Multicultural marketing: an investigation into marketplace diversity across two essays

Multicultural marketing, the practice of integrated marketing strategies that identify and tactically target potential consumers by diverse backgrounds has become less niche and a more mainstream marketing consideration, due to accelerated multicultural population growth (Franklin, 2014; Johnson, Elliot & Grier, 2010; Friedman, Lopez-Pumarejo, & Friedman, 2006; Burton 2005; Chan, 1996). These diverse subcultures have unique culturally embedded needs and perceptions of bands and products; thus, they respond better to culturally relevant marketing communications (Cui, 1997). With the growing multicultural population in the United States there has been debate and questions among marketing practitioners, relative to targeting consumers by their race, ethnicity or sexuality. This subject is studied over 2 essays. The first essay is “Leveraging Diversity as a Resource: Identifying an Organization’s Antecedents, Strategic Approach and Succeedents to Multicultural Marketing”. Multicultural marketing strategy is examined; leveraging the theory of the Resourced Based View of the Firm (Wernerfelt, 1984) in positing a conceptual model and identifying constructs within an organization that predicate multicultural marketing success. The conceptual model is constructed where an organization’s commitment to diversity is proposed as a tacit, competitive resource. The second essay, “Moderating the Effectiveness of Racially and Ethnically-Congruent and Diverse Marketing Communications”, investigates the consumer response to multicultural advertising among racial and ethnic groups and diversity in advertising among the general population across 4 studies. The likeability of multicultural advertising is positively mediated by the felt, cultural targetedness of the marketing communications. This effect is also moderated by levels of acculturation and ethnic identity. Attitudes towards diversity in advertising is also explored among all consumers. The findings demonstrate that there is a “post-racial” segment of the population that appreciates diversity in advertising. This essay ads to our knowledge of Distinctiveness (McGuire, 1984) and self-identity theory (Tajfel, 1980).Ph.D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Jean-Paul James, I