ABSTRACT
The formal study of one group of people by another has existed for thousands of years in Eastern and Western civilizations (Mead 1967). Within the last century this interest has intensified given the substantial increase in business and economic transactions that cross national and geographic boundaries. The focus in this chapter is to consider the range of methods and approaches that can be undertaken to do this. It is probably true to say that there has been far more attention in cross-cultural marketing paid to the substantive content, prioritizing theoretical approaches and empirical findings, as opposed to discussing methodology and research practice. Over the last two decades there have been some important developments in the USA and Britain, across the social sciences and humanities with respect to the profile of scholars undertaking racial and ethnic research. New generations of ethnic minority scholars have a strong personal and political engagement that challenges the traditional White/Other dynamic of much research (Alexander 2006). Furthermore, they have introduced new research issues that have their roots in the wider social sciences such as discrimination and consumer racism.
