Watch Out for Discrimination

Are your employees showing respect for all ethnicities and races when dealing with customers—and with each other? Researchers at Clemson University and University of North Carolina-Wilmington found that discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities continues to plague retail settings.
     Some frontline retail staff who carry biases against minorities operate on the assumption that it’s only the minorities who are disturbed by discriminatory behavior. Since the prejudiced staff member decides consciously or subconsciously that they’d prefer not to do business with minorities anyway, they resist changing their behavior.
     Purge discriminatory behavior. It’s unacceptable on ethical and legal grounds. It also has more widespread effects on customer goodwill than those prejudiced frontline staff acknowledge. The Clemson/North Carolina researchers found that many white shoppers become as outraged as blacks when the white shoppers observe a black customer being treated in a discriminatory way. All the customers are watching.
     Discriminatory behavior can be a problem in staff-to-staff interactions as well as in staff-to-customer interactions. According to findings by researchers at University of Southern California, about 40% of retail consumers report that at least once each month, they see a store employee treat another store employee so rudely that the customer gets less interested in shopping at that store.
     Social psychologists say there’s a particular risk of racial and ethnic discrimination when retail gentrification confronts retail redlining. Retail gentrification refers to affluent and middle class people starting to do their retail shopping in stores previously associated with lower class shoppers—shoppers who are disproportionately racial and ethnic minorities. Retail redlining occurs when certain racial and ethnic minorities systematically receive lower quality goods and/or are charged higher prices for equivalent merchandise than is true for other groups.
     An article in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times features one example of retail gentrification—Westfield Culver City mall. In a shopping center known previously as a collection of down-market stores, the mall now includes trendy retailers like XXI Forever and Hollister. But the economically disadvantaged haven’t been forgotten. 99 Cents Only and Dollar Tree stores are moving in. The split personality of the mall is evidenced by the names of the four anchor stores: Macy's, JCPenney, Target and Best Buy.
     The LA Times article says that what’s happening with the Westfield Culver City mall is an overall trend in retailing. Because a side effect of that trend might be inequitable treatment of customers, watch out for discrimination.

Click below for more:
Show Respect in Front of Customers
Reexamine Retail Redlining Temptations