The time has come when building brand loyalty among consumers of color is no longer just an enlightened humanist perspective but also one that successful corporations know is profitable in the U.S. which is undergoing a browning of culture. African-Americans, Asian-Americans and Hispanics will spend $1.125 trillion in the U.S. this year and within two decades 48 percent of all American consumers will be non-white (Smith-Akinsanya, 1999, p. 1). When it comes to African-American consumers, they differ culturally from their white counterparts not only in the products and services they most desire but also in the criteria which they use to choose a company, product and/or service to use.
Two of the areas where African-American consumers are much more brand loyal than their white counterparts deal with supermarket and household products. In the first national consumer study focusing on inner-city consumer consumption patterns, brand preferences and store preferences, the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC) released the following key findings with respect to African-American consumers with respect to brand or company loyalty and preferences:
Inner-city African-American households report spending more annually on apparel than the average U.S. household.
Inner-city African-American households are more interested in fashion and apparel shopping than U.S. households as a whole.
For groceries and household items, inner-city shoppers have greater brand loyalty than other U.S. shoppers.
When it comes to brand loyalty, blacks at all income levels often demand the same quality of product, atmosphere and customer service as their white counterparts, but they often do not get it because of a lack of corporate understanding regarding the criteria used by blacks to remain loyal to a company or brand. When it comes to being loyal to a store on the retail level, Ketchum Worldwide conducted a study in tandem with Florida’s A&...