Multicultural marketing (also known as ethnic marketing) is the practice of marketing to one or more audiences of specific ethnicities—typically an ethnicity outside of a country's majority culture, which is sometimes called the "general market." Typically, multicultural marketing takes advantage of the ethnic group's different cultural referents—such as language, traditions, celebrations, religion and any other concepts—to communicate to and persuade that audience. Cultural as well as ethnic variations in multicultural societies such as the United States provide marketers with the opportunity to connect with consumers by developing consumer segments for targeted marketing initiatives. For example, insight into the culture and ethnicity of consumers is applied directly to consumer targeting through a variety of marketing initiatives in the U.S.
Multicultural marketing acknowledges differences in perception, motives and beliefs among consumers with different cultural backgrounds, utilises cultural norms of several cultures to maximise exposure of the business's product or services by demonstrating interest and appreciation of different cultures (De-Mooij, 2015). For a multicultural marketing strategy to succeed, cultural differences must be identified, understood, and respected. Businesses must communicate on different "wavelengths" and adapt to different markets around the world (Wilkinson & Cheng, 1999).
International marketing generally works with national-level data (De-Mooij, 2015). International marketers analyse nations with respect to GNI/capita, education levels, available mass media, social media used, retail infrastructure and product category data, all at the national level (De-Mooij, 2015). Applying cultural values at the same national level is useful for understanding differences in consumer product ownership, brand preferences and motives. This cannot be established from differences in income or other demographic characteristics, but may be explained by cultural differences (Demangeot, Broderick & Craig, 2015).
Cultural value data tends to be assessed using either primary or secondary data. Primary data is derived directly from assessing values through surveys or experiments. Secondary data includes scores of properties of national culture. For individual-level studies, data is collected and analysed at the individual level and tied to the individual level outcome. To measure culture at the national level, individual data are combined by country and linked to the country-level outcome or pre-existing country-level measures. (Demangeot et al., 2015)
Multicultural marketing (also known as "ethnic marketing" or "cross-cultural marketing") applies unique marketing techniques to access the ethnic market. "Ethnic market" refers to cultures other than the majority culture in a company's home area. Multicultural marketing strategies involve recognising a culture's traditions, beliefs, values, norms, language, and religion—and applying those aspects to market to that culture's needs. (Rugimbana & Nwankwo, 2003).
History
Multiculturalism was regarded as a problem, in Australia attempts were made to reduce cultural heterogeneity by restricting immigration to white Europeans (Wilkinson & Cheng, 1999). This idea was swiftly abandoned. Other issues included adapting to the customs and traditions of new countries, tensions between ethnic communities of historical origins (Wilkinson & Cheng, 1999). Recently the focus has shifted onto the benefits of multiculturalism, and how it can potentially increase domestic and international brand recognition (De Mooij, 2015).
Economical, political, and social suggestions of this cultural mix cannot be ignored and has become widely recognised, for example the Australian Broadcasting Commission in 1995 took a significant step in ensuring that several cultures were taken into consideration and allowed for the best television programs to be sourced from around the world to cater to the needs of different cultural groups, airing programs from Asia and Europe, this directly influenced its ratings and achieved larger audiences (Wilkinson & Cheng, 1999). Various other types of products and services have been developed or adapted for the multicultural domestic market. For example, Chtaura Dairy products introduced Middle Eastern recipes for their dairy products.