The Whole Foods Fight

Written By: KatieRogers on August 26, 2009 No Comment

Is the “Whole Foods Boycott” impacting the company’s financials? Not yet. (Image via Creative Commons)

Nearly 29,000 people now subscribe to a Facebook group calling for a boycott of Whole Foods Market Inc. since CEO John Mackey wrote an op-ed against proposed methods of health care reform in the Wall Street Journal Aug. 12.

Not surpisingly, after it lead off with Margaret Thatcher’s quote, “the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money,” Mackey’s piece just didn’t seem to sit well with Whole Foods’s left-leaning consumer base.

And now, an online consumer ratings group called YouGov reports that consumer ratings of the company are beginning to plummet. The company, which actually tracks a company’s “buzz” within news and pop culture, posted numbers that indicate positive public perception of the company has dropped significantly in past weeks, according to Mashable.

The boycott doesn’t stop with Facebook. A WordPress blog, Twitter feed and Flickr pool have all been registered, indicating a social media siege from all angles.

The impact of a social media-generated movement like this one remains to be seen, but it’s clear that Whole Foods — and companies that find themselves in hot water on the Internet — won’t get away with a vague response posted in the same forum that houses thousands angry customers.

But financially, it seems there’s still appetite for shares of Whole Foods [[WFMI]]. Shares are rebounding since the first few days after Mackey’s op-ed was published, with shares trading near $28.38, a small jump of 0.55 percent, early in the day Wednesday.

In short, a Facebook-led attack spurred by a CEO’s interpretation of health care reform seems less like a problem for the company than, say, a crashed economy that saw shares tank to around $8 in November 2008.

A snapshot of YTD performance is below: