Ethnic Marketing

“The ethnic Marketing consists in segmenting the market while being based on the homogeneity of an ethnic stock of consumers (…) and to offer to them products adapted to their physical and cultural characteristics. ” (B. Cova and O Badot).

Opportunities marketing of “the Ethnicité”

Cultural diversity within much of industrialized countries develops. Good number of these countries try to measure this diversity. Statistical classifications of the ethnic minorities enormously vary from one country to another. Certain countries like the Australia and the New Zealand recently developed a sophisticated system of classification of the ethnicities while the the United States count the individuals according to their racial origin since many years. The “challenge for the marketers” is to translate these statistics into term of appropriatenesses market and to reach individuals who are identified with a particular ethnicity and who have homogeneous behaviors of consumption. However the demographic studies show that in the future, the dominant Population will tend to be reduced to the profit of the minority groups. For example, in Australia, the anglophone group dominating is supposed to account for 66% of the population in 2030 while the Asian populations will have increased by 13%. In the United States, projections show that the white population will reach 62% of the population in 2025 compared with 72% in 2000, and this with the profit of the Hispanic and Asian groups which will have increased respectively by 18 and 7%. Taking into consideration these evolution, some believe that the approaches Marketing standardized which are unaware of the cultural differences existing within the same nation's economy have little chance to reach the ethnicities effectively having a strong direction of identity. It would be of as much less relevant to be unaware of these groups of consumers than the economic indicators show than they see purchasing power to them and their influence in their host country to increase. It is for example the case in the United States with the power of the Asian groups in California and particularly in the Silicon Valley, the influence of the groups Afro-Americans in the new tendencies of consumption via their actors, their media business men but also of their stars of the Hip hop. Lastly, it there with the appearance of Spanish like first spoken language in certain States like Florida. Let us note for example the election of a Hispanic mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, in Los Angeles in May 2005.

The place of ethnic marketing in France

Ethnic marketing

Many research was led to the United States since 1932 showing the differences in behavior of consumption (Cui, 2001) between the ethnic minorities and the population known as majority. In France, research is done rarer because of the existence of republican principles.

The pluriethnism is not very visible in publicities. In 1994, only six French publicities put of afro-French at the honor. Erik Vervroegen, director of creation of TBWA declares in 2004: “there are still today marks which refuse the presence of Blacks in their publicity”. However, in 2003, one counts 59 French publicities putting of the Blacks at the honor (Strategy, October 28th, 2004). Going in this direction, Marionnaud calls upon Sonia Roland to answer waitings of the individuals color “chocolate, caramel, honey” or SFR and RTL put forward the Blacks in their publicities.

Are posed thus the following problems: do the ethnic origins determine or intervene in the act of purchase and the choice of the marks?

Indeed, certain advertisers but also certain advertizing executives refuse an approach segmented of the population according to the ethnic membership. For some, ethnic marketing carries in him the germs of the communautarism. Robert Rochefort, director of Credoc, confirm “that the industrialists hesitate because the segmentation by the ethnos group resembles a segregation and can be interpreted like the exclusion of the majority”. However, Juergen Schwoerer, director of Sociovision affirm “clean marketing is the search for criteria of differentiation and the segmentation”. From its point of view, it appears legitimate to segment the population if there exists a new criterion of differentiation relevant and obvious.

Let us note for example the importance of the market of ethnocosmetic, intended for the black and métissées skins and the crisp, curly and defrized hair. Software Sheen-Carson, the “ethnic” subsidiary company of L'Oreal estimates that its potential customers spend three times more, except hairstyle, that the white customer. One in addition estimates that a “black” woman uses nine times more capillary products, seven times more make-up and five times more products of care than a white woman under the same conditions (according to the studies undertaken by ak-a, institute of studies specialized on the population afro-Frenchwoman). One thus includes/understands all the extent of opportunities marketing being offered to the companies.

Vis-a-vis the French republican principle

France, from its history, is one of the European countries where one counts the most individuals belonging to an ethnic minority in proportion of his total population. It is for example the country where the Muslim population most important of Europe is found (the Moslems are however not an ethnos group, but good, explain that with pubeux). The waves of immigrants who followed one another since the beginning of the twentieth century were integrated by a system which does not recognize ethnic distinction, racial or religious, whatever it is, because of its republican values which confer the equality on all its citizens.

