How can we conduct research that truly furthers our understanding of diversity, rather than reinforcing old models?

This chapter explores that researchers studying racial and ethnic consumer groups should not feel compelled to accept the traditional logic that Caucasians are the most logical or necessary contrast against which racial and ethnic groups should be compared. Fortunately, research on multicultural consumers has advanced significantly beyond the early efforts to understand the segments not far enough. The multicultural groups not only demonstrate significant differences in terms of household compositions, values, lifestyles, self-perceptions, and aspirations, from the majority group, but also great diversity within each group. The approach reflects the Cultural Deviant Model, which characterizes differences between groups as deviant and inferior. Furthermore, within-group investigations can significantly advance people understanding of multicultural marketing by providing information that is lost in the traditional between-group comparisons. For example, the few studies on African Americans focused on samples of lower income, usually urban consumers, and then generalized those results to all African Americans.