-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
The Thank God For Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day was “record-setting.” Pastor Rick Warren tweeted that Dan Cathy, CEO of Chick-fil-A, called him with the good news. The Culture Warriors are positively giddy. But, is this level of sales sustainable?
According to YouGov’s BrandIndex’s Index score, Chick-fil-A’s perception among consumers dropped nearly 26 points since Cathy made his anti-LGBT remarks. In the South the Index score plummeted from 80 to 44. The biggest drop occurred in the Northeast where the score went from 76 to 35, a drop of 44 points.
The YouGov BrandIndex is a measure of brand perception created from thousands of daily consumer interviews. Brand perception is based on quality, satisfaction, reputation, value, general impression, and willingness to recommend.
A proper sampling would include all ages, genders, and ethic groups, but would focus on 18-34 year olds. The later demographic is important for growth of new customers. The older, white Christian conservative demographic, who has rallied in support of Cathy’s remarks, is declining.
The 18-29 year old demographic favors gay marriage by a whopping 63%. If Chick-fil-A wants to alienate this demographic, it would be like committing corporate suicide. Since Chick-fil-A is a private company, its sales figures can be kept secret. It is likely that Chick-fil-A’s plummeting brand perception will be reflected in sales.
While Cathy is free to offer monetary support the Family Research Council, designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, people are also free to withhold support form Cathy by not patronizing Chick-fil-A.
(Tony C.) “I do not think the response is sustainable at all. I wish it were, it would put the homophobic owners out of business.”
Homophobic or homophobia is a useless meaningless cliche. The reason why, is phobia implies a fear, but of the general consensus, the emotion regarding homosexuality isn’t of fear, but of digust.
Additionally, if EVERY homosexual quit going to Chick-Fil-A, it wouldn’t even be a blip on the radar screen. The overwhelming crowds from Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day is representation of people who are getting really tired of the political correctness, and the double standard the leftwing wingnuts insist on perpetuating.
The more Roseanne Barr types, and the more vandalism on the buildings (hypocritically saying something about hate, when we know full well the idiot who vandalized the building was full of hate when he did such), the more polarized the outcome and more support will happen.
“The emotion regarding homosexuality isn’t fear but disgust”
Hubert C,
Your juxtaposition of fear and disgust are merely semantics used by you to justify your particular bias. Now I don’t know you well enough to know whether your bias is based on religious conviction, or the fact that you are not confident of your own sexuality, yet you do reveal bias of some sort. Disgust is a strong emotive term that implicitly requires either viewing and/or visualizing something distasteful. If in thinking about a homosexual one visualizes homosexual acts that arouse feelings of disgust, then their feelings can be said to being close to, if not fear of their own potential lapses. A person only fears something that can hurt them.
Your own bias is not only revealed by the use of disgust, but by the addition of the term “political correctness”. The origins of this term were neither spontaneous nor organic. This term arose as a direct result of the civil rights movement which at least made the prevalent racist rhetoric of this country unacceptable. “Political Correctness” was used as a means to try to make racist terms and jokes again acceptable in society by implying that those who abjured them were somehow unfairly limiting discussion.
I personally know and have known too many gay people to accept any bigotry towards them and certainly any diminuation of their rights as citizens.
The excuse that this is merely religious conviction is specious. We also saw people of Christian and Mormon belief declaring that God decreed that Black people were inferior to Whites and God decreed that Whites should rule them. Any supposedly pious person who declares they know the mind of God through scriptual exegesis is merely a blasphemous fool seeking to give credence to their own bigotry. By the tenets of their own religion the final judgment of any human is God’s alone and to sit in judgment of someone’s elses moral character is to me the ultimate blasphemy. Mr. Cathy may profess his Christianity, but he obviously doesn’t heed Jesus’ Golden Rule, or believe that “he who is without sin, should cast the first stone”.
