Brand boycotts in politically sensitive markets increasingly arise from symbolic and geopolitical interpretations rather than operational failures, challenging dominant explanations of brand rejection. While the self-congruity theory (SCT) explains how consumers withdraw from brands perceived as identity-incongruent, it offers limited insight into how such incongruence becomes moralized, publicly contested and collectively mobilized under conditions of political salience. This study examines how identity-based boycotts are constructed and mobilized in politically sensitive contexts and how brands attempt to realign value congruence in response. Adopting a qualitative, interpretive and comparative case study design, the research analyses two high-profile boycotts of McDonald’s and Zara during the Gaza conflict. Drawing on triangulated secondary data, including news coverage, corporate communications, news-reported social media content and market reporting, the analysis traces how controversies unfolded, escalated and stabilized over time. SCT serves as the primary interpretive lens for understanding identity-based meaning-making, while the Brand Controversy Response Framework is used as an organizing scaffold for cross-case comparison. The findings show that identity-based boycotts evolve through a patterned interpretive sequence involving perceived identity violation, moral outrage, symbolic amplification, collective mobilization and partial value realignment. Recovery efforts centred on procedural clarification proved insufficient; symbolic and value-oriented responses were central to restoring legitimacy. The study offers contextual insights into how political identity and mediated meaning-making shape brand crises in conflict-affected markets.
Nermain Al‐Issa (Thu,) studied this question.