Editor’s note: Rill Hodari is the founding president of the Association of Minority Market Research Professionals (AMMRP), Chicago.
As anyone who has done mass consumer research knows, although a U.S. Census representative sample solicitations is sent out, the final data set is rarely representative. And often when you let the responses come in without any extra controls – in other words letting them naturally fall out – total minority representation is typically 4 to 5 percent. That is 4 to 5 percent for all minority groups.
Similarly among market research and consumer insights professionals, minority race/ethnicity representation is much lower than the U.S. population proportions even though extra efforts are made by some companies to increase representation. Table 1 shows the racial/ethnic composition of marketing research employees during the typical employment ages of 20 to 69 years old. Conversely, a recent estimate of racial incidence puts minority representation among analyst/associate and manager at 17 percent, with Asians over-represented at 10 percent and African-Americans and Hispanics underrepresented at 5 percent and 2 percent, respectively.
One reason for this demographic distribution may be due to low awareness of market research careers but since low awareness this is something that impacts the field in general, it should impact all groups equally. In addition, it should be noted that although the corporate market research practices may have started in the 1920s, U.S. minorities may not have started to participate to a significant degree until after the 1980s. So the chronological delay in the history of minorities in market research may also impact current representation.
Doing further analysis we find there may be even more dynamics at play. A review of over 200 LinkedIn profiles reveals that although 60 percent of the profession report having graduate level degrees, over 90 percent African-American and Asian market researchers report having at least a graduate level degree. Hispanics are so underrepresented, a read on their education level is difficult to evaluate. For African-Americans, this educational hurdle is actually an economic barrier since Blacks still lag behind the general population in achieving higher education correlated with economic constraints. So access to the profession at the collegiate level is particularly critical in order to more effectively increase African-American representation. In addition, the collegiate field of study is more diverse among White, non-Hispanic market researchers in that they have majors in business, marketing or social sciences but also in communications, psychology, history or various physical sciences. African-Americans and Asians often have less range in their majors and are generally more in line with the typical business, marketing and statistics profile. This shows that potential minority research candidates suffer over-adherence to the requirements in order to gain career access compared to their non-minority counterparts.
Another finding from the review of the LinkedIn profiles shows that African-Americans and some Hispanics can tend to have more mobile careers. On average, Blacks and Hispanics change companies more than their White, non-Hispanic counterparts. The data also shows that people with longer tenures at a company have a greater change to advancing into leadership positions. One might hypothesize that this career mobility behavior may impact effective advancement and even attrition rates among African-American researchers. Whether or not these trends really have a direct relationship, it is certainly more evidence that there are unique minority experiences within the profession that need to be identified and better understood.
Suggestions for measuring and constructing solutions
Recently the University of Southern California at Annenberg announced that they will produce an annual diversity report card on the entertainment industry. Given the similar gaps that the market research profession faces in terms of diversity, I would suggest that similar reporting be conducted. The Association of Minority Market Research Professionals has initiated a good start in measuring not only the racial composition of the profession but the experiential differences. Longitudinal tracking would go a long way in crafting and implementing effective organizational changes to bring the profession in alignment with where it needs to be in order to take advantage of an increasingly diverse talent pool. Collaboration with other professional organizations and corporate stakeholders are essential not only to build profession-wide buy-in but to also craft relevant, actionable recommendations and bring a broad skill set and resources to the table to ensure research quality.