Abstract

The Italian ethnic market is increasingly relevant, with its 3.7 million presences and almost the 6% of the Gdp attributable to foreigners. In the past, other countries have already applied the ethnic/national criterion to segment this market. However, the Italian context requires different criteria, given the pulverization of immigrants over 200 different nationalities. The paper aims to contrast three different criteria of segmentation that emerge from managerial praxes, market researches and academic debate. In detail, we document the following criteria of segmentation for the ethnic market: i) lifestyles; ii) socio-cultural integration; iii) generation-based analysis. In the light of these praxes, new marketing paradigms are discussed in order to meet the almost virgin ethnic market.