Multicultural marketing: should marketing campaigns be customized for subcultural divisions in India!

Abstract

Multicultural marketing is any business endeavour to promote a product or service to a particular demographic. This includes overseas and international cultures but can also refer to minority cultures in a single country. In a world that's significantly becoming customer-centric where the customer is the king in the market, one-size-fits-all solutions are no longer favourable. In the context of marketing, designing marketing and advertising campaigns that will be uniformly used across the various subcultures within a nation is least likely to resonate well with the target segments. In the Indian context, there are 9 subcultures recognized which are characterized by diverse traditions, languages, religious upbringings, purchase behaviour, ethnicities, and history of that culture. Each culture has a unique persona of its own that needs to be kept in mind while targeting them. Integrating subcultural knowledge into marketing efforts helps engage people in the appropriate context. Culture has been a dominant determinant of consumer behaviour. In a country like India which is a subcontinent, the changing culture and thus changing Consumer Behaviour is to be kept in mind by marketers to target the right consumers with the right ads. Culture refers to the ways of living of people, their beliefs, values, customs and traditions, languages, art and is the sum total of all of the above. The diverse and varied subcultures of India have significant repercussions on the psyche of consumers and guides their purchase decisions. India has a strong "Middle Class" or who are often also referred to as the "Consumer Class" whose disposable incomes have increased, thus leading to the rise in India's economic power. Some of the major brands which have engaged in such Multicultural marketing are Procter and Gamble (My Black is Beautiful campaign), Adidas (Here to Create), Adobe (When I see black), Bumble (Find me on Bumble), Nike (One day we won't need this day). The upsides of customizing marketing campaigns for subcultures in India are to better connect with customers, showcasing relevant features, filling the need gaps carefully, scope of better conversions and thus, higher profitability. Multicultural marketing is not free from its set of cons. There's plenty of room for Superficial mistakes of possibly ignoring cultural contexts where rather than striking the right chord, campaigns can go horribly wrong by misinterpreting sensitive cultural pillars. 4 With this context, Multicultural marketing is going to be of immense interest in terms of business relevance with a huge influence on the final purchase decisions of consumers. With this study, we will explore the future of multicultural marketing backing it up with the relationship it has on consumer behaviour and preferences.