Symbolic vs. Substantive Support: The Impact of Black Lives Matter on Black-Owned Businesses

This study examines the impact of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement on consumer behavior toward Black-owned businesses, using George Floyd’s murder as a shock to the salience of and support for BLM. Utilizing a difference-in-differences design with data on reviews, revenues, and foot traffic from Yelp and SafeGraph, we analyze changes in symbolic support (review frequency and valence) and substantive support (revenues and foot traffic). Our findings show a significant increase in symbolic actions for Black-owned businesses following Floyd’s murder, especially among White and Democrat-leaning consumers. However, we observe no substantial evidence for a corresponding increase in substantive support. This indicates that, although the BLM movement heightened visibility and prompted short-term symbolic gestures, it did not translate into large, lasting economic benefits for Black-owned businesses. Additionally, we observe an increase in “not recommended” (i.e., suspicious) reviews on Yelp following Floyd’s murder, one explanation may be that consumers were leaving inauthentic reviews without visiting the stores. These results highlight the complexities of sociopolitical consumerism and suggest that social movements like BLM may be insufficient on their own to address the economic disparities faced by minority-owned businesses.

History: Catherine Tucker served as the senior editor. This paper has been accepted for the Marketing Science Special Section on DEI.

Supplemental Material: The online appendices and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2023.0243.