Starbucks is the evidence: tax campaigning can hit brands

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The Guardian reports this morning:

On Thursday, YouGov's BrandIndex, which records the strength of companies' brand identity, revealed Starbucks has plummeted in the past few days. Its "buzz" score, which measures the number of negative and positive comments customers have heard, reached a four-year low, falling to -13.9 from +0.7. Its reputation score has also fallen from 4.6 a week ago to -3.9 on Thursday and could continue to drop.

Sarah Murphy of BrandIndex said: "To say this story has been a disaster for the Starbucks brand would be a bit of an understatement. It's still too early to say what the long-term impact of this is going to be, but in the current climate we've seen the public take a fairly dim view towards accusations of corporate greed."

I think the case that tax avoiding can harm shareholder value has been made.

It's time corporate bosses noted. The anti-tax avoiders campaign is not going away.


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