Inclusive Marketing:

How Businesses Should Embrace Diversity and Inclusion

in Marketing Strategies

Puntaree Suvarnin

MKTG 569 Multicultural Marketing

Liautaud Graduate School of Business, University of Illinois at Chicago

Diversity and inclusion are not just trending topics that have just come up in conversations in these past few years; they are what businesses should embrace when they pursue marketing strategies. Today generations of consumers are progressively multicultural due to the intersectionality of ethnicity, race, and sexual orientation. The upsurge in popularity of social media and the influence of progressive social activism have made consumers become more empowered and aware of the issues, setting higher expectation for business to cherish empowerment, acceptance, and equality. As consumers’ expectations evolve, an increasing importance is placed not only on a company’s profits, but its impact on people. (Deloitte, 2017)

However, the issue of diversity and inclusion has put marketers into a difficult dilemma.

As a principle practice of marketing is to identify potential customers from segmentation and concentrate marketing efforts on target customers, there is a fine line between target marketing and discrimination. Still, there are several reasons why companies should take the issue of diversity and inclusion seriously.

First, companies that fail to address this issue or are alleged of discrimination in their marketing practice could put their businesses at risk. Abercrombie & Fitch is the brand that faced a reputation loss during 2000s to 2010s because of controversies encompassing the brand concerning diversity issue. According to its CEO at that time, the brand tried to target the

“attractive all-American kid” and intentionally excluded other consumers that do not belong in this category. Another wrong move by the company is that their communication campaign portrayed the images of professional models in hyper-sexualization theme. In cultural point of view, not only it had formed the false impression on aesthetic value of human physique, but it also gave a sense of unease and discomfort for consumers who came from cultures where sexualization is a taboo.

Moreover, the company also faced the allegations of employment discrimination as non-white employees were forced to worked in backroom and a Muslim woman was refused to hire by the company because she wore hijab. As social media is a means of communication that allows words and opinions to travel in an uncontrollable speed, one wrong step companies take can provoke a potential backlash from netizens and result in inevitable sales collapse and negative brand image.

Instead, companies could benefit from incorporating diversity and inclusion in their marketing strategy. By expanding their target to new populations, it means their new business opportunity. To illustrates the importance of this idea, take Abercrombie & Fitch as the example.

After falling off the chart of popular brand among upper-income teens in 2014, the company appointed the new CEO in 2017, leading the transformation of the brand’s image by adopting a more inclusive attitude. This effort resulted in the growth of sales by 4% from the previous year.

The answer to the question on how marketer can solve this dilemma between targeting or discriminating lie within the principle of inclusive marketing. The term “inclusive marketing” is defined by Salesforce as “creating content that truly reflects the diverse communities that [the] companies serve. It means that [the company] are elevating diverse voices and role models, decreasing cultural bias, and leading positive social change through thoughtful and respectful content.” The followings are some recommendations that marketers could adopt when developing their inclusive marketing strategies.

It is difficult for companies to put their marketing efforts on all market segments. So, first of all, prioritization is the key. After evaluating different segments, the companies must decide which segments will be a central focus of their marketing strategies while still include other target segments by prioritizing these targets in order of the probability that they will purchase the products. This practice urges brands to examine consumers with ethno-consumeristic approach to understand specific consumer behaviors based on their social or cultural group.

Once learned about the differences between each target segments, marketers should develop integrated marketing program by adhering to the principle of inclusive marketing. Inclusive representation is at the core of developing an effective marketing program that embrace diversity and enhancing extrinsic quality of relationship between brands and consumers.

To begin with, customer-driven product development strategy should be implemented so that the companies can ensure consumers that their portfolio of products offered covers different needs and wants across all segments of diversity. Industries that are at risk of being discriminatory are such as cosmetic and fashion since they both have their focus on appearance of consumers which are directly related to the issue of diversity. Many American cosmetic brands have developed shade-inclusive foundation lines and diverse color options that match all skin tones from fair to deep. Fenty Beauty lauched its 40 shades of foundation in 2017, setting new standard for other cosmetic companies to follow. Another brand that has set a good example of how business can put inclusive marketing strategy into practice is Old Navy. According to Vogue Business, the average U.S. woman wears a size 16, though most brands only offer sizes up to 10 or 12, meaning that millions of customers are left out. In 2018, Old Navy kicked off its YES campaign to celebrate inclusive sizing as the brand offers clothing in sizes 00 through 30.

