By Lisa Mabe
Savvy marketers are constantly working to stay leading edge — keeping a pulse on consumer trends such as shifting demographics, evolving purchase behaviors and assessing lifestyles and life stages to best identify how their brands can fit into a variety of consumers’ lives. One consumer group that is gaining more attention among multicultural marketing experts is American Muslim consumers.
This group, numbering between six and eight million in the U.S., represents billions in disposable spending power — yet is perhaps the most underserved market in America. The third annual American Muslim Consumer Conference (AMCC), which took place on Oct. 29 in New Brunswick, N.J., addressed the opportunity for companies to reach out to this growing group of consumers.
When marketed to effectively, Muslim consumers remarkably champion brands and provide consistent and continued results, as evidenced by several of the success stories shared during the conference about companies such as Saffron Road Foods and Whole Foods Market. Muslims want brands and retailers to engage with them and say they are willing to open their wallets to those who do.
Consistent with last year’s conference, the AMCC drew both mainstream and Muslim-owned companies and organizations from Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Thomson Reuters to IFANCA, Noor Pharmaceuticals and Modern Eid. This year’s theme, “Multiculturalism & the American Muslim Consumer Market,” addressed the diversity within the Muslim market as it includes a variety of ethnic backgrounds, cultures and lifestyles.
As highlighted in the new book, Marketing to the New Majority, published by leading international research firm Millward Brown, American demographics are changing significantly, and if companies want to survive, they will need to think differently about how they reach various communities, such as Muslims, within our multicultural society.
Many Muslim market experts agree that missing the Muslim market today would be like missing the Hispanic market in the ’90s. For companies in the U.S. that are interested in tapping into the lucrative and loyal Muslim consumer market, the AMCC is a must-attend event. Millions of consumers are waiting for companies to acknowledge and engage with them. As companies are currently planning for the upcoming new fiscal year, how will your brand’s multicultural marketing efforts reach Muslim consumers in 2012?
