The Multicultural Marketing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

The Multicultural Marketing - Essay Example Today almost all major corporations are actively marketing their products beyond their original homeland borders. Infact the issue is generally not whether to market a brand in other countries or to target multiple audience but rather â€Å"how to do it† (as the same product with the same â€Å"global† advertising campaign, or â€Å"tailored† products and localized ads for each country). Today, marketers are much more aware of the significant opportunity that the varying demographic groups present. What's more, they realize that they can no longer afford to neglect the combined buying power of ethnic Americans who, according to estimates, make up $1.3 trillion, or 18.5%, of all US buying. To appeal to these highly lucrative and diverse audiences, marketers are abandoning traditional mass-marketing practices in favor of laser-focused, multicultural marketing efforts. This paper is discussing following points: 1. Understanding what is multicultural marketing? 2. Ways in which ethnicity can be incorporated into marketing strategy. 3. Presenting steps that how a marketer can reach its diverse customers in best possible way. 4. Importance of marketing for multicultural audience, and the benefits and advantages from being unique marketers for multicultural audience. ... This paper although focuses on cross-cultural marketing, the discussion is at the level of the individual nation-state rather than marketing between countries. In multicultural societies the composition of the population can be highly culturally diverse, comprising many ethnic groups which necessitate a cross cultural approach to marketing strategy and management as suggested by Rugimbana and Nwanko (2003). Here it is important to highlight the importance of ethnicity in marketing in multicultural societies or as WiLkison and Cheng (1999: 106) refer to it â€Å"international marketing at home. TECHNIQUES FOR MULTICULTURAL MARKETING: According to Tharp (2001), decision-makers in organizations in multicultural markets should have the skill of â€Å"border mentality† — identifying multiple situational-cultural meanings, or should perform the role of transmigrants† — bridging or overlapping agents among two or more subcultures. In order to be broad minded foll owing techniques should be adopted: 1) To spot patterns that allow subcultures to be grouped together, so that a common marketing Strategy may be extended to several subcultures in a group (â€Å"transcultural† marketing); 2) To develop a distinct marketing strategy for each subculture, if there is a significantly distinct cultural dimension that is important to the specific culture (multicultural marketing); 3) To further segment audiences in a subculture, if needed, in terms of cultural affinity, cultural identity or acculturation level (tactical adaptation within a subculture); 4) To develop parameters of culturally acceptable marketing stimuli; and 5) to establish a protocol for measuring cultural effectiveness of the stimuli. THE MOST CRITICAL ISSUES FACED BY MANAGERS   The critical issues are defined