Where Are We on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion?: A Million-Dollar Question

Introduction

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion' (DEI) is becoming increasingly popular in various aspects of life and serves as the hallmark of quality in issues such as governance, organisation management, training and development, marketing, and a host of others. Embracing it is widely acknowledged to be beneficial in many ramifications. Among many others, its focus is on ensuring that members of a particular system have a sense of belongingness and are fairly treated. In marketing parlance, the scope of equity, diversity, and inclusion is incredibly wide. The idea lies principally in how stakeholders like marketers, consumers, competitors, and society interact in a marketing system to forge productive and healthy exchange relationships. Even though there are several lenses through which the topic could be examined, this chapter focuses on four areas nameless poverty, gender, age, and homelessness as shown in Figure 1. This will allow for an in-depth and robust explication of the topic. Hence, the chapter presents an eclectic synthesis of the literature to unpack the subject and the extent to which the imbalance in the system has been addressed. Given, the wide relevance of income, the chapter begins with a focus on low-income consumers and deprivation in the society and is followed by gender discrimination in marketing. The experience of young consumers in the marketplace system and the imbalance depicted by homelessness are discussed in respective order before the conclusion of the paper. Overall, the chapter is very revealing in relation to the status quo, the anomalies in the marketing system, and the needed strategic direction.