Consumers today are bridging connections across the globe, resulting in an increasingly diverse international marketplace. As a result, global marketers are no longer stymied by emerging markets, and the opportunity to expand a brand’s global reach has never been more accessible. Yet despite fewer barriers to multiculturalism, the research community is still catching up: Fewer than 3% of all subjects in major research studies represent participants with diverse backgrounds, according to Geraldine Rosa Henderson, associate professor of marketing at Chicago-based Loyola University, and Jerome D. Williams, distinguished professor and Prudential Chair in Business at New Brunswick, N.J.-based Rutgers University.
In the latest issue of the AMA Journal Reader, Henderson and Williams summarize a collection of global diversity studies from the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, and analyze how each contributes insight toward a broader framework for intercultural competency. “It’s interesting that most Fortune 500 companies are trying to build up their presence in the U.S. and abroad, and when you look at the largest countries, India and China account for a huge percentage of the global population,” Henderson says. “[We need to] incorporate novel approaches that will help move the ball forward with our understanding of what’s happening in the multicultural marketplace.”
Marketers
Raise your awareness. According to Henderson, every marketer needs a solid understanding of the importance of diversity within the marketplace in order to apply it within their brand’s overall marketing strategy. “If you’re using [non-cultural] methods to market to consumers, you’re missing out not only on the present, but certainly on the future,” she says.
Have a diverse workforce to deliver against a diverse marketplace. “You need to have people who’ve been steeped in different methods and approaches [on your team]. Hire people who have an awareness, sensitivity and openness to diverse marketplaces so that they can spot opportunities as they arrive.”
Researchers
Understand diversity within data collection. “Make sure your sample is representative of the population you truly are interested in studying … and that people who are reading the data can interpret it in a way that makes sense, so that means they need to have some awareness and sensitivity, too.”
Work together. “Multicultural data is hard to get, so market researchers need to come together and move the ball forward by sharing their data and research.”
Written by Melody Udell,managing editor of the AMA’s magazines and e-newsletters
Source:AMA