Learn English – a good alternative for the reverse of a boycott

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Boycotting is a classic consumer strategy to, in a sense, vote with your feet or with your dollar against some business that is doing something you find troubling, whether integral to the business, like slaughtering practices for meat, or incidental, like personal ethics violations by management.

But there is a practice that is the reverse for this, that is, providing additional support or changing brands to a business that does good things, changing business practices to acceptable ones, or giving to charities you approve. In the end, rewarding the company for activity that you like.

Is there a good term that captures this 'opposite' of boycotting?

Dictionaries specify 'support' as the antonym, but that word is much too broad to correspond well with 'boycott'. There are other terms: 'sanction' (an auto-antonym), 'encourage patronage' (probably the most exact but a bit of a mouthful)

Obviously the best corresponding word would be just as snappy as 'boycott': 'reverse boycott' (but still possible negative), 'to santa clause' (like a gift?).

Can you make a case for these or other suggestions?

Best Answer

Procott has been used, on both sides of the Atlantic:

Procott or boycott?

I quote at length only because it's relevant to the question:

Then there’s the procott. The opposite of a boycott, (according to a coordinating website that seems to have disappeared) a procott “is a movement to support the production and purchase of earth-friendly and justice-friendly goods and services.”

I first ran across the term in Utne Reader’s “Good Idea” contest in 2002. Instead of not buying products as a protest, procotts encourage people to buy products and services that help bring about good...

Something happened to the word procott; a web search finds almost nothing, just a few blog posts and a dog shampoo. It’s like someone sent out a “cease and desist”—the dog shampoo people!? Or maybe it just didn’t take. I like the term and we should use it. It’s the alternative to unconscious consuming. When we tune in to the effects of our buying power we help create a better world.

By "dog shampoo people" the author is referring to an actual product called Procott Dog Shampoo.

At any rate, one can find other uses of the term:

How they reached that conclusion and that having a “procott” (basically, the opposite of a boycott where everyone buys a certain product on a certain day) was, to put it gently, unscientific at best, but there was definitely heart behind their ideas!

(Tuxedo Unmasked)

Don't boycott – procott instead.

(The Guardian)

I'm not sure if pro is used as in the opposite of con but one could make the case it's taken from the word promote, which contains the idea of 'providing additional support':

1 Support or actively encourage (a cause, venture, etc.); further the progress of:
‘Do you promote recycling as a form of responsible waste disposal?’

1.1 Give publicity to (a product, organization, or venture) so as to increase sales or public awareness:
‘they are using famous personalities to promote the library nationally’

(promote, Oxford dictionary)

As such this word provides an alternative.

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