Crossover Dreams: Consumer Responses to Ethnic-Oriented Products

Abstract

The authors develop and evaluate a framework for investigating and understanding ethnic product crossover, that is, when a product intended for one ethnic minority group gains significant penetration among consumers outside the referent ethnic group. In three studies, the authors investigate how a product's characteristics, the promotion and distribution decisions made for the product, and consumers' propensity for diversity influence the product's likelihood of crossing over from the intended ethnic target market to mainstream white consumers. Product characteristics interact with both other marketing decisions and consumers' diversity-seeking tendencies to influence whether consumers will be interested in ethnic products and the social context in which they are willing to consume them. The authors discuss the implications of the findings for theory and practice and provide directions for further research that include consideration of the product's ethnic embeddedness, the context in which the product will be consumed, and consumers' diversity-seeking tendencies.

The global hip-hop Diaspora: Understanding the culture

“…Further, early hip-hop music and the messages in U.S. music appeared to resonate with individuals outside the geographic boundaries of the United States and those individuals embraced it as their own, i.e., appropriated it. Grier et al (2006) suggest the characteristics of, the promotion and distribution decisions made about, and the context in which people consume products such as hip-hop may lead them to want to adopt it. For hip-hop, a distinction must be noted between crossover and appropriation.…”

“…For hip-hop, a distinction must be noted between crossover and appropriation. Crossover (push) is part of a marketer imposed market growth strategy, and Grier et al (2006) define ethnic product crossover as when a product intended for one ethnic group is marketed to and consumed by a significant number of people outside of that particular referent ethnic group. Appropriation (pull) of hip-hop might reflect receptivity, initiative, and perhaps inappropriate or undesirable borrowing according to some African-Americans by consumers outside the United States (Kitwana, 2005;Ziff and Pratima, 1997).…”

“…The concept of intended audience (part of the definition of crossover) is particularly important in our context, since it is not clear when the African-American, Caribbean and Puerto-Rican intentionality was lost for hip-hop music (Grier et al, 2006). That is, in the early days of underground hip-hop (remember the Grandmaster Flash quote from our introduction), the expectation and intentionality was that hip-hop would not be consumed by people outside of the South Bronx.…”

“…In hip-hop culture, there is a tension between authenticity or "keeping it real" and profitability or "selling out" (Grier et al, 2006). Hess (2005) suggests that the importance of authenticity, i.e., reflecting genuineness and truth (Grayson and Martinec, 2004) of hip-hop increased with commercial success.…”

Oneself for another: The construction of intimacy in a world of strangers

“…Migrants in this sense navigate their multiple cultural affiliations, oscillating and swapping between local(s) and global cultural references (Askegaard, Arnould, & Kjeldgaard, 2005;Oswald, 1999). The local marketplace also enlarges its multicultural offer in this manner, allowing consumers in a more general sense to endorse and express their multicultural appetite (Grier, Brumbaugh, & Thornton, 2006). These consumption opportunities provide support in the day-to-day process of navigating between a multiplicity of cultures that consumers experience progressively more over time, especially when living in global cities (Rojas & Emontspool, 2015).…”