Despite headlines suggesting Target’s stock price cratered due to conservative protests, analysts say the stock was primed to drop due to underlying issues with the business’s performance and outlook.  The conservative boycott of Bud Light, however, may have more staying power.

The nationwide pushback from conservative activists against diversity, equity, and inclusion practices policies is hitting Target and Bud Light, harder than most of the litany of companies to provoke conservative ire.

Target has seen its stock price sink to levels not seen since 2020 and Bud Light is seeing its sales dip by 25.7 percent compared to the same week last year, according to numbers released Tuesday.

The president of a global research and advisory firm for retail industries, Greg Buzek, tells the Sun that “You’ve got five or ten percent on either side and then there’s 80 percent in the middle that don’t want part of either side of it.”

In his assessment, the drama around brands like Target and Bud Light becomes a problem for customers otherwise indifferent to the company’s marketing moves because they don’t want to deal with the sort of harassment or disruptions that are seen online.

“The people in the middle don’t want to drink a Bud Light or have a Target shopping bag because they don’t want to deal with the headaches,” Mr. Buzek said.

While this dynamic applies to both of the brands in question Mr. Buzek did say that the protests surrounding Target and Bud Light are distinct, in part because of the businesses themselves but also because of the nature of the controversy.

In terms of competition, there are far more alternatives to Bud Light than there are to Target. While Target’s competition may be geographically limited, other light beers are available almost anywhere Bud Light is sold.

These two protests are also different in scale. While Target has made headlines for seeing a massive drop in its stock price, Mr. Buzek said that this is only partly due to the protests.

“Forty percent of the drop was already there because the guidance for the rest of the year was negative and the rest came because of the protest,” Mr. Buzek says. “It made it a self fulfilling prophecy.”

Mr. Buzek said that Target had already been struggling to meet its goals because its business was hit harder than most by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and because its stock price was inflated during the pandemic.

“Covid was the largest transfer of wealth ever from non-essential to essential retailers,” Mr. Buzek said. “They were allowed to be open and sell clothes when others were not.”

Mr. Buzek expects Target to push through continued public relations problems through the end of pride month in June but then to largely bounce back to where it was before the protests began. 

The protests, in Mr. Buzek’s opinion, aren’t even a real top concern for Target at the moment, as the company has become increasingly harder to work with from a merchandising standpoint.

The situation with Bud Light, however, is different, according to Mr. Buzek, and he expects Bud Light’s struggles with sales to last throughout the summer. He also didn’t expect to see any bump in sales during pride month because the company managed to offend both conservatives and LGBTQ supporters.

“I think the Bud Light situation is far worse,” Mr. Buzek said. “It’s basically who did you offend of your core demographic?”

While Bud Light’s initial transgression against their core demographic of middle American, probably Republican leaning, beer drinkers may have only been a single promotional video with a transgender actress and comedian, Dylan Mulvaney, the company hasn’t yet – and may not — regain the approval of its core demographic.