Branding beyond prejudice: Navigating multicultural marketplaces for consumer well-being

Today's marketplaces are increasingly multicultural as more individuals negotiate complex cultural identities. Brands play a role in materializing individual identities—however, little is known about how culture-based brand appeals might affect consumers'' identity dynamics, positively or negatively. The paper provides a framework and a model that examines the interaction between three different types of multicultural marketplaces (assimilation, separation, and mutual integration) and different voices that brands might use in their cultural appeals (Branding Ignorance, Branding Tolerance, and Branding Engagement). The model identifies how these different voices (strategies) might exacerbate consumer vulnerabilities in different types of marketplaces and provides recommendations for how to use culture-based branding appeals in a benevolent manner.

Keywords:

brand name products  branding (marketing)  cointegration  consumer vulnerability  consumer well-being  consumers  cultural identity  culture-based branding  economic models  marketplaces  multicultural marketplaces  prejudice  well-being 

Citation:

Eva Kipnis, Amanda J. Broderick, Catherine Demangeot, Natalie Ross Adkins, Nakeisha S. Ferguson, Geraldine Rosa Henderson, Guillaume Johnson, James M. Mandiberg, Rene Dentiste Mueller, Chris Pullig, Abhijit Roy, and Miguel Angel Zúñiga (2013). Branding beyond prejudice: Navigating multicultural marketplaces for consumer well-being. Journal of Business Research, 66(8), Pages 1186-1194. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2012.08.011