Other businesses are also attempting to reach out to untapped demographic markets. The example is that Harley-Davidson started marketing to women by creating classes to teach women to ride. In fact, the CEO of the company has also confirmed that more sales of Harley-Davidson’s motorcycle are from women customers, reflecting the growing number of female ridership today.

The shortcoming of having such a wide range of product lines is the high operating expenses for the business from the production to inventory management. The businesses can minimize these costs by how they prioritize their target segments; they can focus on the product units that match with the majority of their main targets and have their variants readily available to serve the requirements of non-focus target segments. Although the products and services are developed to fulfill needs and wants of different groups of consumers, the pricing strategy should remain constant across all segments. This issue is still being debated within fashion industry – whether brands should charge more for larger sizes.

Plus-sized consumers consider the differences in cost for the plus-sized consumer as “fat tax” and feel that this business practice is discriminatory. Thus, fashion brands and other businesses serving diverse customers should set same price for each product regardless of its variation.

Another point for marketers to consider is that their products and services must be equally accessible by all target segments. Old Navy, despite of its mission of total inclusivity, once face the allegation of being discriminatory as their plus-sized clothing options are only available online.

This problem was eventually fixed when it decided to stock its plus-size in its 75 stores.

Promotion is another dimension of marketing program that crucial to brands as consumers today needs to feel represented in marketing strategies and see how the brands reflects the reality of their lives. Some companies fall short of representing the diverse populations that they serve, causing controversy and disconnection of relationship between the brands and consumers.

Marketers should aim to break advertising norms by going beyond stereotypes or highlighting groups of people that might be underrepresented through thoughtful and respectful content, even they are not their main target audiences. There are several elements of marketing content that the brands should pay close attention to when crafting and executing their communication campaigns.

First, marketers should be careful when selecting word choices to use in the advertisement.

Greenpeace has provided a helpful set of guidelines for inclusive language that businesses could follow. In summary of the guidelines, marketers should avoid using words that contributes to stigmas around appearances, gender bias, and reinforces racial, ethnic, or religious stereotypes.

Another component of marketing content involves visual. Inclusive marketing strives to create a visual culture that is more representative. (Fish, 2016) The study conducted by Google reveals that consumers want to see businesses embraces people in the real world. That is to say, authenticity is another key to successful inclusive marketing communication strategy. Therefore, using non-celebrity, real people that represent diversity in advertisement is recommended, as the audience could feel more relatable and thus have emotional connection with the brands. Aerie, an intimate apparel sub-brand of American Eagle, has demonstrated how it cherishes diversity and inclusivity through their campaign ‘Aerie Bras Make You Feel Real Good’. This campaign aimed at boosting a body confidence in women and highlighting the beauty of diversity by featuring unretouched images of 57 women in a variety of race and physical appearance. This successful campaign is one of the reasons why American Eagle has outperformed its competitor Abercrombie

& Fitch that had done poorly in regards of diversity issue.

The result from the survey conducted by The Female Quotient partnered with Google and

Ipsos in Summer 2019 indicates that when people recognize themselves in messages communicated by brands, they are more likely to respond. It also reveals that 64% out of 3,000

U.S. consumers, ages 13–54 who access the internet at least monthly, are more likely to consider, or even purchase, a product after seeing an advertisement they consider to be diverse or inclusive.

All in all, these recommendations on marketing efforts will not be successfully carried out without investment and commitment of businesses to cultivate the mindset of diversity and inclusion in their corporate culture. The marketing team as well as the decision makers of the companies should include and involve people from varying race, ethnicity, cultural background, sexual orientation and age in order to generate insightful discussion based on their personal experience and genuinely represent consumers in marketing decision-making process. References and Work Cited:

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