I agree with Mike, et al, why alienate any segment of a potential customer base. It takes so little to cost so much in the long term. A couple examples with my choices:
1) Cable TV. In 1987 Cox Cable charged me 1 dollar for a subscription to a movie channel that I did not consent to pay for. When I confronted them on this they said “If you didn’t want the channel you had to tell us otherwise it would be added.” it angered me so much I cancelled my service and said I would never again buy cable. Around 2006 I relented due to my wife’s nagging. (Cox got into hot water over this by the state AG’s office) Cost to the cable industry over 19 years from ONE customer they alienated: over $6,000.00 due to a $1 insult.
2) Any company supporting Leonard Peltier: A friend of mine’s neighbor is the sister to one of the FBI agents he murdered, occasionally I have dinner with them. It will not insult this woman’s memory of her lost brother.
3) Wal-Mart. Too many reasons to type.
rafflaw,
“I do not shop at WalMart because of what they do to their own employees and to the competition of small businesses.”
Ditto!
I had never heard of Chick-fil-A until this story broke.
*****
mespo,
“I think most people don’t make buying decisions based on the political philosophy of the business.”
I avoid purchasing products manufactured by companies owned by the infamous Koch brothers.
Here’s something the Homophobes don’t know, Dan Cathy does not segregate the gay chickens from the straight ones.They are slaughtered together and mixed during processing. Every bite of chicken is 5% GLBT
Put that in your corn cob and smoke it Cletus.!!
http://www.chickenjoke.com/
The Plot Chickens
Did Chick-Fil-A Create The Facebook Profile Of Abby Farle?
i’ve got some free coupons from chik-fil-eh that i’ve never used. the food is okay but the employees always seemed a bit too stepford wife-ish for my taste.
What Tony C. and Mike S. said. Stupid is as stupid does. Keep your mouth shut and increase your business.
mahtso,
” To me, the logical solution is to get government out of the marriage business all-together.”
————-
Marriage has always been a civil right in this country, but with restrictions. Same as voting has always been a civil right, but with restrictions. Marriage is sometimes a rite performed by a civil servant, sometimes by contract, and sometimes by clergy.
Government is so deeply embedded in marriage that I’d have to see your specific proposal as to how to get it out. Many things can be handled by contracts, but there are laws that give rights and privileges to spouses and children, e.g. inheritance, taxes, and medical decisions. Even those married in church now have to have their marriage recorded by the state in order to receive the benefits of the marriage laws.
Those of privilege frequently don’t recognize their own privilege, nor the damage that the lack of it does to those who don’t have it. Same with civil rights. Those that have them sometimes just can’t see the damage done to those who don’t have them.
If one’s interpretation of the Bible indicates that same-sex marriage isn’t ok, then stick with the church that interprets the Bible that way. Wouldn’t a bit of Christian tolerance be in order for those who don’t agree?
Tony C’s point is an excellent one that can be overlooked to easily in the back and forth about homophobia. What Cathy did as a businessman in doubling down on his personal opinion and what he has done in his managing of CFA is really quite stupid. A restaurant chain operation succeeds via maximizing its customer base. The alienstion of potential customers unneccessarily is bad business practice and will ultimately limit a company’s future. In the past I’ve patronized CFA even knowing their adherence to the management’s particular Christian belief. Their food is unhealthy but quite tasty. However, given what has come out regarding Cathy’s beliefs I will never patronize them. In a world with numerous food choices I have the luxury of not supporting businesses whose models I disagree with. In another context I also don’t shop at Walmart.
The negative consumer response to the egregious and stupid policies of the Chik-whatever is proof positive of America’s greatest remaining liberty, the 1st Amend. The best response to stupid speech is more speech. While the various politicians trying to block their entry into markets via zoning regulations may help boost their standings in the polls, it instead helped their opponents via something similar to the Streisand Effect. That’s why it’s important to remember that as stupid as someone’s beliefs are, until they violate actual rights, then they get to express whatever opinion they want without legal repurcussion. It’s the financial and social repercussions that will eventually either shut that restraunt down or force it to change its management policies, not stupid politicians blathering about zoning restrictions. I personally would love to never see another Chik-Fil-A restraunt again. Their signs are tacky, their food is bland and tasteless, and they are way overpriced, in my opinion.
