Immigrant Target Marketing and Communication Policies of Italian Companies

The relationship between immigrants and consumption is very topical today. The issue, in addition to involving immigrants as new consumers, concerns also the Italian offer system and the enterprises created and managed by foreigners. To date, Italian companies seem to have not yet recognized the specific needs and requirements of this target and therefore generally adopt undifferentiated behavior. Literature states that when ethnicized marketing and communication policies are effectively implemented by businesses, they validate immigrants’ identity and become a means for their social recognition as consumers (Licsandru and Cui, 2019; Peñaloza, 2018). Given these premises, the paper aims to study companies’ interest towards the immigrant target. The output of the exploratory research aims to identify possible marketing and communication strategies useful to businesses for the creation of an offer system, that takes into account the cultural differences in purchasing behavior. Finally, in the article we will re-read the four alternatives presented in the Cui model of 1997 (Cui, 1997), in order to understand which area, in the light of the data analysis, must be deepened. The article adopts a qualitative methodology, based on 20 in-depth interviews to different key informants.