How France count does its ethnic minorities? Why should it do it? Is there to only count?

The population is divided into two great groups: French and foreigners. In certain tables of INSEE (National institute of the Statistics and Economic studies), the distinction is made among the French between the French of birth (including by rehabilitation), and the French by acquisition (people become French by naturalization, marriage, declaration or with their majority). The foreign population is defined according to a criterion of nationality: “any person is foreign residing in France which does not have French nationality. A foreigner can acquire French nationality during his life, according to the possibilities offered by the legislation. He becomes French then by acquisition”. The criterion of the birthplace makes it possible to define the immigrant population: “any person born foreign is immigrant, in a foreign country, which lives in France. This population is composed for most of foreigners but also of people who acquired French nationality. Any foreigner is not necessarily an immigrant, and any immigrant is not inevitably a foreigner”. According to the last census of 1999, France thus counts 52.902.209 million French of birth and for example 725.782 Morrocans, 685.558 Algerians, 448.018 originating in Black Africa etc Cependant the census does not make it possible to enter:

individuals originating in foreign and naturalized countries (unless making a subtraction, operation well too complicated for pubeux);
children of individuals originating in foreign countries and French nationality.
alive ultramarins in metropolis.
subways living overseas.

However it is not completely impossible that a part of them, was it tiny, show the same “characteristics known as ethnic” as their parents or grandparents, although integrated into the majority culture.

Definition of the Ethnicité

The term of “ethnic marketing” is often perceived like pejorative. Indeed the “ethnic” qualifier, for the detractors of ethnic marketing, refers only to the skin color, a discredited concept of “race”. It is thus paramount for its promoters to give a general standard of the term “ethnicity” for:

on the one hand to justify the name of this new current marketing and to show that it does not refer solely to the skin color;
in addition to show that the census of INSEE does not make it possible to give an exhaustive range of the various ethnic minorities living in France.

At the beginning of the decade 1990, a polemic develops on the taking into account or not of “the ethnicity” in the investigations of INED (National institute of the demographic studies) and of INSEE. The concept even of ethnos group is problematic. In number 300 of the review of the INED Population and Sociétés (April 1995), Michele Tribalat writes an article entitled “ethnic Membership”. The author tries to segment the French population according to the ethnic origin and uses for that of the objective characteristics: the birthplace of the parents, language etc It can thus categorize several “ethnos groups” like “the Spanish ethnos group”, “the ethnos group kabyle”… But of many detractors consider his aberrant terminology. They consider that the “ethnic” categories of Michele Tribalat are rather doubtful and not very relevant. Certain detractors think that it “satisfies to apply mathematical instruments to categories of populations without putting question about the scientific relevance of these categories”. The problems rest on the fact that one can define the ethnicity in two manners:

an objective manner used by Michele Tribalat;
and a subjective manner

Objective definition of the ethnicity (which would have its place in the page on the Ethnie S much more than here)

The ethnos group term, that it is of national or transnational size, implies several dimensions which max Weber in 1961 evokes in addition: help, political solidarity with respect to the other groups, common habits, languages, religions, values, morals, labels. Since 1980, in the United States, the identification of the Hispanic groups is based on a given number of sociocultural criteria such as the name of Spanish origin (Mirowsky and Ross 1980), the country of origin (Gurak and Fitzpatrick 1982; Massey, 1981), the paternal ancestor (Alba and Moore, 1982), and the use of the Spanish language at the house (Massey and Mullan 1984). The official ethnic censuses, however, do not retain any of these methods and are satisfied to leave listed to be classified themselves in the category (S) of their choice. The Australian Standard Classification off Farming and Ethnic Groups (ASCCEG) gives in 2000 the following definition of the ethnicity: “the term of ethnicity (with the objective direction of the term) refers to an identity or similarity shared by a group of anybody on the basis of one or several characteristics including:

a shared long story, its memory being always sharp;
a cultural tradition, including family and social habits, and sometimes nuns;
a common geographic origin;
a common language;
a common, oral and spoken literature;
a common religion;
to be a minority (in the direction to be or to be oppressed) and;
to have a different skin color. ”

According to this definition, a French of African origin, entered like French by the census of INSEE, fact part of an ethnic community from his history, his habits etc However, this definition is to be taken with tweezers. Indeed, while reasoning to the extreme, it devotes the inhabitants of the Country-Basque or Corsica like members of ethnic minorities, which denounces the demographers. This method of classification can indeed appear restrictive and arbitrary because of labelling of the individuals. It is thus a question of stating the subjective definition of the ethnicity.

