What Companies Get Canceled For

The number one reason to “cancel” a brand – or at least boycott or protest them - is the mistreatment of animals. Animal cruelty was named as the (joint) top reasons why consumers would give up on a brand in three out of four countries included in a special survey by Statista Consumer Insights. 43 percent of the more than 3,000 U.S. respondents said they would give companies mistreating animals the boot, ahead of racism and human rights violations at 42 and 40 percent, respectively. UK and German respondents saw things similarly, with the exception that Germans considered the mistreatment of animals and human rights abuses as similarly damning and also rated environmental concerns higher than their English-language counterparts. Japanese respondents, on the other hand, were most concerned about products harmful to health, inapproriate advertising and corruption within a company.

13 percent of U.S. respondents said they had boycotted a brand before over practices seen as unethical. 21 percent said they had spoken with their friends about their concerns around a brand, while 25 percent said they had posted about these concerns on social media. While 86 percent of Americans in the survey named a reason they found good enough to boycott or otherwise attack a brand over their business practices, 49 percent said that they had actually never done so before.