African American Marketing Strategy

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African American Consumers Amanda Grant Marketing Principles African American Consumers The African American consumers compared to other consumers are similar, but different in many ways. As described in the article for this paper, African Americans are becoming a much larger piece of the market, and it is expected to only get bigger. Because of this, it is smart for companies to take the differences of these consumers into consideration when choosing and promoting their products. If a company chooses not to take this group into consideration, they could be missing out on a very large opportunity. Companies such as McDonalds are looking to tap into this growing market of African American consumers. Some of the reasons include the…show more content…
They came to realize that they had a very unique opportunity to tap into the growing market of African American consumers. They started out by getting African American women to be willing to talk openly about what their opinions were on race, beauty standards, and self-esteem. This took place over the course of a year through online conversations. The result of these conversations is their campaign entitled “My Black is Beautiful” that was launched in May of 2008. In June 2008 they began a four-city tour where they had forums about race, beauty bars, makeover stations, massages, and yoga and meditation instruction. They provided all of this free of charge in Chicago, New Orleans, Atlanta and Charlotte. One of the talks was a panel discussion about race and beauty that was hosted by an actress named Tasha Smith. In one of the panelists’ films it was reviled that “21st century African American children still regard themselves as inferior and less beautiful than Caucasians.” Some other things the four-city tour presented were fashion contests and small group discussions on beauty, self-esteem, finance and media. The “My Blacks is Beautiful” campaign is considered to be “a holistic, multi-brand movement designed to reinforce pride and stimulate a national conversation about African American women in popular culture.” Also, as part of this campaign Proctor and…show more content…
Some of the statistics surrounding the use of digital technology in the African American culture is also surprising to hear. It is stated that they “spend 44% more time on Education and Career sites and 21% more time on Family and Lifestyle sites than Total Market consumers.” A couple of other statistics state that African Americans are more likely to own their own website and their primary search engine is Google. When comparing the use of smartphones between the African American community and that of the overall population, 71% of African Americans have a smart phone and only 62% of the total population own a smartphone. However; African Americans are more likely (73%) to own an Android than an iPhone (27%).

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