Article Review
The Article “How important are different socially responsible marketing practices? An exploratory study of gender, race, and income differences” was written by Anthony Patino, Velitchka D. Kaltcheva, Dennis Pitta, Ven Sriram and Robert D. Winsor in 2014. Its purpose is to analyze the importance that customers usually place on socially responsible marketing practices and the impact of gender, race, and income. Authors decided to carry out a survey of 232 people in Baltimore, Maryland. The latent class analysis was used for assessment of survey results that will be presented further in this paper.
The article was divided into several sections. At firsts, authors wrote about evolution of perspectives that are used in marking. Initially, marketing was focused on efficient distribution of goods and services. Next, there was a marketing management perspective that extended to the customer needs. Soon an exchange perspective was developed. Its main idea is that relational exchange depends on understanding of values and outcomes such as time, information, social change, etc (Patino et al, 2014, p.3). At last, a stakeholder perspective is the most relevant nowadays. It is aligned with the concept of socially responsible marketing that is concerned with “an organization’s obligation to maximize positive impact on markets, investors, and the firm while minimizing its negative impact on virtually all other various publics and stakeholders (Cited in Patino et al, 2014, p.3.).
Undoubtedly, consumers are one of the key stakeholders in socially responsible marketing. Authors state that there has been already much research about socially responsible marketing practices and it is clear that consumers usually respond to contemporary efforts by marketers. Some consumers would even like to switch to more expensive brands if they support a socially positive impact. In this article, authors decided to show how gender, race and consumers’ income influence consumers’ attitudes towards socially responsible marketing. 282 people (50% male, 50% women) that participated in the survey were of different races and had unequal incomes. There was an interview and a focus group during which participants had to either discuss or rate various marketing practices.
Results of the survey prove the impact of gender, race and income on understanding socially responsible marketing practices. For example, middle and higher income females are the type of consumers that pay attention to socially responsible marketing practices the most. In turn, low-income males and females are less responsive and for them it is mostly important whether companies make donations to charities. There are not many differences in terms of race, and it seems that income is the most crucial factor. In authors’ opinion, research that they carried out is very important, because nowadays many marketers use socially responsible activities to differentiate their brands. Therefore, it is important to understand consumers better in order to develop effective marketing practices. For example, for some consumers it is important that a company provides good working conditions and is environmentally friendly, but there are consumers for whom donating to charity and sponsoring local community events are much more important.
In general, the article is very informative and easy to read. Authors’ hypothesis is supported with statistical data. Thus, readers may trust the authors. In the meantime, authors themselves wrote that there is one limitation - the survey was carried out only in one state. Moreover, location for the survey – an art festival – means that results of the survey may be inaccurate. Finally, in my opinion, there should be more research in terms of specific industries and companies (multinational, local, b2b or b2c). Nevertheless, this article may be useful for marketers, because it provides interesting information that describes effectiveness of 10 socially responsible practices starting from non-discrimination in employment and ending with non-harming animals. As a result, concepts of social corporate responsibility and socially responsible marketing have an academic proof that they may contribute to differentiating a company from its competitors.
References
Patino, A., Kaltcheva, V., Sriram, D., Winsor, R. (2014). How important are different
socially responsible marketing practices? An exploratory study of gender, race, and
income differences. Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 31 Iss 1 pp. 2 - 12
