The importance of ethnicity as a segmentation criterion: the case of the Pakistani consumers' attitude towards direct mail compared with the indigenous population

The UK is a multicultural society consisting of a multitude of ethnicities. The Pakistani community in the UK represents nearly 500,000 people and is the second largest ethnic group. There is no evidence of any previous published research investigating the Pakistani community's attitude towards direct mail. Marketing practitioners, it appears, are reticent about engaging in research into attitudes of different ethnic groups fearful, perhaps, of being labelled racist. The authors feel that since segmentation is frequently based on sex, age, weight etc., ethnicity, too, should be open to the same usage. An empirical approach to the research was employed utilising a mail questionnaire, a subset of Evans et al. (1998) research, with 88 Pakistani respondents. A great many statistically significant differences between Evans et al.'s model and the authors' model were discovered. The research concludes by confirming that attitudes towards direct mail, vary considerably between the indigenous and the Pakistani communities. Marketers are advised not only to consider ethnic groups as a viable segmentation opportunity but also because, on the evidence of this research, the Pakistani group wish to be targeted according to their ethnicity