After Starbucks and McDonald’s, Asia’s anti-Israel boycotts find a new target: Western beauty products

“I had one lady who had used L’Oreal products for over a decade, but she said she would never use it again and was moving on to other local brands,” Phany said.

“Since the Israel-Gaza war peaked at the end of last year, the boycotts have been quite massive in scale compared to previous boycotts of Western products,” said Ega Kurnia Yazid, an economist and subsidy policy specialist at Indonesia’s National Team for the Acceleration of Poverty Reduction.

At the beginning of the war, Malaysian consumers rallied behind a call made by the local arm of the global boycott, divestment and sanction movement to spurn brands seen to have links with Israel, causing many of those companies to incur financial losses.

McDonald’s became a target of the boycott movement after social media videos went viral showing the fast-food chain’s branches in Israel donating free food to Israeli armed forces in the wake of Hamas’ October 7 attack.

Berjaya Food has attributed its lower earning to the “ongoing boycott”.

McDonald’s in February said international sales rose 0.7 per cent during the fourth quarter of last year, significantly lower than the 16.5 per cent rise that was recorded a year earlier.

“The most pronounced impact that we’re seeing is in the Middle East and in Muslim countries like Indonesia and Malaysia,” McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said.

While the boycotts weighed on the companies’ share prices and financial reports, they “did not have much impact on the aggregate economy in Indonesia” that grew by 5.04 per cent last year, Yazid said.

“This is an indication that consumers are making substitutions for the Israeli-American affiliated products.”

Retail products such as food and drinks are typically the main targets for boycotts because