Geraldine Rosa Henderson

Courting Customers: Assessing Consumer Racial Profiling and Other Marketplace Discrimination

Through an examination of 81 federal court decisions made between 1990 and 2002 involving customers’ allegations of race and/or ethnic discrimination, the authors uncover three emergent dimensions of discrimination: (1) the type of alleged discrimination (subtle or overt), (2) the level of service (degradation or denial), and (3) the existence of criminal suspicion in the alleged discriminatory conduct (present or absent). Using a framework that enables the categorization and aggregation of cases with common themes, the authors demonstrate that real and perceived consumer discrimination remains a problem in the U.S. marketplace, and they conclude that further research is necessary for marketers to address the issue effectively.

Toward Intercultural Competency in Multicultural Marketplaces

Intercultural competency plays a pivotal role in creating a more equitable and just marketplace in which situations of marketplace vulnerability are minimized and resilience is enhanced. Intercultural competency is the ability to understand, adapt, and accommodate anothers culture. In this essay, the authors present a framework of intercultural competency development in multicultural marketplaces. They discuss resilience-building actions for multicultural marketplace actors, specifically, consumers, companies/marketers, community groups and nongovernmental organizations, and policy makers for three phases of intercultural competency development.

Beyond Poverty: Social Justice in a Global Marketplace

The social justice paradigm, developed in philosophy by John Rawls and others, reaches limits when confronted with diverse populations, unsound governments, and global markets. Its parameters are further limited by a traditional utilitarian approach to both industrial actors and consumer behaviors. Finally, by focusing too exclusively on poverty, as manifested in insufficient incomes or resources, the paradigm overlooks the oppressive role that gender, race, and religious prejudice play in keeping the poor subordinated. The authors suggest three ways in which marketing researchers could bring their unique expertise to the question of social justice in a global economy: by (1) reinventing the theoretical foundation laid down by thinkers such as Rawls, (2) documenting and evaluating emergent “feasible fixes” to achieve justice (e.g., the global resource dividend, cause-related marketing, Fair Trade, philanthrocapitalism), and (3) exploring the parameters of the consumption basket that would be minimally required to achieve human capabilities.

From Exclusion to Inclusion: An Introduction to the Special Issue on Marketplace Diversity and Inclusion

ew attention is needed for often overlooked and undervalued consumers. Some would argue that there has been sufficient attention to these groups, but perhaps the problem, from a public policy perspective, is with the marketing strategies that have been used to attract and retain their patronage. Some companies fear making a mistake and thus shy away from potentially complex markets. Still other firms fail to recognize the value of such niche markets because they see no potential for economies of scale. However, in this special issue, we argue that it is no longer a viable strategy for companies to stick their collective “heads in the sand.” Instead, private and public sectors should enact policies to ensure active interest in and respect for diverse marketplaces throughout the globe. We conceptualize global marketplace diversity and inclusion to incorporate the traditional four Ps of marketing (product, price, place, and promotion) and interactions in the marketplace, which include business to business, business to consumer, supplier diversity, consumer to business, and consumer to consumer settings (see Figure 1). Such diversity may be with respect to ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and physical (dis)ability, among other factors. Whereas it is true that more multicultural consumers and products exist than ever before in the marketplace, there is certainly more change to come. As the world becomes more connected through technology (e.g., the Internet, mobile technologies) and transportation (e.g., airplanes, trains), policies for diverse marketplace opportunities become paramount. Next, we briefly discuss ways in which the marketing mix (product, price, place, and promotion) may be considered from a diversity perspective.

Exclusion from Entertainment and Leisure Venues: Can’t we Play, Too?

The purchasing power of historically invisible groups is growing and yet we continue to see instances of entertainment and leisure venues either outright denying access to them and/or at least degrading the service that they receive. We study this and other such discrimination and injustice against groups based on gender, religion, skin tone, body image, weight, sexual orientation, language, disability, and other demographic markers (Walsh 2009). We provide a historical perspective, discuss our qualitative methodology, present our findings, and conclude with some recommendations for marketers and researchers in supporting the transformation of the lives of consumers in oppressed groups and segments from positions of being discriminated against and experiencing marketplace injustice to a position of fair and equitable treatment in a marketplace reflecting social justice.