As the month-long boycott of Loblaw-owned companies continues, its subsidiary Shoppers Drug Mart drew the ire of consumers on social media last week when one of its stores posted a LinkedIn ad for a part-time volunteer.

Brock University Assistant Professor of Marketing Joachim Scholz says the post, which drew swift backlash online, may have gone relatively unnoticed in the past — “but not in 2024.”

“The reason for this is the wider economic situation, as well as the massive technological changes our society faces,” says Scholz, who teaches marketing at Brock’s Goodman School of Business and specializes in social media controversies. “After years of high inflation, and with many consumers facing economic insecurity, we are all hyper-sensitive to price hikes and wage stagnation, let alone working for free.”

Scholz says the ongoing boycott coupled with the perception that the company is price-gouging its customers “provided the background embers, which fuelled the strong reaction to Shoppers’ free-labour faux-pas.”

Consumers are also sensitive to shifts in the labour market in general, he adds, with Shoppers Drug Mart among the many companies to replace cashiers with self-checkouts in recent years.

“Many people are fearful about what innovations in artificial intelligence will mean about their own job prospects,” says Scholz. “Are humans being replaced? Is stocking shelves for minimum wage — or even for free — all that is going to be left for the average Joe, while companies get richer and richer thanks to AI and exploiting the many?”

The company has indicated the ad — posted by one of its Toronto pharmacists — was an error and that they do not hire volunteers. However, Scholz says a traditional crisis management strategy of simply “apologizing and moving on” may not be good enough in today’s climate.

“The current cultural zeitgeist is like a powder keg, ready to be blown up by any fuse that seems to indicate the everyday Joe is stiffed by massive corporations,” he says. “Compared to even 10 years ago, marketers today must be much more tuned into the zeitgeist and societal issues in order to protect and grow their brands.”

Brock Assistant Professor of Business Ethics Francois Cote-Vaillancourt says major corporations are also bearing the brunt of evolving conversations around the future of volunteering and changing labour demands.

Although he agrees the public should be pushing back against any abuses involving unpaid labour, rapid changes in technology and automation are going to decrease the need for human labour in the future.

“It’s likely that for this generation, by the time they retire, there will be an economy that needs less people,” he says. “I think as a society, in the long run, we’re going to have to talk about volunteering. We have to find a way to keep humans doing meaningful things with our lives and prevent people from falling into abject poverty when the economy is not needing them.”

As conversations around these issues intensify, the public is understandably looking for an outlet to voice their frustrations and uncertainty, Cote-Vaillancourt adds.

“We blame the firm right now because they’re visible,” he says. “But we cannot rely on corporations to solve the long-term problem. We need to ask: what do we owe to society, and what does society owe us? We might not be able to run forever on just the idea that, through your work, you earn your income.”

In the meantime, Scholz encourages the company to “take this seriously and use the current heat to position themselves as the ally of the average consumer.”

“Social media firestorms carry the risk that they cast a long shadow into the future and are brought back from the ashes, over and over again. The internet does not forget.”