"We didn't want to get arrested," said Kimberly A. Wilson, a member of Jobs for Justice.

Managers at the Disney Store at Copley Place and the Guess? shop on Newbury Street refused to comment on the protest.

However, Megan F. Judge, the events coordinator for the NikeTown store, said she "honestly believed" the accusations against Nike were false.

"People are expressing their freedom of speech," she said, as picketers marched in front of the building. "I'd like them to take a look at the facts and look at the positive changes that are happening, and our leadership position in the industry."

Nike officials responded to the protest by distributing copies of a review of Nike's work practices conducted by Andrew Young, a former member of the United Nations, that found "no evidence or pattern of widespread or systematic abuse or mistreatment of workers."

According to Dwight H. Perkins, Burbank professor of political economy at the Harvard Institute for International Development, contractors who produce shoes for Nike in Vietnam must pay a generous official minimum wage for foreign producers.

"The factories that supply Nike basically pay three times what local workers get for the same kind of work," he said. "They're still low wages, but for Vietnamese workers on the whole, they're attractive wages."

Consumers seemed sympathetic to the marchers' cause.

"It may not prevent me from buying anything, but it would make me think twice," said Kathy L. Smith, a Boston resident who observed the march from her outdoor lunch table on Newbury Street. "It does raise my consciousness of realizing what [businesses] are doing."