Activism in the Aisle: When Should Companies Speak Out?

It’s not often that academic research involves launching a coffee company and selling real products. But to explore how CEO activism influences consumer purchasing, that’s just what the authors of a new paper did.

“The company is still alive. You can go on the website, put coffee in the cart and make a purchase,” says Young Hou, assistant professor of business administration at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. “That’s what’s exciting for a lot of folks reading the paper.”

For Hou and his co-author Christopher Poliquin, an assistant professor at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, setting up the Bean Brigade, which sells single-origin coffee, took time and effort. “We tapped into existing suppliers, built a website and created an image for the company,” Hou explains. “It took a lot of trial and error to figure out how everything would work.”

Choosing the right product was critical. The author team wanted to be sure it was one whose buyers held opposing views. “Coffee turns out to be a highly polarizing product,” says Hou. “If you walk into Walmart, you see Starbucks [often perceived as left-learning] and at eye-level you see these very conservative-leaning coffee companies.” Right-leaning brands, he says, include Black Rifle Coffee and Blackout Coffee.

It’s not the first time Hou and Poliquin have explored the topic. Their 2023 paper, “The effects of CEO activism: Partisan consumer behavior and its duration,” tracked political consumerism through the influence corporate values and beliefs have on the purchasing choices of consumers.

However, in this paper — “Values and visibility: How CEO activism influences private and public consumer choices” — the team wanted to go one step further.

Hou and Poliquin decided to explore not only the effect on purchasing decisions of a CEO’s stance on a particular issue (the team chose gun rights) but also whether those decisions would vary depending on whether buyers were aware that their choice would be known to others or whether it would remain private. In other words, is political consumerism driven primarily by a desire for signaling or by deeply-held beliefs?

The question was how to test this out. Fortunately the team learned that among the pools of people sourced by Prolific, which recruits online research participants, was a group that had agreed to take part in studies in with another person, such as a friend. With a total of 1,198 total participants, the team had 599 pairs. “It provided a unique opportunity,” says Hou. “We had people who knew each other.”

In the experiment, participants were randomly chosen to receive either generic information about the coffee company and its products or the same information along with a CEO statement supporting gun rights. Participants could then enter to win either a free bag of coffee or a bonus cash payment. Five bonus amounts (between 25 cents and $4) were used to assess the compensation needed to persuade those favoring stricter gun laws to accept coffee from a company that supported gun rights. Half the group were told their choice would be revealed to their study partner. The other half were told their decision would remain private.

For Hou, the results were surprising. Participant choices reflected a reduced demand for the coffee among those who disagreed with the CEO’s position on gun rights — but this was regardless of the visibility of their purchase decision. “I thought there would be a significant effect in terms of people knowing that the choice would be seen by others,” he says. “But the ideological piece was so strong that it drove a lot of the effect.”

What was also surprising, says Hou, is how much people needed to be compensated to buy products from companies whose CEO they disagreed with. The team found that those favoring stricter gun laws, who preferred the coffee with a neutral message, would need to be offered a 75% price reduction to switch to the coffee that came with a pro-gun rights message from the CEO. For those in favor of less strict gun laws, switching to a neutral coffee would require a price cut of about 83%.

For business leaders, this has important implications. If political consumerism is not, as the study suggests, driven primarily by a desire to signal or conform to the beliefs of a social group, CEO activism could affect the sales of all companies, even if those that are not consumer-facing and whose products are not, like coffee, highly visible. “It will matter just as much for things like motor oil,” says Hou.

It’s a state of affairs that’s very different from the one that existed 10 to 15 years ago, says Hou. First, CEOs and their companies have become increasingly outspoken on issues such as gun control, voting laws and gay rights. The paper cites recent examples, such as Walmart's CEO supporting gun control, the CEOs of the Coca-Cola Company and Delta Air Lines opposing a Georgia election law and the denial by Goya's CEO of the 2020 presidential election results.

At the same time, consumers have become more polarized, something reflected in their buying decisions. “Ten to 15 years ago, brands didn’t have to choose between left or right,” says Hou. “People cared about the quality, price and brand name. That still matters but this new dimension is changing people’s willingness to pay for a product.”

The impact can be positive or negative. “Every company should be careful when they are pressured to say something or are thinking of taking a stance,” says Hou. “But the positive side is that even companies whose products are not visible can leverage the benefits of this effect to differentiate themselves from others.”

Of course, for large companies, the choice of how to respond to political or social issues may not always be easy. Some of their consumers might favor a progressive stance while others might take more conservative positions. “That’s a lose-lose situation,” says Hou. Nevertheless, he adds, for some companies, winning only one side of the consumer aisle may generate sufficient market share.

Regardless, Hou and Poliquin’s research shows that corporate leaders must think carefully about how and when to take a stand on a political or social issue and what the implications may be for their consumer base. And since people tend not to change political sides, the effect may be long lasting.

Hou hopes the paper will give business students pause for thought. They are, he says, entering a world where, as leaders, they will need to be cautious about what they say and do publicly.

Business decisions such as rebranding can even be perceived as sociopolitical activism, as US restaurant chain Cracker Barrel discovered in 2025. When it attempted to create a more inclusive logo by removing Uncle Herschel (an elderly man leaning against a barrel), pressure from right-wing voices that included activist Christopher Rufo and US president Donald Trump forced the company to reinstate the old logo.

Moreover, when it comes to a backlash in the form of customer attrition, measures such as spending more on advertising may not help. “People are acting ideologically,” says Hou. “You can’t just up the ad spend.”

Even when tapping into people’s values has a positive effect, it doesn’t come without a cost. “Based on my conversations, it’s taking up a lot of management’s time,” says Hou. “Because today, you never know what’s going to land on your desk.”

Professor Young Hou is co-author of “Values and visibility: How CEO activism influences private and public consumer choices” with Christopher Poliquin of UCLA Anderson School of Management, published in Strategic Management Journal (2026).