Courting Customers: Assessing Consumer Racial Profiling and Other Marketplace Discrimination

Through an examination of 81 federal court decisions made between 1990 and 2002 involving customers' allegations of race and/or ethnic discrimination, the authors uncover three emergent dimensions of discrimination: (1) the type of alleged discrimination (subtle or overt), (2) the level of serv...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of public policy & marketing 2005-04, Vol.24 (1), p.163-171
Main Authors: Harris, Anne-Marie G., Henderson, Geraldine R., Williams, Jerome D.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
African Americans
Civil rights
Consumer protection
Criminals
Customer discrimination
Customer relations
Customers
Defendants
Department stores
Discrimination
Federal court decisions
Legal aspects
Marketing
Minority & ethnic groups
Plaintiffs
Policy Watch: Commentaries and Viewpoints
Racial profiling
Retail stores
Social aspects
Studies
United States
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Summary:Through an examination of 81 federal court decisions made between 1990 and 2002 involving customers' allegations of race and/or ethnic discrimination, the authors uncover three emergent dimensions of discrimination: (1) the type of alleged discrimination (subtle or overt), (2) the level of service (degradation or denial), and (3) the existence of criminal suspicion in the alleged discriminatory conduct (present or absent). Using a framework that enables the categorization and aggregation of cases with common themes, the authors demonstrate that real and perceived consumer discrimination remains a problem in the U.S. marketplace, and they conclude that further research is necessary for marketers to address the issue effectively.
ISSN:0743-9156
1547-7207
DOI:10.1509/jppm.24.1.163.63893