A text mining and topic modelling perspective of ethnic marketing research

Sérgio Moro,Guilherme Pires,Paulo Rita,Paulo Cortez

doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.01.053

Abstract

This study presents an enhanced automated approach based on literature analysis and synthesis for establishing the dimensions of the ethnic marketing literature, covering a set of 239 journal articles published by nine major publishers. The approach reported is enhanced by two novel procedures to address previously identified limitations, namely: definition of a relevant dictionary based on both a sufficient lexicon extracted from a definition of the core theme and a conditional dictionary, with related but non-core terms; and a visually appealing pictorial representation to summarize the discovered topics. The application of the method to ethnic marketing indicates that ethnic marketing research is characterized by high conceptual heterogeneity, although a clear definition of “ethnic marketing” is imperative for research development. Overall, the paper advances an approach with considerable scalability advantages when compared with extant approaches, an important issue to consider when textual sources become big data.

Highlights

The increasing importance afforded to ethnicity and to minority ethnic groups, referred to as the new majority in the US (Armstrong, 2013), reflects the potential marketing opportunities offered by ethnic marketing to businesses in both advanced and developing economies, and an expectation that business will take effective advantage of those opportunities
Contrasting from critical reviews of the literature that are open to confirmatory bias (Basuroy et al, 2003), using a literature analysis allows for unbiased conclusions to be derived, potentially highlighting the manifestation of the rigidities in ethnic marketing research development and facilitating remedial actions
Rather than subjecting that definition to unjustified scrutiny, since it remains undisputed, this paper contributes to ethnic marketing research by unfolding a high level of conceptual heterogeneity apparent in the intrinsic nature of articles published under the ethnic marketing umbrella, yet clearly incongruent with that definition

Summary

Introduction

The increasing importance afforded to ethnicity and to minority ethnic groups, referred to as the new majority in the US (Armstrong, 2013), reflects the potential marketing opportunities offered by ethnic marketing to businesses in both advanced and developing economies, and an expectation that business will take effective advantage of those opportunities. Such opportunities are widely acknowledged in the specialist literature (Jamal et al, 2015; Pires & Stanton, 2015) and expected to expand given increasing globalization trends and growing ethnic diversity of countries around the globe (Cleveland et al, 2015). Contrasting from critical reviews of the literature that are open to confirmatory bias (Basuroy et al, 2003), using a literature analysis allows for unbiased conclusions to be derived, potentially highlighting the manifestation of the rigidities in ethnic marketing research development and facilitating remedial actions

Methods

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion