Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Effect of Cosmopolitanism on Multi-Ethnic U.S. Markets under Varying Conditions of Diversity in Advertising

2015; Allied Academies; Volume: 19; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

1095-6298

Delonia Cooley, Jeff Brice, Enrique Becerra, Sindy Chapa,

Consumer Market Behavior and Pricing

INTRODUCTIONMulti-ethnic U.S. Smarkets, or markets consisting of groups of individuals with distinct ethnic origins, culture, language, history, customs, religion, or features (Riggins 1992) located in the United States, present marketers with an advertising strategy conundrum. Should they invest in ethnic-specific or standardized advertisements? Since individuals have been shown to be more likely to self-define on characteristics, like ethnicity, that makes them distinctive relative to others (McGuire 1984), ethnic-specific ads use spokespersons, cues, language, and/or idioms specific to the targeted ethnicity and thus the firm must create ads for each ethnic group significantly represented in the population. Standardized, or integrated, ads are not tailored to any specific ethnic group and utilize the same spokespersons, cues, language, and/or idioms for all ethnic groups. Standardized ads are more effective and cost efficient than ethnic-specific ads when there are few consumer behavioral differences across ethnic groups (Cui and Choudhury 2002). However, ethnic-specific ads are best when there are recognized consumer behavioral differences across ethnic groups within a market (Cui and Choudhury 2002). In addition, ethnic-specific ads, regardless of consumer differences across ethnic groups, increase the targeted ethnic groups' positive attitudes toward the ad and the brand influencing their purchase intentions (Forehand, Deshpande, and Reed 2002). For this reason, firms targeting ethnic groups in the U.S., such as Wal-Mart, McDonalds, and Coca-Cola tend to use ethnic-specific ads.Findings on the effects of ethnic-specific ads are not conclusive though. Some studies find that members of one ethnicity prefer ads with models or actors of another ethnicity (Appiah 2001a; Martin, Lee, and Yang 2004). Results concerning standardized ads come from cross-country studies, but findings on standardized ads in multi-ethnic U.S. markets are scant. In addition, within-country consumer variations tend to be greater than betweencountry consumer variations (Ter Hofstede, Steenkamp, and Wedel, 1999). Therefore, consumer similarities across-countries may warrant an ad standardization strategy while consumer differences within U.S. markets, intensified by widespread online communications, may not. There is little empirical justification to conclude, however, that ethnic-specific ads should be favored in multi-ethnic U.S. markets over standardized ads. The conflicting evidence concerning utilizing ethnic-specific ads versus standardized ads warrants further scrutiny to determine the optimal advertising strategy for a multi-ethnic market. Most studies of ethnic-specific ads in the U.S. have mostly compared an ad's effectiveness on different ethnic groups by using ads with appropriate ethnic-specific spokespersons (Sierra, Hyman, and Torres 2009). This is much different than conducting a comparison of ad effectiveness on different ethnic groups by incorporating ads highlighting a mix of ethnic actors to reflect a multi-ethnic market which can then be standardized across ethnic groups.Another by-product of multi-ethnic markets is an increase of cosmopolitanism among the populace. Cosmopolitanism reflects an acceptance of other cultures, customs, and preferences in deference to one's own (Anderson, 1998) and has been identified as a mitigating factor influencing preference for a variety of international consumer goods and sendees (Beckmann, Douglas, Botschen, Botschen, Friese, and Nijssen, 2001). In multiethnic markets, such as in the U.S., young adults are becoming more cosmopolitan for reasons which include increased inter-ethnic marriages and ethnic diversity in schools, neighborhoods, and the workplace. This is in stark contrast to less ethnic and/or culturally diverse markets such as South Korea, Japan, and Italy (Fearon, 2003), for example. These markets are notoriously (if not religiously) ethnocentric to the point where cosmopolitanism might be viewed with some scorn. …