Marketing & Lifestyle
Marketing for diversity and inclusion: unlocking consumer, company, and societal benefits
Have you ever felt that a service or product did not cater your uniqueness? I personally did. As a left-handed person I always struggle trying to use basic products that are designed primarily for right-handed users (such as scissors, notebooks, or even the mouse). Others feel the same for different reasons. For example, Tom, who moves in wheelchair, often finds that many stores are not accessible to him and it is difficult for him to enjoy shopping as other people. Carla often finds that her company’s events do not properly considerate her dietary restrictions as a vegetarian, giving her few choices and making her feel unappreciated.
Those examples do not just show personal inconvenience for some customers, but they reflect a broader issue in several companies’ practices: the lack of inclusive actions to meet all customers’ diverse needs.
Diversity and Inclusion
Diversity and inclusion are frequently grouped together, leading to the mistaken belief that they mean the same. However, this is not the case. Diversity is defined as the recognition of individuals’ distinct identities that can be based on several characteristics such as: gender; age; type of body; race and ethnicity; social class and social status; religion; nationality and language; cultural identity; sexual orientation; disability; religious commitment; political perspective, etc. Inclusion means integrating and valuing diverse groups of people within a setting to promote a sense of belonging.
In today’s society, the importance of diversity and inclusion is growing. They are today a key objective of the United Nations Development Program and several governments around the world are crafting regulations aimed at promoting them. Consequently, companies’ practices strive to align with these measures and gain consumers’ preferences. A lot of companies’ initiatives and academic research on diversity and inclusion focus on internal workplace organization and culture and how this is beneficial to companies. But what is concretely done by companies to develop diversity and inclusion marketing policies to improve their customers’ wellbeing?
Our research focuses on this question with the aim of pointing out which may be the impacts of companies’ marketing policies aimed at promoting diversity and inclusion. To this end we performed a literature review and analyzed the results of 52 relevant academic studies on this topic selected out of a sample of 28,353 academic papers mentioning it.
What are companies doing?
Our results show that several of the companies’ marketing activities to enhance diversity and inclusion focus on representing diversity in advertising. One of the pioneers in this sense has been Dove with the Real Beauty campaign launched in 2004. Diversity representation is relevant as researchers showed that the use of nontraditional models in advertisements positively influences consumers’ attitudes and behaviors towards the represented minorities.
Other initiatives go further the mere representation as some companies try to reach real inclusion while developing their offers. This led for example to the development of: accessible leisure propositions to different types of disability, such as restaurants or touristic experiences; more inclusive video games including LGBTQIA+ characters and the first wheelchair-friendly seat in an airplane.
Finally, some companies publicly promote and associate themselves to public diversity and inclusion initiatives, such as the numerous examples of companies that support the LGBTQIA+ community Pride celebrations or associations promoting disability inclusion.
Our results show that those companies’ marketing efforts to promote diversity and inclusion provide positive outcomes at three levels: the individual consumers; the companies themselves and the society as a whole.
Benefits for the individuals
Our results show that consumers can benefit in several ways from companies’ diversity and inclusion policies.
First of all, for minorities groups those policies often allow their destigmatization. Indeed, some individual characteristics might become a stigma and be judged negatively when they deviate from what others consider “normal” and lead the person being devalued and feeling vulnerable. Thanks to diversity and inclusion policies, previously stigmatized characteristics become more easily socially acceptable making people more aware of and familiar with them. Consequently, vulnerable consumers develop self-empowering that allows them to cope with stigma and reach a greater well-being.
Furthermore, customers belonging to a minority can have access to a greater range of products to fit their specific needs which benefits their shopping and consumption experience.
This greater exposure to diversity also benefits “mainstream” individuals and can shape their tastes and preferences, leading to more openness to try new products and services.
Benefits for the companies
Enhancing inclusivity through concrete marketing efforts offers a plethora of benefits for the companies themselves. Among the most important positive effects, companies can benefit from more positive consumers’ attitudes, better brand evaluations, higher sales and willingness to pay as well as greater loyalty. A recent study of Kantar confirms our results showing that for 75% of the consumers their purchase decisions are based on the inclusion and diversity reputation of the company. Several indicators of marketing performances are therefore positively affected by investments in diversity and inclusion.
Benefits for the society
Companies’ diversity and inclusion actions can also generate a positive effect at the wider societal level, generating greater cohesion and reducing inequities. Diversity and inclusion are indeed often related to equity, which refers to fair treatment and equal opportunities for all consumer groups. Although this increased equity effect can be perceived as related only to minority groups, the multiple forms of diversity affect a wider range of people as their impacts extend to all those involved with them, such as their family members and friends. Increasing equity advances therefore the overall societal welfare.
Our study contributes with concrete evidence to promote diversity and inclusion in companies’ marketing policies. Just as the beauty of a garden is given by different flowers, the beauty of our society comes for inclusively embracing everybody’s diversity to design a better equitable world and marketing can play a key role in enhancing this process.
This article is based on the academic publication: Branca, G., Grosso, M. and Castaldo, S. (2024) “Value through diversity: A systematic literature review to understand diversity and inclusion in consumer research”, Psychology & Marketing, 41(11), 2854-2873. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.22088