The exposure of Egyptian youth to campaigns to boycott foreign brands on social media and its impact on their attitudes towards buying and supporting local industries

This study addresses the impact of exposure of Egyptian youth to campaigns to boycott foreign products via social media networks, which came as a reaction to foreign countries’ support for the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, which caused the death of a very large number, most of them children and women, on the purchasing behavior of Egyptian youth and their attitudes towards supporting Egyptian industries. This study aims to identify the extent to which Egyptian youth are exposed to these campaigns, and define to what  extent these campaigns have succeeded in changing their point of view in supporting Egyptian industries by replacing  alternative products to foreign products that support the Israeli aggression. This study uses  a survey approach, relying on a questionnaireas a tool for collecting the required data from a simple random sample of Egyptian youth in Cairo Governorate, which consisted of (400) individuals. The study reached a number of results, the most important of which were:

There is a statistically significant correlation between the rate of exposure of Egyptian youth to boycott campaigns via social media sites and the impact on their attitudes towards them.
There is a statistically significant correlation between the public’s exposure to campaigns to boycott imported foreign products via social networks and its purchasing behavior for those products.
There is a statistically significant correlation between the motivations of the young people following boycott campaigns on social media sites and their actual participation in those campaigns.
%84.3 of the Egyptian youth respondents participated in boycott campaigns by not buying foreign products that belong to countries or entities that support the continued Israeli bombing of the Palestinians, while the percentage of youth who did not participate was 15.7%.
The study’s sample of Egyptian youth confirmed that boycott campaigns on online social platforms have prompted them to hate foreign products that support the Israeli entity to a great extent, at a rate of 73%, and to a certain extent, at a rate of 18.3%.
The most prominent cognitive effects resulting from young people following boycott campaigns via social media sites were the phrase “I have become sufficiently aware of the foreign products that fall within the framework of the boycott and of the countries that own trademarks that support the Zionist occupation,” with a relative weight of 91.3, while at the forefront of the emotional effects was the phrase “campaigns.” The boycott made me hate foreign products” with a relative weight of 88.3, while at the forefront of the behavioral effects were the phrases “It made me completely dispense with some foreign products” and the phrase “I now look at the origin of any product I buy to ensure its source” with a relative weight of 86.3.