For three days following Friday’s viral video in which two black men are seen being arrested at a Philadelphia Starbucks, #BoycottStarbucks was one of the most-used hashtags related to the coffee giant, second only to #Starbucks itself, new data reveals.
Digimind, an analytics firm that tracks consumer sentiment, found 106,920 mentions of #BoycottStarbucks posted across social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram from Saturday through Monday.
The breadth of the boycott effort–and the fact that it continued days after the incident–indicates that Starbucks probably made the right decision yesterday when it said it would close thousands of stores for an afternoon so employees could take racial-bias training.
“Following the incident in Philadelphia, Starbucks made the right move by apologizing to its customer base on social media, but the next step is taking measures internally to make sure that this kind of incident doesn’t happen again,” Paul Vivant, Digimind’s CEO, said in a statement.
Based on Digimind’s April 13-16 analysis, here are the top 10 Starbucks-related hashtags used on social media in the wake of the controversy:
- #starbucks
- #boycottstarbucks
- #racism
- #philadelphia
- #starbuckswhileblack
- #blacklivesmatter
- #starbucksboycott
- #philly
- #blm
- #coffee
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