There’s a behavioral matrix in the sales world called the permission concept, and this purchasing theory is now reaching epidemic proportions in the controversy surrounding the Trump brand.
Here’s how it works: Let’s say you’re out to dinner with three other friends. The waiter walks up and asks if anyone would like dessert. The chances are high that if the first person says no, the three others will follow suit. However, if the first person says yes, others are more likely to order dessert as well. What it comes down to is simple – people don’t like to be first when it comes to doing almost anything. 
It seems this theory holds for retailers as well. This week the #Boycott and #Grabyourwallet campaigns against everything Trump scored their first major victory when Nordstrom decided to drop Ivanka-wear. This initial permission had other stores falling like dominoes to cut any and all things Trump-related — shoes, clothing, home goods, and everything in between.
Now that the permission concept is in full swing, other stores have political cover to follow suit. By week’s end, Sears Holdings Corporation and Kmart Corporation joined the amen chorus by discontinuing online sales of “thirty-one Trump home goods,” according to Reuters news.
Buoyed by so much success, and with the permission concept in the rearview mirror, principles in the anti-Trump #grabyourwallet campaign tell the Wall Street Journal they are setting their sights on Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, Lord & Taylor and – you guessed it – Amazon.
Meanwhile over on the right, conservative women are planning public displays in which they cut up Nordstrom credit cards. And chatter regarding protests for retailers who have succumbed to the political pressure to dump Trump goods abounds on social media and across the conservative cyberspace. Even a conservative-fueled #Buy campaign is underway for those wishing to support Trump products, according to the Wall Street Journal.
And in what the Journal has labeled NordstromGate, White House official Kellyanne Conway is breathlessly accused of ethics violations for telling people to go and buy Ivanka clothing during a live television interview on FOX. Oh, my!
So the retail ghetto which I warned about in an article last week right here on Liberty Nation is being constructed into a big, not-so-beautiful skyscraper right before our very eyes. Our country has become so polarized that purchasing just about anything Trump (if you can find it) is a major political statement. And coercing retailers to halt sales of Trump gear has now become a political movement.
On its face, all this politicized purchasing seems rather senseless if not entirely impractical. Need to pick up your favorite eyeliner? Don’t go to Nordstrom. Need a new tie for Dad’s birthday? It better not be labeled Trump. Love that pair of heels? Uh oh, they’re designed by Ivanka.
Somewhere, somehow sanity must prevail. But when it comes to bullying and controlling others, the left gets a Triple-A rating from the Better Business Bureau.
How about this for an idea: Let’s take the tags off everything and just let people buy what they like.
Nah. That would make too much sense. In a vicious political year such as this, there seems to be little if any common sense left. That’s what happens when losers act juvenile and inane and refuse to accept reality.
