Article Review on Marketing Ethics

Article Review on Marketing Ethics:
Marketing is one of the most important strategies towards the growth of a company. Most business people and marketers are coming up with strategic ways in which they can sell their products to different consumers in a given region. This has led to the need for close focus on ethnic minority groups especially in the United States where there are different ethnic communities. Ethnic marketing is all about a marketer or business person using marketing strategies aimed at attracting a particular ethnic group. With the big numbers of ethnic minority groups in major countries in the world especially in the US, marketers have to develop their marketing strategies to incorporate these other communities since they are part of the larger market. This has grown over time leading to focus on African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians among others since marketers have realized that most of the expenditure is from the ethnic groups thus a need to make them feel more recognized and appreciated by the companies. This is an analysis on the article, ‘Ethnic Marketing: McDonald’s is Lovin’ It’

McDonald Company was among the first companies to implement ethnic marketing strategy. According to Helm, McDonalds have taken cues from Asians, African Americans and Hispanics to develop menus and advertising to encourage middle class Caucasians to buy smoothies and snack wraps in the same way they consume hip hop and rock ‘n’ roll (Helm 4). The CEO says that the ethnic minorities seem to set the trend on how they should enter into the market. This is because they prefer things done in a certain way and the snacks prepared according to their taste and preferences which make them make frequent purchases. Ethnic marketing also involves the marketer incorporating staff from the ethnic communities to show the customers that they also appreciate working with people of their kind. McDonald’s has set the trend for minority groups advertisements which are special for each group to feel represented other than the generalized advertisement (Helm 1).

There are various principles to help a marketer successful in ethnic marketing that include valuing; cultural uniqueness of the target group, cultural group’s beliefs, symbols, and practices, differences in language, practices, accents and social conduct, bridge building and cooperation between leaders and other interest communities and valuing word of mouth and interpersonal communication to spread the message.

McDonald is ranked as the best at standardization of its marketing through the Big Mac which has been used to measure inflation in the world. Through its low prices and the new menus McDonald’s sales have increased in the year. The launch of the Fiesta menu led to more sales in Hispanic neighborhoods and more sales from the whites as a way of appreciating the strategy and variety of its products. Definitely, people want to try different tastes of other ethnic communities too. The sensitivity in ethnic marketing has led to development of new product. The advertising committee is comprised of more African American, Asian and Hispanic focus groups, to reach out to their target consumers.

Many companies adopt ethnic marketing as they are left with no choice but to standardize their advertisements, personal selling among other marketing tools. Having a large market, which is comprised of consumers with different preferences, requires a marketer to focus on the needs of these groups to help in making your products acceptable to satisfy the needs of the large market like McDonald does.