” … those who went this week went not because of homophobia, but rather in support of free speech.” (mahtso)
I’m getting dizzy.
I cant find the quote but the bible allows for concubines, sleeping with your brother’s wife, etc. I guess then Cathy supports these too.
Cathy and Huckabee etc forget that since you can;t see homosexual, there are probably a lot of ‘them’ as their freidns, family members, etc and they have friends, family members that support them and, like the old commercial so and so on and so on. In the ned I would bet Cathy will lose a lot more then he thinks he gained.,
Chick Fil A operates as a franchise. Want to buy into a franchise where the owner is continually and, as Tony C. pointed out, “pointlessly alienating a percentage of your market”?
Good business sense says … find a different franchise. It’s elementary.
First, this just adds to the pile of evidence that seems to support my hypothesis: “Right-wing politics and religion are simply a set of individual money-making scams.” Politician Huckabee encouraged people to give their money to Corporation Chick-Fil-A over a religious/political/partisan issue. Ka-ching all around.
Second, being anti-gay is stupidly, obviously hard to sustain – at least harder to sustain than being “racist”. It’s an “us against them” tactic, except that your customers spontaneously give birth to “them”. I guess a lot of people aren’t familiar with the history of active discrimination against left-handed people, but as a characteristic that people are spontaneously born with, it didn’t survive well as an “us against them” tactic financially/politically. It seems pretty clear that now that being gay versus being a bigot against gayness is “out of the closet” it will be tough to sustain for those people who make a living by promoting bigotry. (Not to worry, though, they have plenty of other things to disparage for profit.)
Bettykath said:
“Those who deliberately go to places like CFA because of the homophobic views of the owner are also homophobic.”
Bettykath –
Phobia – “persistent, pathological, unrealistic, and intense fear of an object or situation.”
Homophobia – “the irrational fear of, or aversion to, homosexuality and/or homosexuals. (Comprehensive Glossary of Psychiatry and Psychology, Kaplan and Sadock)
I saw nothing in Dan Cathy’s comments to indicate he is ‘homophobic.’ Neither is it logical to say all of his supporters are. Disagreement on the grounds of one’s religion is not necessarily ‘irrational.’
Mahtso said:
“To me, the logical solution is to get government out of the marriage business all-together.”
My point entirely.
bettykath,
“Why do the “traditionalists” feel so threatened by those who want the same civil rights? Is their own marriage so insecure that it could be threatened by someone else’s marriage?”
I cannot speak for them. But to me it appears that you beg the question: is same-sex marriage or any marriage a civil right? I recall hearing a proponent of same sex marriage asked if a man should be allowed to marry his mother. Her response: that’s disgusting. The point being that there are many restrictions on marriage; are these all violations of civil rights? To me, the logical solution is to get government out of the marriage business all-together.
“Those who deliberately go to places like CFA because of the homophobic views of the owner are also homophobic.”
I have not seen proof that the owner is homophobic (other than the assertion that to oppose same sex marriage makes him so), but maybe he is. And, as my first comment was intended to indicate, I assume that many of those who went this week went not because of homophobia, but rather in support of free speech.
@Bron: I see, so which would you rather lose, 20% of your market, 35% of your market, or 0% of your market?
Cathy should have minded his knitting. Pointlessly alienating any percentage of your market is just stupid.
Dredd,
Have had dear relatives visiting from USA.
Very rewarding, in many ways developmentwise. And feelings of course.
Am finding time for other things than JT’s.
Tonight, among many things, it was Annie Liebowitz, a film done by her sister.
The things one missed by not experiencing them IRL and IRT.