Diversity Marketing
Diversity marketing is a marketing strategy that puts specific sub-publics at the center of its communication . This marketing approach is of particular importance for communication with those target groups that cannot be reached via conventional mass media, or only to a limited extent or not in a specific context to their interests. According to the six dimensions that are also addressed in diversity management (ethnic origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, special needs / disabilities and age), diversity marketing is about targeting these target groups according to their life situation, values, expectations, and beliefs and their lifestyle and to use suitable communication channels for this. In this respect, diversity marketing represents the attempt to resolve the contradiction between mass and individual marketing by addressing groups that cannot be reached by mainstream advertising (e.g. television advertising).
Implementation of the claim
The (US) marketing literature has been talking about diversity and segmentation of target groups since the 1950s , but in the age of mass production until the 1970s, the possibilities for differentiation proved to be limited.
When implementing differentiation strategies in marketing towards the end of the last century, the large target group of senior citizens was in the foreground for a long time. However, the finer categorization of the market segment often brought with it a clichéd form of addressing and strengthened the feeling of undesirability in the target groups who are currently not being addressed. In view of complex market conditions, not only the mass marketing, but also the target group marketing no longer had the desired effect; Target group marketing is also expensive. Like mass marketing, diversity marketing strives to completely cover the market, but tries to do without widespread standardizations and stereotyping. The implementation of the claim in brand communication is not easy; this often takes the form of an emphasis on “openness” and “diversity”.
Diversity marketing is related to special disciplines such as community marketing or ethnic marketing , but does not focus on a single sub-area of social diversity like these, but rather addresses the diversity of market participants (consumers) as a central planning basis.
criticism
Mary Goodyear criticizes that the global language of marketing hampers rather than encourages the observance of different needs and consumption habits, even if she has included the category of diversity in her vocabulary. Instead, it suggests starting from a continuum of consumerization , which denotes the degree to which consumer-producer relationships are marketed and the maturity of the markets, with traditional societies at one extreme end of the spectrum. The criticism of a group of scholars from Taiwan of an exclusively marketing-oriented view of the markets, which hinders the deep understanding of a culture, comes from a different direction . This explains the failure of some European grocery chains in the Asian market: You have done a lot to superficial and inadequate analysis of local values and consumer habits, going for their understanding in depth and in the culture embedded ( embedded ) ethnographic long-term observations required were. Previous successes in other markets would lead to an overestimation of the transferability of marketing concepts and cause blind spots. This applies particularly to food.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Michael Stuber, Diversity Marketing: A solution to the (apparent) contradiction between mass and individual marketing? , Thexis 4/2003, pp. 31–35, http://www.diversity-wissen.de/downloads/Div-03-Sep-Thexis.pdf
- ↑ See e.g. B. http://www.diversity-marketing.de/downloads/Druckversion_Diversity_Marketing.pdf Website from Ungleich better
- ^ Mary Goodyear: Divided by a common language: diversity and deception in the world of global marketing. In: Journal of the Market Research Society, April 1996, pp. 105 ff.
- ^ Clyde A. Warden, James Stanworth, Stephen Chi-Taun Huang: Strangers in strange lands: hypermarkets and Chinese culture misalignment. In: International Journal of Market Research (IJMR), 6 (54), 2012.