LGBTQ consumers cut spending at Target, Walmart, Amazon over DEI

LGBTQ+ consumers are directing their spending distant from Target, Walmart, and Amazon successful effect to those companies' perceived rollbacks of diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments, according to a caller survey from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.

Among the cardinal findings of the HRC Foundation's Pride successful the Marketplace 2026 report: adjacent to 72% of LGBTQ+ respondents reported purchasing less products from brands they presumption arsenic pulling backmost connected diverseness and inclusion, and conscionable nether 70% said they had declined to bargain from those companies connected astatine slightest immoderate occasions. When asked which brands prompted that pullback, respondents named Target, Walmart, Amazon, Chick-fil-A, and Home Depot much than immoderate others.

Spending shifts ran successful the different absorption arsenic well: astir 70% of LGBTQ+ respondents said they had accrued purchases astatine brands they see inclusive. Costco, Apple, Ben & Jerry's, Delta Air Lines, and Kroger topped the database of companies benefiting from that uptick.

The National LGBT Chamber of Commerce estimates LGBTQ+ consumers correspond much than $1.7 trillion to the U.S. economy, according to CNBC.

"Consumers are rewarding companies they spot basal by their values and turning distant from those who retreat nether pressure," HRC President Kelley Robinson said successful a statement. "The information is clear: authenticity and consistency builds assemblage spot with brands."

HRC spokesperson Jonathan Lovitz told CNBC that companies earning the strongest loyalty are those that maintained consistency alternatively than changed course. "Companies who person the longest tally of spot with customers successful the [LGBTQ+] assemblage is they didn't alteration thing astir what they were doing but remained consistent," Lovitz said.

He besides noted a spread betwixt companies' interior efforts and outer perception. "There is simply a spread to adjacent betwixt cognition and what you're doing inside," Lovitz said.

The findings onshore against a backdrop of eroding firm engagement with HRC's benchmarking tools. The fig of Fortune 500 firms taking portion successful the Corporate Equality Index collapsed by 65% successful a azygous year, dropping from 377 participants successful 2025 to conscionable 131 successful 2026.

No institution appeared much often successful responses tied to reduced spending than Target, which has weathered governmental unit from opposing directions. Consumer Edge information cited by CNBC showed Republican-identifying shoppers trimmed their Target purchases amid backlash implicit the chain's 2023 Pride Month displays, portion Democrat-identifying shoppers followed suit astir 2 years aboriginal erstwhile Target scaled backmost respective of its DEI programs. Despite those headwinds, the concatenation managed to station a affirmative same-store income effect successful its latest 4th — the archetypal specified summation successful much than a year.