Buycott is the opposite of boycott. When we are purposely purchasing a company’s product or service in support of their policies and ideally because of their moral and ethical standards we are applying buycott. On macroeconomic level buycott can reflect larger goals such as improving domestic economy by buying for example “made is USA” products. On a microeconomic scale buycott can reflect more specific goal as with “buy local” approach which can either support small local business, try to lower one’s carbon footprint or both. The underlying reason for each buycott highly depends on consumers preferences, ideals, moral principles, political affiliations etc.
In open, democratic and market oriented systems companies are highly responsive towards consumer’s buying preferences. With time and with more information available consumers are becoming aware and educated about origin of a specific product. When combined with current global issues such as environmental crisis, exploitation of workforce and animal abuse the consumer awareness tends to shift towards companies which address these issues. Unfortunately the price is still the most determinantal factor in consumer decision making since most of the people have limited resources. That is why increase of living standard is directly corelated with higher buycott flexibility.
A good thing about capitalism is that we can influence its course of development with our buying habits. If we choose to ignore the origin of a specific product as for example that it was made in a sweat shop by poor workers in miserable conditions than companies will simply make more of these products because we are buying them. However, if we start questioning origins of that product and avoid buying from companies which exploit their workers then these companies will be forced to change their approach in production. This is why it is extremely important to investigate the origin of a product and buy as much as possible from companies which apply high moral, ethical and environmental standards to their production.
What to do:
Write/update buycott Wikipedia article in your mother tongue so that more people can learn about buycott
For any product or service that you purchase try to find a relevant company with propper ethical and moral standards
