Customers react to Starbucks CEO refugee promise, and it's not good

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According to reports, customers have reacted poorly since Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz vowed to hire refugees after President Trump's executive order came out.

reuters.com reports: Starbucks Corp's (SBUX.O) vow to hire thousands of refugees after President Donald Trump's first executive order that temporarily banned travel from seven mostly-Muslim nations appears to be hurting customer sentiment of the coffee chain.

Trump supporters have used Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites to call for a boycott since Jan. 29, when Starbucks Chief Executive Howard Schultz vowed to hire 10,000 refugees over five years in the countries where it does business.

Schultz in a letter to employees said the promise of the American Dream was "being called into question" and that "the civility and human rights we have all taken for granted for so long are under attack."

YouGov BrandIndex, which tracks consumers' sentiment toward companies and their willingness to purchase from those brands, noted that the data around this boycott is different because both measures are declining. 

Starbucks' consumer perception levels took an immediate hit as measured by YouGov BrandIndex's Buzz score, falling by two-thirds between Jan. 29 and Feb. 13, and have not recovered.

Starbucks Buzz score fell to 4 from 12 during that time. Such scores can range from 100 to -100 and are compiled by subtracting negative feedback from positive. A zero score means equal positive and negative feedback.

Prior to Schultz's refugee comments, 30 percent of consumers said they would consider buying from Starbucks the next time they made a coffee purchase, that fell to a low of 24 percent and now stands at 26 percent, according to a YouGov spokesman.

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