Le Monde newspaper said that Starbucks cafes and McDonald’s stores in the Middle East are not completely deserted, but its quarterly results showed a decline in sales, which confirms that the boycott campaign against companies accused of supporting Israel is not without a painful impact.
The newspaper explained – in a report written by its correspondent in Beirut, Helen Salon – that this group of companies accused of supporting Israel is suffering from the effects of a campaign that encourages consumers to stay away from its products, a campaign that is very popular in the Middle East.
Le Monde pointed out that Washington’s unconditional support for Israel in its war on Gaza, in which more than 37,000 people have been killed so far, raises a wave of anger and discontent.
She highlighted that the Starbucks chain has been paying the price since it filed a lawsuit against the United Trade Union Federation for publishing a message of solidarity with Palestine on social media.
Changing consumption behaviour
The Kuwaiti Alshaya Group, which manages Starbucks franchises in the Middle East and North Africa, announced the layoff of two thousand employees as a result of the decline in sales. The parent company also announced a decrease in quarterly net profit by 15%, and its general manager admitted that this weak performance resulted from the significant decrease in… Sales in the United States and the Middle East, and that it is the result of “a misconception related to the Israeli war on Gaza.”
Starbucks states that it has no “political agenda” and that it refuses to “use its profits to fund government or military operations anywhere.”
According to Le Monde, the damage to the company’s reputation may last a long time. In an attempt to repair their image, Starbucks Charity and Alshaya Group announced a donation of $3 million to the “World Kitchen” organization to provide one million meals in the Gaza Strip, the correspondent says.
The Americana Group, which runs the Middle East franchises of fast food chains such as Hardee’s, KFC, and Pizza Hut, also suffered for the same reasons, and announced a decline in its quarterly profits by nearly 50%, citing “ongoing geopolitical tensions” in the Middle East.
McDonald’s announced that it failed to achieve its profit goals for the first time in 4 years, because its sales were severely affected in the Middle East, especially after its branches in Israel provided free meals to Israeli soldiers.
Barcode scanning
Le Monde quoted researcher Stephanie Hoshir Ali of the Atlantic Council for Research as saying that business leaders in the Middle East are concerned because of “the dissatisfaction with American policy, which is seen as immoral and harmful to the region’s ability to develop economically,” especially since changing consumer behavior constitutes, for many, a threat to the region’s economic development. Middle East most effective way to express political and moral positions.
The researcher explains that “boycotting American brands is a way to collectively show anger over the situation in Gaza and the United States’ support for Israel.”
Already, applications have been launched to help consumers discover brands with ties to Israel by scanning barcodes, and lists of companies to be boycotted are published, and these lists are often more comprehensive than those provided by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. , says Le Monde.
Fast food chains and food companies are the first targets of the boycott campaign, unlike companies such as Google, Amazon, and Oracle, which have been little affected so far, even though the boycott movement has identified them as being linked to Israel.
