By: Julian Forester, Alec Ibatuan, Matthew Hobbs-Mallyon, and Hanna Hill

 

This blog goes into detail on how marketing towards minorities and marketing from minorities can affect the communication within the workplace. It will discuss when companies represent minorities does that create more efficient communication throughout the company.

 

Beer, J. (2019, September 24). 17,000 data points from 50 top brands prove that diversity in ads is good for their bottom lines. Retrieved January 28, 2020, from https://www.fastcompany.com/90407174/diversity-advertising-good-brands-bottom-line

This article will be useful for our project because it shows how diversity in marketing returns profits. This means companies where management might not necessarily reflect these views can still use the most vulnerable people in society to turn a profit. It states that it is the right thing for companies to be diverse in their ads but when it isn’t reflected in their company brings up an ethical issue. It found that 92% of brands have a person of color in a power role but only 15% of those companies are culturally diverse. This directly relates to our research.

 

Blendon, R. J., & Casey, L. S. (2019). Discrimination in the United Sates: Perspectives for the future. Health Services Research, 54, 1467—1471. https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.wwu.edu/10.1111/1475-6773.13218

The article is relevant to our topic because it dives into discrimination in the United States and gives us data in the broader scope of how big this problem really is. The data found came from a national telephone survey conducted between January-April of 2017. The data found during the survey begs the question as to whether the United States must “move ahead” and create strong governmental policies targeted at reducing discrimination. This follows our question and provides important background information for us to better understand discrimination among minority groups and gives us a closer look at what companies are doing in response to this discrimination.

 

Keller, R.T. (2001). Cross-Functional Project Groups in Research and New Product Development: Diversity, Communications, Job Stress, and Outcomes. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/77bf/86ddb9ca8edb185fe475c07d5528e141bd15.pdf?_ga=2.257846095.552240157.1580259888-1411511177.1580259888 

This article is a study on 4 separate companies on how more diverse employees having affected the company as a whole, and the effects on communication within groups; the article also calls into question how increased stress levels can affect diversity and group cohesion.  This journal has a scientific study of 4 companies in measuring functional diversity, internal and external communications, stress levels of employees, and group cohesion. The study also measures the resulting variables: technical quality, schedule performance, and budget performance, of the projects completed by the groups studied.  These values are measured and calculated into means and other numerical functions in order to find correlations in the data, to prove or disprove the three hypothesizes in the journal. This source is valuable to our topic as it provides valuable data on the actual results of diverse groups on their communication, the interpersonal results, and the results within organizations.  This journal falls short in presenting the data for a specified business forum, whether marketing, economics, accounting, etc. Instead the study exclusively measures the data and discusses the result, allowing for any business to interpret and use the results. This study is narrower in their focus than other articles we have selected, as well as focusing more on data analysis.

  

Peñaloza, L. (2018). Ethnic marketing practice and research at the intersection of market and social development: A macro study of the past and present, with a look to the future. Journal of Business Research, 82, 273—280. https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.wwu.edu/10.1016/j.jbusres.2017.06.024

This article describes how marketing in the U.S. can be correctly directed towards minorities without being ethically wrong. We believe that this article is important for our blog because it studies the past and present of minority marketing. How marketing towards minorities in the past has been cruel and degrading, but recently things have been changing. Marketing lately gives minority consumers a better sense of identity and community. The article closes by making an inference about how the future of marketing to minorities will be and how it will change.

 

Powers, A. (2018, June 28). A Study Finds That Diverse Companies Produce 19% More Revenue. Retrieved January 28, 2020, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/annapowers/2018/06/27/a-study-finds-that-diverse-companies-produce-19-more-revenue/#5da9d064506f

This article is crucial for our project due to the immense amount of data related to diversity in the workplace. A study conducted in the article researched over 1700 companies in 8 countries varying in size. The study found that on average companies that have more diverse management teams would have an increase in revenue by 19%. The study explains that this is due to increased innovation that is directly correlated to diversity and that it is an integral part of success in today’s business environment. This is directly what we are trying to research and will be an important study that will be constantly referenced throughout the project.