Editor’s note: In conjunction with his BOSS Academy Radio podcast, Paul Kirch, CEO of Actus Sales Intelligence, a Fort Worth, Texas, business and sales consulting agency, is interviewing authors, marketers and marketing researchers on a wide range of topics. By special arrangement, we’ll periodically feature edited recaps in the e-newsletter including portions of the conversations that touch on research-related topics.
To effectively engage with multicultural consumer segments, it is often up to researchers to recognize and focus on differences, something that Pepper Miller, president of Chicago-based marketing strategy company, the Hunter-Miller Group, believes many researchers shy away from when it comes to the African-American consumer segment. Without this ability to find and embrace segment differences, researchers and marketers are missing out on the opportunity to show consistent relevance with multicultural consumers.
In an interview with Paul Kirch for BOSS Academy Radio, Miller said she believes this challenge stems from society’s overall sensitivity toward pointing out differences, which is linked to black America’s history of slavery and post-slavery discrimination. Miller discussed the importance of pinpointing differences and using them to effectively design and conduct research – and ultimately market products and messages to the African-American consumer segment. Miller believes that researchers who are shaping techniques and multicultural marketing must focus on changing the conversation to represent, engage and include black America to collect relevant stories and quality consumer data.
Paul Kirch: You have talked to a lot of corporate organizations and companies from a consulting standpoint about the idea of race and how [MR] is missing the mark when representing individuals …
Pepper Miller: For the most part, when we hear the word multicultural, it mostly encompasses the Hi...