مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد جامعیت اجتماعی ذهنی (الزویر)

In recent years some marketers have been active in providing differentiated appeals to different ethnic consumer segments, with global brands such as Coca Cola, AirBnb and L’Oreal entering the local political and social debates and giving voice to their multicultural customers. This “deliberate effort by marketers to reach a group of consumers presumably due to their unique ethnic characteristics” is known as ethnic marketing (Cui, 2001, p.23), and it is motivated by the increased ethnic diversity across the world. In the US, the Census Bureau forecasts that by 2044 the ethnic minority population will become the numerical majority (Colby & Ortman, 2014). The buying power of US multicultural consumers reached $3.4 trillion in 2014, with a percentage increase twice higher than in the total population (Nielsen, 2015). In 2010, 13% of the total UK population was foreign-born (Office for National Statistics, 2012), while the purchasing power of the Black and Minority Ethnic population was estimated at £300 billion (IPA, 2012). It is hence pertinent to understand how marketers can adapt their communication strategies in order to effectively appeal to ethnic consumers. Although positive effects of mono-ethnic marketing have been noted particularly in the area of congruence between endorser and target audience (e.g. Appiah & Liu, 2009; Karande, 2005; Khan, Lee, & Lockshin, 2015), negative consequences have been pointed out in the literature. Burton (2002) critiques ethnic marketing communications targeted at pre-defined ethnic groups for their use of broad racial and ethnic categories that ignore the variety within each ethnic segment and the myriad of ethnic identities that one may have. This, in turn, may engender underrepresentation of certain consumer segments, misunderstanding of cultural nuances, stereotyping and consumer prejudice (Davidson, 2009), or even exoticization and exclusion (Schroeder & Borgerson, 2005). These issues represent a threat to ethnic consumers’ integration in the host society and the effectiveness of ethnic marketing communications. Thus, an important research question and indeed a gap in the extant literature, is how ethnic cues can be best depicted in marketing communications in order to effectively reach the diverse audiences, ensure fair representation of ethnic consumers and trigger their positive feelings of being part of the society. Advancing research in this respect is beneficial for both ethnic consumers’ psychological wellbeing and marketing effectiveness. To fill in this gap, the purpose of the current paper is twofold. First, we aim to provide an in-depth conceptualization of the construct of subjective social inclusion and justification for its importance to the marketing literature. Second, we join recent research streams that question the performance of ethnic marketing (Jafari & Visconti, 2014; Kipnis et al., 2012; Schroeder & Borgerson, 2005), and propose new theoretical underpinnings of marketing communications aimed at enhancing ethnic consumers’ inclusion in the host society and corresponding effectiveness of marketing efforts in ethnic consumer markets. A review of the extant literature shows that there is a notable lack of consensus as to what “social inclusion” means at the individual, subjective level despite its widespread use at the economic, political and societal levels. This hinders the efforts for a more inclusive society and calls into question the effectiveness of “inclusive” policies in accurately reflecting the needs of their targeted groups. In the current paper, we propose to focus on subjective social inclusion as a multi-dimensional construct and define it as the individual’s feelings of belongingness to a host society in which he/she feels accepted, empowered, respected and fully recognized as an equal member. Our theoretical positioning departs from past research that focused on ethnic marketing as a persuasion tool to explore the psychological and social mechanisms that underlie consumers’ responses. We focus on ethnic consumers’ subjective social inclusion as an important outcome of multi-ethnic embedded marketing communications and a constructive factor for effective marketing efforts