New Course Development in Multicultural Marketing

Abstract

The multicultural market has witnessed tremendous growth in many societies, yet multicultural marketing is marginalized in the marketing curriculum. The focus of this article is to stimulate more discussion of multicultural issues within marketing by proposing suggestions for a multicultural marketing course and identifying appropriate teaching resources. Issues for discussion include defining the multicultural terrain, ethnic groups and boundaries, models of acculturation and assimilation, multicultural marketing research, and incorporating multicultural issues into the marketing mix. It will become increasingly unethical and socially irresponsible for marketing educators to exclude ethnic minority discourse when significant numbers of our students will be drawn from these groups and practitioners wish it to be included. Although teaching specialist multicultural marketing courses may be the prerogative of the few, all marketing academics can use multicultural examples in their mainstream teaching.