What did the Trump campaign and Walmart have in common?
Posted November 14, 2016 7:15 am.
Last Updated November 14, 2016 7:17 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
BURNABY (NEWS 1130) – As anti-Donald Trump protests continued right through the weekend in many cities across the US, there have been calls for a boycott of the billionaire turned president’s business interests.
But one local expert believes that showing political discontent by avoiding the Trump brand will make little difference to his bottom line.
“I don’t think it would be all that effective,” says Jerry Sheppard, an associate professor at SFU’s Beedie School of Business.
“The properties are still worth something, so even if a boycott had some effect, he could always sell those and make money on that. And my understanding is that those might go into some kind of trust that he would not have any relationship with as a public official,” he tells NEWS 1130.
On the other hand, Sheppard says if a boycott targeted Trump’s daughter Ivanka’s business holdings it might catch his attention.
“But I don’t know what the end result would be — if he would be inclined to go against the people who are doing the boycott or support their decision.”
On a side note, Sheppard says Trump’s campaign strategy should seem familiar — courting rural America while his opponent took cities.
“That is similar to the strategy that Walmart started out with. They opened 80 per cent of their stores in America in rural areas in their first 10 years,” he explains.
“They managed to capture market share and move up from there. The ironic thing about that is that Hillary Clinton was on the board of directors of Walmart around 1990 so she should have been familiar with that strategy.”
