Danish Boycott

The article about the boycott of Danish products can be related to both the Hamel and Porter articles. From Porter’s point of view the article shows the buying power that consumers have, in this case the boycotting of Danish products. They had power to do this because the products bought from Denmark are mostly dairy ones and so are indifferent and standard, which means that they are easily substituted. I don’t think that the switching costs for the buyers are much this is because there are lots of local companies that sell similar products. Also Saudi Arabia and many other countries in the Middle East are boycotting Danish products which mean that combined together they buy a large amount of Danish products. This gives them a certain power because the Middle East forms large part of the market they operate in and so this might cause the Danish companies to ask their government to give an apology.

Some of the elements of Hamel’s business concept innovations that can be applied here are customer interface and Value network. Under the customer interface the element that we can apply is the information and insight, this is because the stores got information that people are planning to boycott and so they removed the Danish products from their shelves so they don’t loose customers. In the value network we can apply the coalition elements, this is true because the stores decided to join together and boycott Danish products until they receive an official apology from the government.