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In this learning memo I outline some basic ideas about ethnicity and religion as consumer demographic profile characteristics and discuss how that influences our understanding of consumer behaviour and marketing.

Most countries in the world today are multicultural to some extent. There are very few mono-cultural societies remaining. Therefore ethnic and religious sub-groups and sub-cultures represent a unique marketing opportunity.

ETHNIC AND RELIGIOUS SUBCULTURES

The impact of globalisation has created strong, influential, and lucrative market segments based on subcultural demographics especially in some major markets in the world. For example Latino and Hispanic ethnicities are strong consumer subcultures in the USA as are Asian consumer segments in UK, Arab and Middle Eastern segments in France, Turkish consumers in Germany and Chinese consumer groups in Australia. Similarly in many Western countries, Islamic consumer segments are the fastest growing subcultures, creating huge marketing opportunities.

ETHNICITY AND RELIGION BASED CONSUMPTION

A person’s ethnic and religious background is an essential part of their identity and determines buying preferences for certain types of items such as food, fashion, music, media etc. These choices are influenced by tradition, heritage, customs, and rituals, family structures that are part of that ethnic and religious identity.

The growing importance of ethnicity and religion as social profile demographic characteristics creates huge marketing opportunities. Consumers use their consumption decision making as ways to construct and express their own ethnic, religious, and subcultural identity in a host society or make sense of their own heritage in a multicultural environment. Ethnic and religious characteristics become hybridised in multi-cultural, multi-racial societies and consumption and consumer behaviour itself becomes a form of identity construction and acculturation. In other words, people use their consumption choices of certain products as a way of affirming their ethnic and religious identity characteristics especially if they are in a minority. Eventually their tastes in ethnic products diffuses and spreads into mainstream cultures. (This will be explored in detail in topics related to culture and globalisation.)

Equally, marketing to ethnic and religious subcultures can sometimes run the risk of stereotyping, prejudices, and sweeping generalisations in marketing. There can be accusations of ‘cultural appropriation’ as well and it becomes difficult to draw a line and distinguish between genuine appreciation of other cultures through tastes and cultural appropriation.

ETHNIC MARKETING

Marketers need to develop a better understanding of ethnic cultures, consumers and markets because:

• Ethnic populations are among the fastest growing demographics in any country’s population make up.
• Ethnic consumers are brand loyal and therefore offer more opportunities for brand marketing strategies. Ethnic consumers, especially young consumers are also typically seen as high achievers making them influential.
• Ethnic consumers typically are affluent, aspirational, upwardly mobile, and have positive attitudes towards work and family life.
• Ethnic consumers challenge conventional understandings of health, medicine, food, cultural practices etc. which demands specialised market research and insights.

SECULAR AND NON-SECULAR RELIGIOUS SUBCULTURES

The idea of ‘religion’ is typically understood as faith based worship, and organised religion provides huge consumption and marketing opportunities for businesses. Religious terms such as kosher and halal are increasingly being applied to non-food products and areas as well in order to make them more acceptable to particular market segments while they are also gaining popular appeal to crossover into mainstream cultures.

Increasingly many brands and lifestyle consumption choices inspire religious-type beliefs and cult worship among consumers, causing them to create ‘secular’ religions.  

ETHNICITY AND RELIGION AS SOCIAL CONSTRUCTS

Traditional views hold ethnicity and religious characteristics as typically those that consumers are born with and identify as. A person is born into a certain ethnic or racial makeup and into a certain religious denomination regardless of whether they adhere to the tenets of the faith or not. However increasingly these characteristics are also being seen as a social construct, allowing people to self-identify into profile characteristics of their own choice. In religion for instance many people either formally covert into other religions and / or identify with other religions and adopt its faith, beliefs, and practices. An increasing trend in recent years has been consumers self-identifying as belonging to ethnicities other than the ones they were born into and making changes to their self-presentation through consumption choices.

These trends again provide marketers with many challenges and opportunities in marketing new products and services, spotting trends, and the forming of new consumer segments, micro-segments, and subcultures.