Subjective definition of the ethnicity (which it as would have its place in the page on the Ethnie S much more as here)

In the subjective method, the membership of an ethnicity is generated by the individual himself on simple declaration of membership (Barth, 1969). This prospect joined the concept of ethnicity (or of ethnicity) which is defined in three characteristics:

Perception by the others that the group is different (single);
Perception by the members of the group to be different from different, to be a single group;
Those which are defined as pertaining to the same group, with the same identity, share activities based on the perceived similarities, which these last are real or imaginary.

This manner of defining the ethnicity thus allows stage the gaps of the objective definition.

The measurement of the ethnicity of an individual

A method combining the objective and subjective definitions developed (Handleman 1977) making it possible to measure the degree of intensity of affiliation to an ethnicity through measurable and predetermined criteria (Hirshmann 1981 and Yankelovich, Skelly and White 1984). It is initially a question of counting the members of an ethnic community in an objective way (according to the criteria of languages, values, skin color…) then to manage a comprising questionnaire of the items allowing to quantify the degree of identification of the individual at this community. This method thus makes it possible not to regard the ethnic target as a perfectly homogeneous group. Indeed, all the individuals do not present degrees of engagement of adoption of identical common values. A hierarchisation settles around a core having a strong implication of the initiatory values (Ponthier 1997). The ethnic identity is an aspect of the acculturation which concentrates on the fact of knowing with which degree an ethnicity is related to its own group as under group of a broader company of reception (Berry 1980). The degree of affiliation to its group can vary according to the individuals inside even of the minority culture what can thus involve differences in behavior of purchase. The individuals influenced by the dominant culture of the country would thus have behaviors different from those of which the degree of identification to the minority culture is strong.

By this method, the individual will be defined even like belonging to him or not to a “ethnicity”. He will define his degree of implication in this last what allows while incorporating the level of the total population to determine so the aforementioned community exists “indeed”.

Sources

Worse Guilherme D. and Stanton P.John, Ethnic Marketing, p 13, 1st ED., Thomson 2005
Cui, G. (2001) “Marketing to ethnic minority consumers: has historical journey (1932-1997)”, Journal off Macromarketing, 21 (1): 23-31.
Le Monde - February 21st, 2004: “The pluriethnism remains not very present in publicity in France”
Le Monde 2 - September 4th, 2004: File “Black beauty” p 24-25
http://www.recensement.insee.fr/FR/RUB_MOT/ACC_MOT.htm#nationalite
Tréguer, Jean-Paul and Segati, Jean-Marc, new marketing, 1st ED, Dunod 2003
http://www.ined.fr/publications/pop_et_soc/pes300/pes3003.html
Berry, John W. (1980),” Acculturation ace varieties off adaptation” in Acculturation; Theory, Models and nap New Findings, Amado Mr. Padilla, ED. , Boulder, CO: Westview, 9-26

See too

External bonds

http://www.cynomedia.com (Agency of services marketing online and offline specialized on the diasporas)
http://www.ak-a.fr (ethnic Agency of marketing specialized on the French population afro with free documents)
http://ethno-marketing.blogspirit.com/ (Blog dedicated to ethnic marketing with articles of topicality of various countries)
http://www.communautarisme.net/ (Observatory independent of information and reflection on the communautarism, secularity, discriminations and racism)
http://www.lewebmulticulturel.fr/ (Blog carrying out a review of the ethnic approaches of different marks, and initiatives on Internet and in the other media)

http://www.lagencemulticulturelle.fr/ (Agency Web specialized on Africa, the Caribbean one and their diasporas)

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