How Should Brands Give Back in a Multicultural Market?

Marketers frequently ask how their brands can give back to a community to create good will and enhance their brand's position. The answer to the question is complex, but one of the ways of trying to address it is by asking consumers of different cultural and acculturation backgrounds how they rate different actions that brands can take in order to give back.

In 2012 with the cooperation of Research Now and the leadership of +Melanie Courtright, we again collected an online national sample composed of Hispanics and Asians born in the US and those born abroad, in addition to African Americans and Non-Hispanic Whites. We used the country of birth as a proxy for acculturation to see if technology adoption varied accordingly.

We asked respondents to rate different actions that companies can take to give back as follows:
“When a brand gives back to a community, which of the following are most and least important contributions from your perspective? Please rank in order, from 1, most important, to 5, least important, each of the following items.”

The following chart shows the total across all respondents (indicated by the blue bars) and for each of the culturally unique groups (indicated by the colored lines) for the rank of “Most Important” in regard to the following possible brand actions:

• Provide jobs
• Give scholarships
• Help clean the environment
• Keep jobs in the local community, and
• Employees get free time to do community service

The rank shown is just the “Most Important” for each of the items. The totals for each culturally unique or acculturation group add to slightly more than 100% because each item was rated independently.

The first surprise is that the differences across culturally unique and acculturation groups is relatively small and that these cultural groups agree on the priority of the items.  The number one priority across the board is that the most important contribution that brands can make is to provide jobs to the community, followed by keeping jobs in the local community. It is perhaps not surprising that these two items have the highest priority given the economic downturn that most Americans have experienced in the recent past.

At a distance the next two priorities for brands are to help clean the environment and give scholarships. This does not necessarily mean that these are not important brand contributions, but that jobs are a more prevalent contribution at this time.

Interestingly, giving employees free time to do community service was ranked as top by the smallest proportion of respondents in each cultural group. This is perhaps due to the lack of visibility that such action may have as a contribution.

What are the lessons from these findings?

1. Cultural groups and those at different levels of acculturation tend to agree on approaches that brands need to take to give back to the communities where they operate. Clearly, the implementation of providing jobs has to be by cultural group in order to satisfy the expressed sentiment of these consumers. Creating jobs is not enough but creating jobs that satisfy these segments individually.
2. At times of economic distress there are actions that consumers feel are important but they subside to the more pressing issues of the time. While cleaning the environment and giving scholarships are important, jobs take preeminence in economic downturns.
3. Marketers are encouraged to emphasize how their brands contribute to employment of these different cultural groups with specific emphasis on the local community.

The data for this study was collected by Research Now of Dallas, Texas, thanks to the generous initiative of +Melanie Courtright. Research Now contributed these data to the research efforts of the Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication at Florida State University (+Hispanic FSU). This online survey included the responses of 936 Asians (398 US born), 458 African Americans, 833 Hispanics (624 US born), and 456 non Hispanic Whites. This national sample had quotas for US region, age, and gender to increase representativeness.

Emerging Minorities, Concern for the Environment, and What Marketers Can Do

When I was growing up in Mexico City my father and mother always told me not to keep the faucet running because wasting water was bad. Then they told me not to throw things away because some day I can reuse them. I saved cans, jars, bottles, bags, and was very careful not to leave the faucet running while washing dishes or shaving. And, of course, you would not dream of leaving the lights on when nobody was in a room. That was such a waste of electricity.

Perhaps we were so thrifty because that was the economical thing to do at the time. But we were also frugal because resources were scarce and we did not want to waste them. For example we did not have all the water we needed. They would sometimes cut it systematically at different times during the day. Electricity was a similar problem.

I have noticed that Hispanics coming from Latin America, similar to my youth case, are also frugal with resources even if they have money to buy what they need. I have been curious to know if it is a general phenomenon that Latinos are more concerned with the environment than others.

According to our recent 2011 FSU – DMS Multicultural Marketing study we found that in fact, Hispanics that still prefer to communicate in Spanish are the most concerned with the environment compared to anyone else. Further, minorities are generally more concerned than non-Hispanic Whites after conducting statistical tests of significance. Here are the averages on a scale from 0 to 5 in terms of agreement with the statement: “Humans are severely abusing the environment.”

This belief reflects an attitude of concern for the environment that should be noticed by marketers. Products and messages directed to Latinos and other minorities are likely to have stronger resonance if they address how a company is doing something for the environment, and that their products are green.

It is not intuitive that Hispanics who prefer Spanish are most strongly concerned with the environment. Particularly not to those marketers who do not share their history of environmental chaos and deprivation. Further, Latinos who prefer English, along with African Americans and Asians, share a stronger concern for the environment than their non-Hispanic White counterparts, and that is not intuitive either. It is perhaps that those who have had to live with the consequences of environmental degradation are now turning more conscientious about it.
The lesson of the story is that emerging minorities are likely to embrace green and marketers should make that part of their agenda. Perhaps green is the new “green.”

The data for this study was collected during March 2011. This online sample was comprised of 500 respondents per segment, for a total of 2,500, based on quotas by gender, age, and geographic location. DMS Insights managed the sample and data collection and they graciously contributed their effort to the academic program of the Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication at Florida State University. This study was conducted by the faculty and students of the graduate Multicultural Marketing Communication course offered by FSU this Spring.