Marketing Across Cultures (Culture for Business Series)

OVERVIEW

Much of this book has been focused at increasing the understanding of how to approach different cultures across country boundaries. However, we also need to give consideration to different cultures within country boundaries resulting from ethnic differences, and address issues of marketing in these multicultural societies .

Ethnicity and identity are important marketing concepts in multicultural societies but they have received relatively little attention in the literature on marketing. When the topic has been addressed the focus has been on assessing consumer behavior characteristics without reference to wider marketing debates, or drawing out any robust general model, or giving any structure to the practical marketing implications.

Research conducted by Williams, published in 1995, examined the frequency with which racial and ethnic papers were published in three consumer behavior journals over a period of twenty years . This found that only 3.4 percent of articles had a racial or ethnic focus and only 2.3 percent of the total number of subjects were identified as such. The following points have been assembled to explain why ethnicity has been relatively ignored by researchers (Burton, 2000):

• The fact that ethnic minorities account for approximately five percent of the British population and 30 percent of the US population. Marketers may have decided that it is not financially feasible to target marketing resources at these groups.

• The pervading ideology surrounding some ethnic groups. For example, Britain's Afro-Caribbean and Pakistani populations have been described as one of the foremost examples of the underclass in Europe. Much less reference is made to the Asian bourgeoisie, referred to as "Britain's hidden achievers ."

• An alternative view is that members of Britain's ethnic minority community do not require any specific targeting and that they can be treated as part of the indigenous population. This approach has its roots in two possible ideologies. First, that existing methods of using the marketing mix are sufficiently accurate and appropriate without having to incorporate ethnicity as an important variable. Then another very different perspective - the postmodern arguments that suggest group boundaries have become more fluid and consumption patterns more individually centered, hence lessening the importance of ethnicity as a consumer characteristic.