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In the wake of President Donald Trump's campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion programs, or DEI, we've seen companies roll back their own initiatives. Walmart, Target, Lowe's, Amazon are just a few of the major corporations we've seen reduce or eliminate programs in recent months. Now, consumers plan to speak up with their wallets, with many social media accounts planning a spending blackout on February 28th in protest of these anti-DEI moves. Instead, asking others to spend at small businesses if they can. Joining me now, we've got Marcus Collins, who is a marketing professor at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. Marcus, always a pleasure to grab some of your time. Want to get your take here and and input on what we're seeing play out and how consumers are being vocal, planning to be vocal with their spending, and for some of them, with the shares that they hold too, because a lot of these programs have been put to shareholder votes.

Oh, well, it's always a pleasure to be with you, Brad. And I think what we're seeing here is how social change happens. You know, when we think back to the civil rights movement, we think that, at least the way it's way it's mythologized, is that there is an appeal to people's goodwill, to their altruism that made them change their mind and how they operated against people of color. But the truth of the matter is that they attacked their pocketbooks. This is exactly what we're seeing happen today. I mean, according to the Harris poll, 40% of Americans have decided to shift their spending towards companies that are more aligned with their ideology. Uh the Guardian even sourced that 25% of Americans are are moving their spending from brands that they love to brands that are more inclined to be aligned with their ideology. This is about ideological congruence. And it only makes change when it actually has a consequence. In this country that's based on capitalism, that consequence has to be through commerce.

You know, I was speaking with John Hope Bryant, the the founder CEO of Operation Hope, and he was mentioning that the way for consumers to also go about this is not just to boycott Target, but also go buy up all the inventory of the black-owned businesses, the entrepreneurs that have sold into some of these mega retailers, and then take it one step further and go purchase specifically from them on their websites as well. So that the shelves are being cleared of their products, and then you're also continuing to support the business. In that congruence that you're talking about for consumers here, how much is this also playing out in trends now that businesses have more avenues, more channels to sell their products and their services?

Yeah, this is about empowering agency. The fact that I can sell directly to a consumer, it officates my dependence on a retailer being the primary way in which my product reaches people. There's different distribution outlets. And I think that actually there's a symbolic gesture that happens there too when I buy only black products or from brands that are aligned with my ideology in a retailer that I don't want to buy from. So that they see that the product is moving, but people are making a concerted, intentional effort not to buy from you. And it's that it's that level of intentionality that sends a signal, but also impacts the bottom line.

Yeah, absolutely. And we've seen that in some of the Placer AI data as well, as they were looking at some of the declines across Target and Walmart here, leading up to what is the more mass planned boycott here as well. And we've got some of that data on the screen for our viewers.