Prejudice or discrimination based on an individual’s race; can be expressed individually or through institutional policies or practices.
Definition of target marketing:
Market specialization is a business term meaning the market segment to which a particular good or service is marketed. It is mainly defined by age, gender, geography, socio-economic grouping, or any other combination of demographics.
As you can see, there might be a little overlap between the two. In December of 2005 a settlement was reached in Gonzalez v. Abercrombie & Fitch discrimination lawsuit. It alleged:
Abercrombie & Fitch settled a $40 million discrimination lawsuit requiring it to pay this large cash sum to Hispanic, black, Asian American and female applicant employees who charged the company with discrimination. The lawsuit stemmed from claims that minorities were denied prominent sales positions in the store or had their contracts terminated primarily based on their race. Part of the settlement reached with Abercrombie & Fitch, in addition to establishing procedures to allow for more diverse employment, required that marketing materials - such as shopping bags, posters and catalogs - include members of various minority and ethnic groups.
So when is marketing to one group acceptable and when is it not?
First, lets look at when marketing to one group is unacceptable:
- When the group is entirely white
- When the group is anti-race
- When the group is anti-female
When is marketing to one group OK?
- When it is a specific age group
- When it is anti-abortion/pro-abortion
- When it is anti-male
- When the group doesn’t contain whites
- When it is to a nationality
So wait a second, why is marketing to entirely white groups considered racism while marketing to anything but white perfectly acceptable?
For one, white is seen as a majority, at least in the west. Thus, any prejudice or discrimination against a white man or women publicly is seen as fair game. However, when it comes to another race it is not. The same goes towards advertising to anti-male groups, or at the very least, feminists. Men are seen as a majority, not because men are the true majority (women are), but men hold the majority of powerful positions within the USA.
Going back to the Abercrombie & Fitch lawsuit, marketing to white men and women was seen as unacceptable and resulted in an enormous settlement, even though the large majority of their customers were white. However, if you have seen any of the latest McDonald’s commercials (or if you live in Southern USA, any KFC or Church’s Chicken ads) you will notice the complete lack of whites.
Although this is a huge governmental and societal double standard, this is how racism, prejudice, and discrimination is dealt with within the United States, even though within many portions of the US white is no longer the majority.
So to recap, marketing towards a less powerful minority is seen as OK, while marketing towards the actual majority will get you a lawsuit.
Written: Jul 10, 2008
Tags: internet marketing, marketing, racism
Saphrym
July 10, 2008 @ 1:16 pm
It’s a little disconcerting that there’s even a “line” drawn between any races. I’m not a fan of it. I’m a fan of things like the scene in “Volcano” where everyone is covered with grey ash and a little girl says, “They all look the same.” Not that I’m for sameness, but that moment made me think about us all being humans.
John
July 10, 2008 @ 2:52 pm
I would think that the main difference is between hiring practices and advertising. While you can’t discriminate in hiring practices you can focus your advertising toward certain groups. It also happens that ad companies love to advertise toward woman by portraying men as stupid and incompetent- one of my favorite stereotypes.
Gary R. Hess
July 10, 2008 @ 3:05 pm
You are right, there is a difference between hiring and marketing; however, when it comes to the law there isn’t. There have been many lawsuits stating advertising towards one race (at least if that one race is white) is illegal. The Abercrombie lawsuit is just one example.
CyberCelt
July 12, 2008 @ 12:28 am
I wanted to thank you for displaying your EC on my blog.
Read this post twice and it made my head hurt. When I am asked for race, I always write HUMAN. I had a friend that always wrote YES when asked for his sex. LOL
Emerging economies are prime targets for marketing. If we are depending on the white middle class American male to make our fortune, we are lost.
All the best.
Linda P. Morton
July 13, 2008 @ 9:47 pm
Gary,
There is a huge difference between racism and target marketing.
First racism ignores or markets inappropriately to people of one or more races in the market. While target marketing focuses on a selected group of people, it does so because of the group members’ want or need for the business product or service, not because of race, gender, etc.
Second racism is a type of stereotyping. It focuses on a few characteristics of the group while ignoring many others. Target marketing uses as much information as can be acquired about a target market in order to understand people in the market as throughly as possible.
I recently wrote a post related to the points above at
http://www.strategicmarketsegmentation.com/blog/market-segmentation-vs-stereotyping/
Gary R. Hess
July 13, 2008 @ 9:58 pm
Again, I point you to the lawsuits which have come about through the years. Anything that doesn’t fully market to all races is considered racism by definition. You can say it isn’t all you want, but by the definition of the word it is and has been found to be in the court of law.
The difference is, generally speaking, whites are less likely to win lawsuits due to race because of how they are seen as the majority.
Also, by your definition it is stereotyping. OK, so using your definition why isn’t marketing chicken to blacks racism? Whites obviously eat chicken. So why not market to them as well? Instead, it is marketed almost purely towards blacks in the south.