As concerns continue about President Trump’s intentions to expand US territory and otherwise disrupt international cooperation, many consumers in Denmark and elsewhere are voting with their wallets and steering clear of American goods and services. Grassroots movements are spreading across social media channels offering alternatives to US-providers and proposing boycotts, and now Anders Hagh (CEO of the Salling Group grocery chain) has announced that the grocery chain will make it easier for consumers to identify European products.
Starting in March, Netto, Føtex, and Bilka will use a black star to indicate products from
European companies. This will mean products from EU-based brands like Nivea (German) or KiMs (Danish with a Norwegian parent company) will be marked with the five-pointed shape, while those from Olay or Lays (both owned by US companies) will not. As Hagh notes, the Salling Group will continue to stock brands from around the world, but will use their electronic price tags to provide additional information that allows consumers to make more informed purchasing decisions.
While fresh foods like fruit, vegetables, dairy, and meat are generally labeled with their country of origin, cross-border production and corporate conglomeration can make it challenging to tell where other products are made, who the brand is owned by, and where the company is based. It’s sometimes possible to determine a product’s country of origin using its bar code, but generally consumers rely on “Made in…” declarations (which are not always present) or simply being aware of where a brand is located (which often requires researching where the brand or its parent company is based). For instance, Zendium is one of Denmark’s most popular toothpaste brands and many people believe it’s quintessentially Danish, but the company was founded in the Netherlands in 1976 and was acquired by Unilever (headquartered in the UK) in 2010.
A few countries are working towards visual elements on packaging that spotlight locally made wares (like Finland’s Key Flag mark), and the EU organic logo can be helpful for identifying goods that are produced and sold within the EU, but there isn’t a European market or retailer standard. In Canada (another country President Trump would like to see become part of the US), retailers are making it easier to purchase domestic products by marking them on shelves or online with a Canadian flag or maple leaf and apps like Maple Scan and Buy Beaver have emerged to help consumers (no European/EU-wide app yet exists).
Avoiding purchasing physical products from the US (or any other region) takes some work — and it’s potentially more challenging to stay away from digital products and services (US tech companies are everywhere!). I’m writing this using Google Docs and cannot (at the moment) imagine life without using Alphabet or Meta products (at least Amazon is easier to avoid as it doesn’t have a Danish presence!). Social media provides vital connections betweens friends and family, necessary local information, and meaningful networking (particularly for internationals) and it may be almost unthinkable to depart Facebook or Instagram entirely (although it is possible to make your personal information less valuable to Meta). There are, however, options like Qwant (French) instead of Google as a search engine, DeepL (German) instead of Google Translate, Elastx (Swedish) instead of AWS, and Mouseflow or Dreamdata (both Danish) instead of Google Analytics — and a pile more European alternatives.
Although boycotts may be questionably effective, the associated negative publicity and reputational threats can influence corporate behavior. Then there’s Tesla’s reversal of fortune in the EU demonstrating what can happen when consumers change their purchasing behavior. It takes work to avoid American goods and services and it can be hard to see an impact, but it might just be satisfying to reach for a Faxe Condi instead of a Coke or Pepsi.
