Java-chip Frappuccinos. Mango dragon-fruit refreshers. Iced white-chocolate mochas. Sydney-based food blogger Walla Abu-Eid has amassed a massive Instagram audience by posting viral recipe videos of homemade Starbucks staples to her 240,000 followers.
In March, Starbucks’ Middle Eastern franchisee, Alshaya Group, laid off more than 2,000 employees, or 4 percent of its workforce, as a result of the boycotts precipitating a sales downturn and “continually challenging trading conditions.
While global economic boycotts are unquestionably impacting corporate earnings, the precise, quantifiable numbers of those declines remain difficult to precisely measure among Wall Street analysts.Boycotts are “very hard to verify or quantify, it is definitely something that investors are thinking about these days,”Gargiulo added that in most cases multinationals being thrust into the spotlight have sought to avoid lengthy comment to limit the noise around such boycotts.
As the war in Gaza continues, many western brands in Middle Eastern markets with genuine ties to Israel expect business to flounder, or at best stall. “So long as this war is going on . . . we’re not expecting to see any significant improvement . . . It’s a human tragedy what’s going on and that does weigh on brands like ours,” McDonald’s CEO Kempczinski told investors in February.