Over 105,000 people joined a Facebook group promising to boycott cottage cheese until the prices dropped. The move illuminated larger concerns among Israelis about rising prices and falling wages.
Worried at the response, the Israeli dairy companies that control the cheese market announced they were cutting prices by 25 percent.
"Something happened here, and it changes the rules of the game in the market," Arik Shor, a top executive at the Tnuva dairy cooperative, told Israel Radio, according to the Associated Press. "We are studying it and will draw conclusions--it is an event that goes far beyond cottage."
Cottage cheese was recently voted by Israelis as the most "Israeli" food, beyond the region's own falafel. The dairy product is ubiquitous in most homes, and the sudden price jump became emblematic of the rising cost of living in the country.
There is hope that the protest will spread to gasoline, which is now over $8 a gallon, and continue to electricity and food.
Analysts are pointing to the event as indicative of the way that social media has become a real force in consumer affairs.
"It illustrates the shifting power dynamic in the world. Social media is enabling ordinary people not only to express themselves, but also to organize themselves quickly," Andrew Nachison, a United States-based analyst at We Media, a digital research agency, told the AP.
"The goal is to change our consumer culture," Itzik Elrov, the Facebook group creator, told Israel Radio. "We can mark down a small V [for victory], but there is still a long way to go."
