie’s List very problematic in Indiana, where they have attacked the state, but also in other conservative states. If people refuse to review services and companies for Angie’s List, the company will no longer have a functional business model.
Likewise, even though Apple has probably angered Christians in the past, this issue is likely to add fuel to the fire. This is something that Christians will not soon forget. Christians may have been unwilling to use economic threats in the past. However, Christians now understand that companies like Apple will extend no such courtesy to them.
Apple and Angie’s List are particularly vulnerable to boycotts because they both rely heavily on their brand. Apple has always charged excessively for its products, and it has been able to do so because of the perceived value of its brand. Once that magic is lost, it is lost forever. Likewise, Angie’s List exists on the belief in the unbiased quality of its reviews. With the company’s bias now revealed, its reviews will lose their magic.
Christian boycotts are particularly bad because Christians are very dedicated people. Their boycotts are not like Elton John’s boycott, which failed within a day. Their good opinion once lost is lost forever, and they will not be back.
At this point, Apple has tons of money and market share. However, its tablet is already losing sales revenue. Its phone has viable, and cheaper, competitors, like the Android and Windows devices. So, the question really comes down to whether Christians are serious about a boycott. If so, oxygen pouring into the competition could give it enough power to defeat Apple at some point in the future.
Even if a boycott does not destroy a company, it can definitely hasten a decline as it is doing with the Firefox browser.