Ethnic Marketing Sensitivity: Reconciling Rigorous Theory With Pragmatism

The substantial literature discussing the reawakening and even strengthening of ethnicity in both advanced and developing economies is seen as an alert for the need to develop reliable ethnic marketing intelligence for management purposes. A prerequisite for this development is to better understand, and to possibly reconcile, the divide between ethnic marketing in theory and practice. This paper reports the major outcomes of extensive qualitative research recently completed. A major aim of that research was to demonstrate the benefits for ethnic marketing practice from conformance to the premises forwarded by higher level ethnic marketing theory. The development of that research identified a divide between a rigorous theoretical approach to ethnic marketing and the pragmatic approach typically subscribed in ethnic marketing practice. It is advocated that how ethnic marketing will develop into the future is related to how well this divide can be explained and reconciled. Based on the outcomes of the research, this discussion paper argues that the future of ethnic marketing, as a coherent and substantive area of research may be facilitated by adopting a pragmatic-like approach that accounts for the importance of the differences in the seeing lenses of different analysts, both theorists and practitioners. The development of ethnic marketing requires gradually bringing the different perspectives closer together, rather than defending one to the detriment of another. A framework is proposed to reduce the theory-practice divide underpinned by a pragmatic orientation.