Why Marketing's Inclusion Crisis Persists: The Limits of Diversity Without Intersectionality

Abstract

[From introduction] Marketing shapes cultural conventions regarding who belongs, who is valued, and whose lives are visible or invisible (Sobande 2020), contributing to the normalization of social hierarchies (Uduehi, Saint Clair, and Crabbe 2025). While marketing research increasingly recognizes diversity and inclusion issues, inequality remains insufficiently addressed. Marketers often rely on unidimensional identity categories, rather than nuanced reflections of multidimensional power systems that structure lived experience (Gopaldas 2013; Uduehi, Saint Clair, and Crabbe 2025). Such perspectives overlook how marketing systems, recognition, and legitimacy are constructed at intersecting social positions. Consequently, seemingly diverse marketing practices can foster inclusion for some groups while structurally excluding others. Nuanced analysis of how inclusion and exclusion are coproduced across intersectional identities is critical.