Ethnic Marketing

9Ethnic Networks and the Adoption of Relational Strategies

This chapter elaborates on the importance of the promotion of suppliers to a minority ethnic group to a perceived “preferred supplier” status, as a factor in the generation of affiliated ethnic minority consumers’ loyalty to the supplier and to the group.

Contrasting with an implied restriction in the identification of “preferred suppliers” to routinely purchased products in business-to-business relationships (Ulaga and Eggert, 2006), preferred supplier status can be conferred to suppliers of all types of service-products in minority ethnic markets. The distinctive factor is that the de facto consumer is the minority ethnic group rather than any one individual consumer. In this way, while ...