BOYCOTT INTENTIONS TOWARDS BRANDS THAT SUPPORTED ISRAEL IN THE CONTEXT OF THE “ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT”

Abstract

In the era of globalization, boycotting products from certain countries or organizations due to past or ongoing conflicts have become common for consumers and thus impacting their purchasing decisions in the global market. This study aimed to investigate some of the variables that influence consumers' boycott intentions to target Israeli products namely animosity, cognitive judgment and affective evaluation in the context of the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” incident.  Respondents consisted of youths who traded online during the pandemic. A total of 152 respondents had answered the distributed questionnaire. Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) was used to analyse the data using Pearson correlation analysis method. The results of the study show that anomosity and affective judgement have a significant relationship towards boycotting intention of Isreali brand products (r_animosity = 0.381, r_affective = 0.587; p-value <0.05) while cognitive judgement no relation toward boycott intention (r = -0.025, p >0.05). Thus, this indicates that the current circumstances of public sentiments toward purchasing Israeli brand related product.